A dog Hitler: Salute to pet secretly taught to ape Adolf

A FINNISH dog trained to mimic Adolf Hitler so infuriated Germany's Nazi rulers that they launched a campaign against its owner, newly discovered documents reveal.

Despite preparing an attack on the Soviet Union, the Foreign Office in Berlin still took time to order its diplomats in Nazi friendly Finland to gather evidence on the dog.

And they even planned to close down its owner's wholesale pharmaceutical company in revenge.

Historians had not been aware of the strange footnote to the Nazi period until around 30 files containing parts of the wartime correspondence and diplomatic cables were recently found by a researcher at the political archives of the German Foreign Office.

Klaus Hillenbrand, an expert who has written several books on the Nazi period, was contacted by the historian and examined all of the documents.

Mr Hillenbrand described the Second World War episode involving the dog as "completely bizarre."

"Just months before the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union, they had nothing better to do than to obsess about this dog," Mr Hillenbrand said.

The dog, Jackie, was owned by Tor Borg, a businessman in the city of Tampere.

Mr Borg's wife Josefine, a German known for her anti-Nazi sentiments, had dubbed the dog Hitler because it raised its paw high in the air like Germans greeting the Fuhrer with a cry of "Heil Hitler!"

On 29 January, 1941, 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."

Borg was ordered to the German embassy and questioned about his dog. He eventually admitted his wife did call the dog Hitler, but said the paw-raising only happened a few times in 1933, as Hitler rose to power.

He told his interrogators that he had never done anything "that could be seen as an insult against the German Reich".

He was not believed. The diplomats wrote to Berlin saying "Borg, even though he claims otherwise, is not telling the truth".

Hitler's Foreign Office, the Economy Ministry and the Chancellory all became involved, though it is thought no-one dared tell Hitler himself.

The Economy Ministry even announced that the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, which had supplied Borg with pharmaceuticals, had offered to "eliminate" his company by ending co-operation.

However, a lack of witnesses to the dog's antics frustrated a move to bring Borg to trial for insulting Hitler. Tor Borg died at 60 in 1959.

His company eventually became the leading wholesale pharmaceutical company in the Nordic countries.