The mutt who mimicked the Nazi salute and mocked Hitler

LONDON - Documents released by the German Foreign Office have revealed that back in 1941, while the U.S. joined the war after Pearl Harbour and Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Nazis were busy dealing with a Finnish dog called Jackie.

The papers indicate that Adolf Hitler’s regime was increasingly angry that the animal, which had been taught to raise its paw mimicking the Nazi salute, was mocking the Fuhrer.

The outrage resulted in an investigation and the Third Reich officials started a campaign against the dog’s owner, with the Foreign Office in Berlin commanding its diplomats in Finland to gather evidence on Jackie and even coming up with plans to destroy its owner’s pharmaceutical wholesale company.

“Just months before the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union, they had nothing better to do than to obsess about this dog,” the Daily Mail quoted Author Klaus Hillenbrand, who examined the files for a German newspaper article to be published today, as saying.

Jackie was owned by Tor Borg, a businessman from the Finnish city of Tampere and his wife Josefine dubbed the dog Hitler because of the strange way it raised its paw high in the air, like German soldiers saluting their Fuhrer.

Borg was ordered to the German embassy in Helsinki for questioning. He denied ever calling the dog Hitler, but admitted that his wife did.

He said the paw-raising had happened only a few times in 1933 - shortly after Hitler came to power.

However officials wrote back to Berlin that “Borg, even though he claims otherwise, is not telling the truth.”

The foreign office wanted to bring Borg to trial for insulting Hitler, but in the end, none of the potential witnesses was willing to repeat their accusations in front of a judge. (ANI)