A short history of the dictator's relationship with dogs:
[Hitler] was a romantic—a twisted, demonic romantic of the most dangerously delusional kind, but a romantic nevertheless. Even his brutality grew out of a belief in a racially and culturally pure Edenic state bearing no resemblance to reality. As such, he was a great lover of mystical signs, and he deeply appreciated the fact that his name Adolf translated from Old High German as "noble wolf." Wolves were considered the purer manifestation of dogs’ original warrior nature, and German Shepherds were bred to be closer to their lupine source. Hitler chose to go by the nickname Wolf, which was the basis for the name of his massive military bunker in Poland, the Wolf’s Lair. As a dedicated self-mythologist who read personal meaning into everything, he took this connection to wolves, the "pure" dog, seriously.
The best retort to this comes from a probably too-good-to-check anecdote about a Jewish Holocaust survivor in Austria who chose to call her own dog "Hitler". It became a kind of therapy for her to order the canine fuhrer-substitute around. "Sit, Hitler!" she would command. "Heil, Hitler" became "Heel, Hitler!"
It's the little things …
(Image of Braun and Hitler with their dogs via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 