Blondi - Hairy Aryan By 1944, Hitler was fucked. And didn’t the fun-sized genocidal maniac know it? As the German war effort crumbled around his ears, Hitler told anyone who would listen – according to Hugh Trevor-Roper1, in his The Last Days of Hitler [Macmillan, 1947] – that there were only two people on earth he could trust. One was Eva Braun, his blonde-haired, blue-eyed doxie. The other was Blondi, his blonde-haired, brown-eyed dog. He added, ominously and quite in defiance of common sense, that at the final hour and in the last ditch, he knew that the only one who would stick by him was Eva. Did he expect Blondi to betray him? If so, that might go some way to explaining what happened afterwards. But for a time, at least, there was an uneasy détente. In 1945, while he directed the dying throes of the war from his final redoubt – his reinforced concrete bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in Berlin – Hitler had Blondi, and her puppy Wolf, by his side. His few excursions from the bunker (air-raid warnings tended to serve as an alarm clock) were to give Blondi a breath of fresh air. “Woof,” we can imagine her saying, as she watched the master developing a series of Herbert-Lom-in-the-Pink-Panther-style tics. We can’t know what was in her head. Living in an underground bunker, what was in her head was probably: “Walkies.” 1 Later Lord Dacre. Distinguished historian. Not to be confused with Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail. Lord Dacre’s reputation was damaged in the autumn of his career by his vouching for the authenticity of the “Hitler Diaries”, a funny hoax which was to have been one of the few true stories ever to appear in the news pages of the Sunday Times, but then wasn’t. Not really Hugh’s fault. Though he initially held the diaries to be genuine, he changed his mind at the eleventh hour, and told the newspaper so. He was overruled by the distinguished historian Rupert Murdoch, with the words “Fuck Dacre.” Hitler’s fondness for Blondi followed a familiar pattern. He liked dogs disproportionately2 . When he was fighting in the First World War, he adopted a dog that had crossed the lines, and named her Foxl. Towards the end of the war, Foxl went missing. “Whoever stole her,” he said, “will never understand what the loss meant to me.” Hitler’s butler, Heinz Linge, was captured by Russians towards the end of the Second World War and interrogated on Stalin’s orders. It was only in early 2005 that the transcripts of those interrogations finally emerged. Stalin’s men had done their work. Herr Linge cracked under the pressure and confessed that, when Blondi fell ill, Hitler insisted she be provided with a special ration of eggs, lean meat and dripping. He was given regular updates on her progress, and woe betide the bearer of bad news: “It was easier for him to sign a death warrant for an officer on the front than to swallow bad news about the health of his dog.” In happier times, Hitler even tried to give Blondi the sexual satisfaction that her master seemed to find so elusive. He commanded a breeder to produce a pedigree3 male dog, and introduce it to Blondi. Emerging from a briefing on the progress of the war on the Eastern Front, Hitler asked Herr Linge whether Blondi and her mate had got it on. “Yes, my Fuhrer, the Act of State has been completed.” “How did Blondi take it?” “They both behaved like beginners.” “How do you mean?” “They both fell down.” 2Indeed, Hitler’s love of dogs ignited a minor historical debate in 1995 when a Labour MP, John Battle, joined battle in the pages of the Catholic Herald. “Walking back to the House of Commons from Pall Mall a friend urged me to have a glance at the dog’s grave next to a monument to Frederick, the Duke of York, at the top of the steps at the end of Waterloo Place,” he wrote. “It’s a small gravestone, dated 1934, marking the grave of ‘Ciro’, Hitler’s dog, opposite what was formerly the German Embassy. My friend commented that only in England could be found a monument commemorating Hitler’s pet dog. Does English sentimentality know no bounds?” What? Interrogated by an enterprising Evening Standard journalist, Mr Battle insisted: “I’ve seen it myself. It’s behind some railings and under a bush. It’s written in German.” The headstone, marked “London, February 1934”, bore the legend “Ein Treuer Begleiter”: “a true companion.” The German embassy, at the time, sought to defuse the potential diplomatic row. They insisted that the dog was actually called Giro, not Ciro, and that it had been an Alsatian belonging to Leopold von Hoesch, last ambassador of the Weimar Republic to the Court of St James’s. 3Obviously. Hitler, according to Herr Linge, burst into laughter at this exchange. I confess to finding it baffling. Let us ascribe it to the differing national sensibilities reflected in the celebrated German sense of humour. By April 29th, 1945, however, the game was well and truly up. On the afternoon of that day, Hitler summoned his former surgeon, Professor Werner Haase, to the bunker, and introduced him to Blondi. She was born a dog but she died a guinea-pig: as Hitler’s paranoia reached its apex, he started to fret that the ampoules of prussic acid prepared4 as suicide pills for himself and the staff might not work. Blondi had to go first. Hitler did not attend her murder. With the help of the dog-handler, Sgt Fritz Tornow, Professor Haase forced open Blondi’s jaws and crushed a capsule in her mouth with a pair of pliers. She died instantly. Hitler came in afterwards, looked at her body, and left without a word to lock himself into his room. Did he cry? Later, Hitler, looking glazed, shook a number of his bunkermates’ hands, and presented his secretaries with a poison capsule each as a farewell present. The two other dogs in Hitler’s household – more kindly, some will think – were shot. The last man to leave the Fuehrerbunker was Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, Col Nicolaus von Below. At midnight, Von Below went above. Hitler remained below. The rest is history. 4According to Ian Kershaw in his magisterial Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis, these were created by an SS surgeon with the magnificent name of Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger.