Way back in the day, I had an 8th grade Social Studies instructor who had served in WWII and told us how the elite Nazi SS soldiers would be given a German Shepherd puppy to raise & train and then, at some point, had to kill the dog on demand. Any hesitation meant you weren’t elite material.
Being 13 years old, I never questioned this and filed it away (not that it comes up much). Today I was reading the website for the elite South African ‘Recces’ units and under “How to spot a fake wannabe” was the tip that they’ll tell a story like the above about their own special forces training.
Which brings us to the obvious question: Has anyone ever actually done this as a legitimate part of elite, special forces military training? With my advanced age and cynicism I assume my old teacher was just repeating propaganda (even if he sincerely believed it) but didn’t know if it had its roots in any actual documented event.
I’ve seen something similar in a documentary about the training of French commandos. A guy who had failed at something was given a goat to bring around and “protect” apparently as some sort of punishment. Later on, he had to kill it for food.
I have read about this lovely facet of the initiation ceremony for members of the SS, but only in a novel. I’ve never come across it elsewhere. Wouldn’t surprise me either way, frankly.
Interesting myth listening a couple of weeks ago to a BBC radio program on the Vikings (a program in the wonderful “in our time” series available on the BBC radio website) apparently dogs played a big part of Viking life and death, many beheaded dogs or bifurcated (how!) dogs show up in burials or ritual site. The Archeologists postulated that a puppy was given to a boy child to raise and on puberty he had to kill the dog to enter adult life… seems the same sort of goolish thoughts enter archeologists heads as do SS mythologists.
Massad Ayoob is one of the world’s best firearms and self-defense instructors and founded a school called the Lethal Force Institute in New Hampshire. In the level 4 class, students are required to go to the slaughterhouse and actually shoot a cow or pig. The thinking is not that it makes them tougher or elite but that that looking an animal in the eyes and killing it gives the student more respect for the power of a firearm.
Just my opinion, but a military organization might have more interest in training dogs for guard and search duty instead of wasting a potentially valuable animal.
Nitpick: “Ghoulish.” A ghoul is a monster that robs graves and eats the dead buried therein. It’s an Arabic word and appears in the name “Algol” (the star) and Ra’s al Gul," meaning “head of the grave-robbing, corpse-eating desert demon.”
Usually “ghoulish” is used to indicate a morbid fascination with the dead or a fascination with benefitting from disturbing the death or profiting from death.
There is a scene in Dog soldiers where a guy is trying out for the SAS and is asked to kill a dog as part of initiation. It seems like it’s a fairly well known trope.
Animal sacrifices (dogs, horses) are not uncommon in ancient burials. Far more likely that the dogs belonged to the dead person (or were acquired on his behalf after his death) and were killed at the time of burial.
Yeah, assuming for the moment that Vikings partook in this urban legend and had to kill a puppy they had raised from childhood in order to enter manhood there’s one thing that didn’t factor into these archeologists thought process: in order to be buried with said puppy they had killed at puberty, Viking men would have to be carrying around a dead puppy with them their entire life.
Unusually for me i realized as i came online tonight that i’d spelled it wrong (usually i just plain don’t notice) and as i scrolled down i though…i bet some nitpicker has corrected it already…thanks for that …
