Believe it or not there is a Nazi memorial in London….of sorts.
At Number 9 Carlton House Terrace is one of London’s most curious oddities. A tiny gravestone can be seen at the bottom of a tree behind the railings.
It is known as the Nazi dog memorial, perhaps a little unfairly. Back in the 1930s when the German Embassy was here the Ambassador, Leopold Von Hoesch, owned a little terrier which was playing in the garden one day when it chewed through some electric cables and died. Von Hoesch was very fond of the dog, whose name was Giro, so he buried him within the grounds.
Leopold Von Hoesch was the ambassador during the Weimar Republic and continued to be ambassador after the rise of the Nazi party, but he was very disapproving of their activities. He was, in fact, very popular amongst the British and when he dies he was give a proper state funeral whereby his coffin was draped in a Swastika and carried on a gun carriage past Buckingham Palace and all the way to Dover and then over the Germany where none of the Nazi Party attended his funeral. They were rather tired of his constant entreaties on behalf of the british.
Inside Number 9 Carlton House Terrace Mussolini had donated some marble for a part of a staircase in there which still exists and Albert Speer, Hitler’s Architect, was responsible for quite a lot of the interior design. It is said that there is still a large mosaic of a swastika on the floor inside under a carpet somewhere but this cannot be confirmed by this parish.
Anyway, it’s a pity that it’s remembered as a Nazi dog but I suppose strictly speaking he was ambassador whist the Nazi party were in power…I’m not sure about the dog’s political allegiances though!
