In 1928 Joseph Goebbels, who would go on the become Propaganda Minister, threatened the democratic politicians of the Weimar Republic during the election campaign: 'Like a wolf tearing into the flock of sheep, that is how we come!' Five years later, in 1933, the Nazis toppled the Weimar Republic. Nazi propaganda used the image of the 'wild wolf' years before taking power.

Not a wolf: a German shepherd dog with a flock of sheep Image: Fotolia/Annette Kurka He liked his friends to call him by the nickname 'Wolf' his headquarters in World War II were named Wolf's Canyon and Wolf's Lair. A fear that is unjustified, as Mohnhaupt shows in his book.Ĭult surrounding predators: 'Like the wolf bursts into the flock of sheep'Īdolf Hitler's favorite dogs were German shepherds, a breed of dog that is very obedient - which is why they were used as guard dogs in the concentration camps - and that resembles the ancestral wolf. 'Anyone who wants to learn about the arbitrariness and contradictions of the Nazi regime should not ignore the animals.' Cover of the German book 'Animals in National Socialism'Īcademic research on the Nazi era had so far not focused on the topic of animals, as it was feared that 'a focus on animals would lead to a trivialization of human sacrifices,' Mohnhaupt quotes Mieke Roscher, a historian at the University of Kassel and Germany's only professor for human-animal studies. 'Sometimes they served as models, sometimes as images of the enemy, sometimes they were just a means to an end,' says Jan Mohnhaupt, author of the book Tiere im Nationalsozialismus (Animals in National Socialism) that also recounts the story of the Buchenwald zoo. Read more: 'Hitler's alligator' that survived Battle of Berlin dies in Moscow People and animals on one side of the fence, prisoners classified as 'sub-human' by the Nazis' racist ideology on the other: This scenario reflects the brutal world view of the Nazis, in which animals^often played an important role. The former Buchenwald concentration camp, with its fence that separated the 'worthy' from the 'unworthy' lives Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Kahnert Sometimes they would throw the inmates into the bear pit, because SS commander Koch enjoyed watching the bears tear them to pieces.

They may have built the enclosures and looked after the animals, but only concentration camp personnel were allowed to take a break there: guards, civilian employees and supervisors who tortured and killed prisoners on the other side of the electric fence. 'Diversion and entertainment,' however, was not meant for the prisoners and forced laborers imprisoned by the Nazis in Buchenwald. The zoo was intended to provide 'diversion and entertainment' for the men who spent their lunch break here, wrote concentration camp commander Karl Koch, who opened the menagerie in 1938, financed by extorted 'donations' from prisoners. Near the city of Weimar, just a stone's throw away from the Buchenwald concentration camp crematorium, monkeys swung around in cages in a small zoo, birds chirped in aviaries, there were brown bears and a goldfish pond.

Nazi breeding farm