Jackie (dog)
The dog Jackie was a mixed breed from Finland , who was known in 1941 for having raised his paw at Hitler's command as if in a Hitler salute . This caused a violent diplomatic reaction by the German Reich ; several ministries were involved in the matter. In 2011 the term "Hitler dog" came up for the dog in the German-language press.
process
In January of 1941 became known in Germany that a dog in Finland on the command Hitler his paw as lifted in the Hitler salute. When Adolf Hitler found out about this, he instructed the Foreign Office with its embassy in Helsinki and its consulate in Tampere , the Reich Ministry of Economics , the Presidential Chancellery and the largest chemical company in the German Reich, IG Farben , to investigate this matter.
The German Vice Consul in Finland, Willy Erkelenz, reported about it on January 29, 1941 and named the dog owner Tor Borg. The pharmaceutical wholesaler Borg was summoned to the German embassy in Helsinki, denied the accusations and testified that his wife had called her dog Jackie in 1933 in the family Hitler because he raised his paw strangely. He had not trained the dog to do the Hitler salute and had no bad intentions against the German Reich. The matter was diplomatically relevant because Borg's company was the market leader for pharmaceutical products in Finland at the time. Borg had studied in Frankfurt am Main and Halle and had been married to the German Josefine Neisius since 1923. His company was in business with "war important" German chemical companies. Among them were E. Merck and Bayer Leverkusen , the latter being part of the chemical group IG Farben at the time.
Finland was actually on friendly terms with the German Reich in 1941, which was in the midst of preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union . Nevertheless, the commissioned authorities worked intensively and meticulously on this diplomatic matter.
Bayer AG was already considering how to react to a possible delivery ban ordered by the state, because sales with Borg in 1940, converted to today's prices, were more than 20 million euros. Bayer AG pointed out that its representative in Finland was not in a position to take over wholesale sales in Finland, and that this prohibition must therefore also apply to all other German pharmaceutical companies.
The Foreign Office in Berlin investigated, apparently on behalf of the Reich Chancellery , whether witnesses could be found to sue Tor Borg in a Finnish court. Witnesses who did not testify against Borg were also heard. On March 21, 1941, the Foreign Office asked the Presidential Chancellery of the Führer and Reich Chancellor whether a criminal complaint could be made against Borg. The answer of the head of the chancellery, Hans-Otto Meissner, on March 26th, 1941 was: "In view of the fact that the matter has not been fully clarified and was several years ago, I do not consider filing a complaint necessary".
This diplomatic incident has been confirmed to the Berliner Tagesspiegel by documents from the Foreign Office in Berlin, which is keeping a relevant file in the ministry's archive.
The newspaper taz first reported on the Hitler dog in Germany , then other German daily newspapers and also the Anglo-American press, including the New York Times , The Telegraph and BBC News .
Klaus Hillenbrand , a political scientist and writer who exposed the case, wrote in the New York Times that :
“The dog affair tells us the Nazis were not only criminals and mass murderers, they were silly as hell. There are very few things you can laugh about because what they did was so monstrous. But there were two or three dozen people discussing the affair of the dog rather than preparing for the invasion of the Soviet Union. They were crazy. "
“The dog affair shows that the Nazis were not only criminals and mass murderers, they were also extremely stupid. There is very little to laugh about because their actions were so monstrous. Still, there were two or three dozen people who discussed the canine affair instead of preparing for the invasion of the Soviet Union. You were crazy. "
Jackie is believed to have lived until after the end of World War II and died of natural causes. Tor Borg presumably died in 1959 at the age of 60, his wife in 1971.
Tor Borg's company, Tampereen Rohdoskauppa Oy , today the Tamro Group , is a leading wholesale company for pharmaceutical products in Scandinavia , Russia and Estonia with around 5,500 employees.
Web links
- [1] NYTimes article 2011
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lt. tagesspiegel.de of January 12, 2011 is said to have raged Adolf Hitler and instructed three ministries to take action.
- ↑ a b c d taz.de : Klaus Hillenbrand: A dog named Hitler , from January 8, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2011
- ↑ a b c tagesspiegel.de : Christian Wermke: Dog annoys Hitler. State affair "Führergruß" , from January 12, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2011
- ↑ a b c d welt.de : Sven Felix Kellerhoff : A dog called "Hitler" , from January 15, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2011
- ↑ Signature R 98974, 3/80 to 4/94, 1941, volume 10
- ↑ a b nytimes.com : Michael Slackman: The Curious Incident of the Dog in Finland. Who Was Trained to Give a Nazi Salute , January 11, 2011, in English, accessed May 18, 2011
- ↑ telegraph.co.uk : Hitler-mocking dog enraged Nazis, according to new documents , in English, January 7, 2011, accessed May 19, 2011
- ↑ bbc.co.uk : Nazi Germany pursued "Hitler salute". Finnish dog Jackie's sunglasses are not thought to have been part of his Hitler impression. A Finnish dog which gave Nazi salutes so annoyed Germany's World War II government that it launched a campaign against its owner , in English, on January 7, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2011
- ↑ fischerverlage.de : Klaus Hillenbrand, Vita , accessed on May 23, 2011
- ↑ msnbc.msn.com : Kisten Grieshaber: "Heil Rover!" Hitler-imitating dog enraged Nazis. During WW II, German diplomats obsessed over canine that copied Fuehrer's salute , in English, January 7, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2011