Tag Archives: Germany

Nazi Germany afraid of a dog

Amused at what the history archives can sometimes produce.  Weird story’s like this make history fun to learn about and research. 

Newly discovered documents have revealed a bizarre footnote to the history of the Second World War: a Finnish mutt whose imitation of the Hitler salute enraged the Nazis so deeply that they started an obsessive campaign against the dog’s owner.

Absurdly, a totalitarian state that dominated most of Europe was unable to do much about Jackie and his paw-raising parody of Germany’s Fuehrer.

The dog, Jackie, was a mutt owned by Tor Borg, a businessman from the Finnish city of Tampere. Borg’s wife Josefine, a German citizen known for her anti-Nazi sentiments, dubbed the dog Hitler because of the strange way it raised its paw high in the air like Germans greeting the Fuehrer with a cry of “Heil Hitler!”

Link: New documents: Hitler-mocking dog enraged Nazis. Via: The Finnish Dog That Mocked Hitler.

Radioactive Boars on the rise in Germany

This is an interesting legacy from the Chernobyl disaster where the wild boars in Germany are eating food that has high levels of radioactivity.

As Germany’s wild boar population has skyrocketed in recent years, so too has the number of animals contaminated by radioactivity left over from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown.

via A Quarter Century after Chernobyl: Radioactive Boar on the Rise in Germany – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

Apparently, mushrooms and truffles, which the hogs like to eat, are “particularly efficient at absorbing radioactivity.”

via Nearly 25 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, Germany Beset By Radioactive Boars : The Two-Way : NPR.

From the first article link it appears that the wild boars in general are a problem with the article noting some of the recent headlines.

Stories of marauding pigs hit the headlines with startling regularity: Ten days ago, a wild boar attacked a wheelchair-bound man in a park in Berlin; in early July, a pack of almost two dozen of the animals repeatedly marched into the eastern German town of Eisenach, frightening residents and keeping police busy; and on Friday morning, a German highway was closed for hours after 10 wild boar broke through a fence and waltzed onto the road.

Ah the fun of wild animals, boars are at least a little more interesting, here in Minnesota the most common road nuisance is Deer. I was most amused and hope the man is alright by the headline from the Berlin park.

Image from NPR piece, Timm Schamberger/AFP/Getty Images