# SS (Schutzstaffel) recruits ordered to break the necks of puppies they raised: UL or based on fact? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 26, 2010, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445 "2010-10-26T21:49:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445/81 "2015-04-20T03:43:15Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > This was a good joke before you filled in too many details and tried to present it as a real story. That just makes it an urban legend instead of just a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445/82 "2015-04-20T04:08:28Z")
Back to Drew Pearson: Just google the words drew pearson eichmann fiendishly clever and you can find that article, or an image of the page it’s on, on-line. His column was syndicated, so you’ll find it in many papers. He was an American newspaper columnist. So I wouldn’t accept anything he writes as true source material itself. If he says Eichmann trained SS like this, one would still need to wonder where he got that from. ETA: Here’s one such link: [Ocala Star-Banner - Google News Archive Search](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19600617&id=k4FPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AQUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3600,760890&hl=en) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445/83 "2015-04-20T17:58:01Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Funny enough, the USAF does have people kill small animals in training. No really. Or at least they did when I attended back in the 80s. > > All USAF aircrew go through survival school. [http://www.fairchild.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3771](http://www.fairchild.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3771) > > Part of that process is a week spent out in the wild equipped with a hunk of parachute and the standard contents of a survival kit & vest, minus the firearm & ammo. The usual group is 5-8 crew trainees and one instructor mostly tagging along and doing some teaching. The main intent is to practice what was taught back in civilization in the previous weeks, so this is NOT like a skilled Scout leader leading the kids through the bush. The group fumbles its way along & the instructor is there mostly to prevent dumb mistakes from costing the USAF too much money in injured or killed crewmembers. > > At the start the group is issued one live full grown fuzzy bunny. The white ones with the adorable pink wiggly noses. And they get to carry it & let it forage for the next few days. About day six it becomes dinner. And a welcome dinner it is, since the last 5 days have been spent foraging in the forest for both food and water while hiking & evading all day trying to reach a pickup point. > > Most crew are suburbanites with college degrees in clean-hands subjects. So killing the cute fuzzy bunny is a new experience for most of them. As is cleaning & roasting over an open fire using all field-expedient tools. > > I had the good fortune to attend in the summer when it was warm days and cool nights and berries and such were relatively plentiful. The folks who attended in February had a worse time of it. Sorry I missed this in February. I guess this would explain why no one in the popular media talks about military survival training. Astronauts in training being written about in National Geographic, _GI Jane,_ whatever, they all were very cryptic about survival training, to the point it seemed like they were deliberately hiding details. Made me wonder what they were hiding. I mean, it’s survival training - how to find food, make shelter, you know, basic Boy Scout stuff. Nothing secret. Why should it be secret? Are there secret military foraging techniques we don’t want the Russkies to have? Was there a “survival gap”? But I guess finding out our National Hero Astronauts were killing fuzzy bunnies might be too much for some people, even in the pre-internet days of Apollo. Especially since they really would never need any of that training. It’s not like they could get lost coming back from the moon (Ah…Houston? I think we landed in Mongolia…). ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445/84 "2015-04-20T18:35:39Z")
I had a professor relay a story that during his survival training he was given a chicken as part of his ‘kit,’ but he decided not to kill it. More anecdotal stuff, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable. and he mentioned it fairly casually. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445/85 "2015-04-20T18:54:55Z")
Variations on this seem to be common. I recall once reading how as part of their training Soviet Spetsnaz soldiers were supposed to kill a pregnant cat, tear it open and count the kittens inside. I thought that unlikely at the time and nothing has made me reassess that view. Actually a little googling suggests it was ‘Inside the Aquarium’ by Viktor Susorov, and killing puppies is also mentioned. Those big meanies. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445/86 "2015-04-20T19:18:57Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Yeah, but that assumes he’d be aware of it. Seriously, how would he find out? How would he have become so intimately familiar with the specifics of the SS training program? Given how the Nazi’s worked, some other branch would have finked them out. The Navy, the Luftwaffe, the Army, the Abwehr, someone. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445/87 "2015-04-20T19:20:07Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > I had a professor relay a story that during his survival training he was given a chicken as part of his ‘kit,’ but he decided not to kill it. More anecdotal stuff, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable. and he mentioned it fairly casually. I have heard this also, and since I have heard it directly from the Professor of my Survival class, I believe it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ss-schutzstaffel-recruits-ordered-to-break-the-necks-of-puppies-they-raised-ul-or-based-on-fact/558445.md?page=4)