The Dog Who Defied Hitler
One of the unsung heroes of WWII was a dog. Who, it seems, wore sunglasses.
Jackie was the pet of Finnish man Tor Borg. Tor’s wife have Jackie the nickname Hitler because the mutt was given to making the Nazi salute with its paw. And that little party trick is what almost got Tor and Jackie killed.
German Vice Consul Willy Erkelenz in Helsinki wrote that “a witness, who does not want to be named, said he saw and heard how Borg’s dog reacted to the command ‘Hitler’ by raising its paw”.
Mr Borg was called into the German embassy for questioning, where he admitted that his wife Josephine - a known anti-Nazi German - had called the dog Hitler, but denied being involved in anything “that could be seen as an insult against the German Reich”.
The embassy, however, thought otherwise, telling officials in Berlin: “Borg, even though he claims otherwise, is not telling the truth.”
The Foreign Office spent three months investigating ways of bringing Mr Borg to trial for insulting Hitler, but no witnesses would come forward.
This is all new stuff, dug up in papers recently discovered in the German Foreign Office.
The good news is that Jackie and Tor made it through the war; eventually charges were dropped (probably because this shit was too silly even for the Nazis) and Tor’s company ended up being one of the biggest pharmaceutical groups in the Nordic region.
That picture at the top is real. And as far as I can tell, that Hitler-defying dog is seriously wearing sunglasses.
