Hitler-mocking dog enraged Nazis

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.
Historians were unaware of the scheme until some 30 files containing correspondence and diplomatic cables were found by a researcher in the Foreign Office archives. Klaus Hillenbrand, an expert on the Nazi period who examined the documents, called the episode "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," he told The Associated Press. The Dalmatian mix named Jackie was 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 way it raised a paw high in the air, much like Germans greeting the Fuehrer with a cry of "Heil Hitler!"
In one photo, Borg, a jovial businessman known for his sense of humour, appears with Jackie by his side wearing a pair of round sunglasses. On January 29, 1941, the German vice consul in Helsinki, Willy Erkelenz, 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 in Helsinki and questioned about his dog's unusual greeting habits. The businessman denied ever calling the dog by the German dictator's name, but acknowledged that his wife called the dog Hitler. He tried to play down the accusations, saying the paw-raising only happened a few times in 1933 shortly after Hitler came to power. Borg assured the Nazi diplomats that he never did anything "that could be seen as an insult against the German Reich," according to the documents.