Adolf Hitler kept alsatians because of their similarity to wolves while Hermann Goring owned lions, according to a study exploring Nazi leaders’ use of predatory animals as icons of power.
Hitler owned at least 12 alsatians between 1922 and 1945, including three bitches called Blondi and three males called Wolf. He approved of newsreel footage showing him with the dogs as it portrayed him as an animal-loving man of the people while conveying his status as a leader demanding obedience, author Jan Mohnhaupt writes in his book Animals in National Socialism.
He liked to be called Wolf in private and named his East Prussian military headquarters the Wolf’s Lair. “To this day, wolves are associated with the far right and that is clearly linked to the Nazis,” said Mohnhaupt.
Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels invoked the animal when he warned Germany’s other parties in 1928: “Like the wolf tearing into the sheep herd, that’s how we’ll come.”
Hitler mocked Eva Braun’s Scottish terrier as a “duster”, the book reveals. According to her friends, Hitler’s fondness for his dogs made her jealous. When Blondi was lying under the dinner table, Braun would give the dog a discreet kick so that he would admonish it for yelping, writes Mohnhaupt.
Predators were to domestic pets what the master race was to subhumans, according to Nazi logic. Nazi author Will Vesper said cats were the Jews of the animal world because they were sly and false.
Read the article by David Crossland in The Australian.