I know Hitler and the Gang were a bunch of crazy’s but may I ask if this story is true? I wouldn’t mind seeing a synopsis on the collective state of the mental health of this group.

Adolf Hitler had army of talking dogs, claims Dr Jan Bondeson

-Hitler trained an army of talking dogs
-Canines could write, read and spell
-Dogs trained at Animal Speech School

NAZI scientists tried to breed a secret army of “educated” dogs that could speak, read and write, according to a new book.

By the way I can tell that second photo is completely natural and not at all retouched.

While this is a news article, this should probably go into Conspiracy Theories…  While the Nazis may well have thought they could teach dogs to talk, a LOT of Nazi science was dubious to the point of insanity. I suspect a certain amount of confirmation bias and ‘creative’ interpretation may have been involved, if not outright manipulation of facts.

Given that the rest of the book seems to be about other ‘extraordinary’ dogs, I suspect there may be a bias.

Just remember: For every dog that can ‘count’ or bark ‘I love you’, there’s hundreds of thousands who are either licking their own testicles or eating their own vomit. Guess which ones get written about?

Robin Bobcat - 25 May 2011 08:58 AM

While this is a news article, this should probably go into Conspiracy Theories…

SHAZAM!!! 

daveprime - 25 May 2011 10:07 AM

Robin Bobcat - 25 May 2011 08:58 AM

While this is a news article, this should probably go into Conspiracy Theories…

SHAZAM!!! 

Oooooh…. ahhhh…..

Yeah.  They might have tried it, but dogs are dogs.  Some of them can be quite smart. . .for dogs.  But they’re not quite at the level of reading and writing and such.  It would take many years of careful breeding before that was even a possibility, and the Nazis didn’t have enough time for a program that long.  Any dogs would have just been ordinary dogs, like the ones around today.

Hitler and dogs…

Death

Before Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, he ordered physician Werner Haase to test pills to help with his suicide on Blondi, fearing that these pills were fake. He became completely inconsolable after the fact and took his own life very shortly after. According to a report commissioned by Joseph Stalin and based on eye witness accounts, Hitler’s dog-handler, Feldwebel Fritz Tornow, took Blondi’s pups from the arms of the Goebbels children, who had been playing with them, and shot them in the garden of the bunker. He then killed Eva Braun’s two dogs and his own dachshund by lethal injection.

Source: Wikipedia

Accipiter - 25 May 2011 01:32 PM

Yeah.  They might have tried it, but dogs are dogs.  Some of them can be quite smart. . .for dogs.  But they’re not quite at the level of reading and writing and such.  It would take many years of careful breeding before that was even a possibility, and the Nazis didn’t have enough time for a program that long.  Any dogs would have just been ordinary dogs, like the ones around today.

By many years do you men centuries?

Peter - 26 May 2011 02:31 PM

Accipiter - 25 May 2011 01:32 PM

Yeah.  They might have tried it, but dogs are dogs.  Some of them can be quite smart. . .for dogs.  But they’re not quite at the level of reading and writing and such.  It would take many years of careful breeding before that was even a possibility, and the Nazis didn’t have enough time for a program that long.  Any dogs would have just been ordinary dogs, like the ones around today.

By many years do you men centuries?

Dunno.  I’m not a dog breeder.  But certainly more than the twelve years or so that the Nazis were in power.