Yes, he was....to animals. He loved dogs. While fighting in WWI, he had a dog named Fuschl, who was trained to run up and down ladders. The dog was stolen from him. During WWII, he had a dog named Blondi. The poor little thing was the test pilot for the cyanide Hitler used to commit suicide. The cyanide worked quickly and fairly painlessly. It would have broken Hitler's heart if the doggy suffered.
Hitler was a vegetarian and hated to see animals suffer. He hated the screaming sounds of lobsters when put into a pot of boiling water. So, he passed a law stating that lobsters had to be killed with kinder methods. It was a good war for the lobster. He also banned hunting animals with dogs.
Hitler's chief mass-murderer, Heinrich Himmler, thought nothing of torturing and killing non-Germans, but he said, "Shooting birds and animals is not a sport. It is pure murder. We Germans have always had a respct for animals". He even wanted his SS soldiers to wear bells at night to scare away any little creatures so they wouldn't be stepped on. Himmler also said that he liked the Medieval German custom of putting rats on trial and giving them the chance to behave themselves. Some Nazi regions banned experimenting on animals. They used human non-Germans instead.
Until I read these tidbits in Horrible Histories: The Second World War, I believed you could always tell a good soul by their treatment of animals. I guess I was mistaken.
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