By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
Associated Press
BERLIN – Newly discovered documents have revealed a bizarre footnote to World War II: the Nazis’ dogged obsession with a Finnish mutt who gave not a howl, but a heil.
And, just as absurdly, the totalitarian state that dominated most of Europe was unable to do much about the canine’s paw-raising parody of Germany’s Fuehrer.
In the months preceding Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Berlin’s Foreign Office commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly country to gather evidence on the dog and its owner – and even plotted to destroy the owner’s pharmaceutical business.