Our Wager Of The Week Winner; Chistiane Schulte (& Friends)

Nazi Patrol Dogs On Berlin Wall

• Concentration camp connection?
• Was Kommisar Rex killed first?
• Is leash memorial to be erected?

The world of academia is not really known for its sense of humor. Sure they do the Darwin Awards once a year but only as a sop towards appearing not to take themselves too seriously, something they invariably do. The popular misconception of the crazy scientist feverously working away in a lab somewhere might be entirely wrong but our Wager of the Week winner proves that you should never gamble an egghead will spot a joke.........particularly not if they're German.

A paper written by PhD Christiane Schulte was an investigation of “the prime importance of human-animal studies for contemporary research into totalitarianism” and was published in Totalitarianism & Democracy a peer reviewed journal in Dresden. It made many interesting assertions that were argued convincingly. The first casualty of the Berlin Wall was a police dog called Rex, and was one of a number of Alsatians bred from the dogs that were used during the war. Used by the Germans.

This, the paper claimed, was to continue a “tradition of violence” directly from Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps to the patrolling of the Berlin wall, so much so there was a law written commanding East German border guards keeping their dogs on a leash to prevent them starting World War III. Heady stuff indeed. The only problem being that the entire thing was a hoax dreamed up by our Wager of the Week winners, and if you're German gambling laws of decency would have this laughed off, like the odds at Bet365 of Aston Villa winning the league, think again, academia isn't at all pleased.

Hoaxer Wins Our Wager Of The Week

The paper had first been presented at a conference last year when one from the group behind the hoax posed as Christiane Schulte expecting to get laughed off the stage. Unfortunately, perhaps because another presentation that year was about rabbits living on the death strip in Berlin, people discussed it quite seriously. Even the suggestion that the memorial to the wall's dead should include a steel dog leash didn't seem to give the game away much to the amusement of our Wager of the Week winner.

“Systematically deceived” is how the Hannah-Arendt Institute for Research into Totalitarianism described feeling when they had to admit they'd been duped and that there were no German Shepherds with totalitarian leanings or any such person as Christiane Schulte. Our Wager of the Week winner was gambling news of such importance to a specific field would be taken on spec, and they were right, so Christiane Schulte, whomever you are, well done for betting Germans academics are too up their own selves to recognize satire when they see it and gambling news of Nazi patrol dogs would be swallowed whole. We applaud you.