No Choice, Bomb Dog, Show Dog or Supper: Dogs and Cynology in the Second World War

On 14 March 1938, a dog show was held in Brussels. Thirty-one Dutch dogs competed; the Kerry Blues were magnificent. On the same day, Germany marched into Austria.For the next seven years, Dutch dog owners kept showing their dogs, arguing about cropping regulations, and worrying about food rations - while the world collapsed around them into unprecedented horror. No Choice is the story of both: the horror, and the going on.If this book demonstrates one thing above all, it is that even under the most terrible circumstances - occupation, deportation, starvation - people cling fiercely to the ordinary. The Winner Show continued every year throughout the war. Breed clubs held their meetings. Litters were registered. Dogs were judged, prizes awarded, champions crowned. Not out of indifference to the suffering around them, but because normality, however fragile, is one of the things human beings cannot survive without.Drawing on thousands of contemporary newspaper reports, club minutes, and survivor testimonies, André Heuzer traces the extraordinary variety of roles that the dog played in the Second World War. Bomb dog and show dog. Red Cross dog and concentration camp guard. Propaganda tool and pot of soup. Childhood companion and military hero.From the anti-tank dogs of the Soviet Red Army to the paradogs of Arnhem; from Fala at Roosevelt's side to Blondi in Hitler's bunker; from the Winner Show in Amsterdam to the gas ovens of the animal shelter - this is a history of the Second World War as seen through the eyes, and experienced in the lives, of the animals who had no say in any of it."They had no choice." - Animals in War Memorial, Hyde Park, London