Giro The Ambassador's Dog

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Not far from Trafalgar Square is Waterloo Place and Carlton House Terrance. Next to No. 9, the former German Embassy, is a small gravestone for Giro, the so called Nazi dog. Giro died in 1934 after chewing through an electrical cable and was buried in the garden of the Embassy. His owner was Leopold Von Hoesch, the German Ambassador, who took residence in 1932. Von Hoesch, A cultured and urbane man, was an excellent English speaker and popular in London. With the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933, Hoesch's job became very difficult and he died, in 1936, of a stroke possibly brought on by the strain of maintaining Anglo-German relations. He was given a 'Nazi funeral' with a 19 gun salute and a procession in London before being taken by destroyer to German where he was totally ignored by the Nazis, demonstrating the antipathy held for each other. In the mid 1960s while work was being done at No. 9 the gravestone for Giro was found and placed next to a tree beside the house, where it remains to this day. Sometime in the 1990s the little wood and plastic house appeared, protecting the stone from the elements. Giro is known as the Nazi dog, but he is really a dog of the Weimar Republic. The inscription reads 'A Faithful Companion' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyeD7lv6xpk