Germany's Nazi government was so angry about a dog trained to imitate Hitler that it started an obsessive campaign against its Finnish owner, according to newly discovered documents.

In the middle of World War II, the Foreign Office in Berlin commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly Nordic country to gather evidence on the dog, and even came up with plans to destroy the pharmaceutical wholesale company of the dog's owner.

Historians had not been aware of the strange footnote to the Nazi period before some thirty files containing parts of the correspondence and diplomatic cables were recently found by a researcher at the political archives of the German Foreign Office.

Klaus Hillenbrand, an expert who has written several books on the Nazi period, was contacted by the historian and examined all of the documents for an article to be published Saturday in daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Hillenbrand called the entire episode "completely bizarre."...