Bitch Alsatian pet of
Adolf Hitler. Sometimes she was referred to as 'Blonda', or anglicised as '
Blondie', which make some people who read too much into anything wonder if
Deborah Harry's pseudonom was a
glam punk wordplay.
It was not Hitler's first dog, during the First World War he had a small dog called Fuchsl who he taught how to climb up and down ladders. Sadly for Adolf Hitler, Fuchsl was stolen in 1917.
Blondi was a present given to Hitler by NSDAP colleague Martin Bormann. When Hitler's mistress Geli Raubal shot herself in 1931, Hitler became a vegetarian, and he only fed Blondi a meat-free diet. Upon his rise to power in 1933 Hitler did break one traditional bond humans had with dogs - he banned hunting, although gave certain exceptions for well connected and keen huntsmen like Hermann Goering.
Hitler was quite affectionate with Blondi, and also taught her tricks, proudly displayed on many a Leni Riefenstahl home video. Hitler trained Blondi to bark an octave lower When he commanded her to 'sing like Sarah Leander', a husky-voiced Swedish singer popular in wartime Germany. Blondi had her own bomb-proof kennel at her master's Bavarian retreat at Berchtesgaden.
In the last days of the war Hitler in a fit of despair said that his only friends were Blondi and Eva Braun, after hearing that Heinrich Himmler was trying to negotiate a surrender behind his back. Deciding to take his own life, but afraid that the cyanide capsule Himmler had provided was merely a sedative designed so he could be taken alive by the allies, he got his doctor, Werner Hasse to test the pill on Blondi. Sure enough Blondi died on the spot, and after his master and mistress took their lives, their bodies together were cremated with diesel fuel in the Reich chancellery gardens on 30 April 1945.