Der Bayerische Kurzhaar-SchnüffelhundThe Short Haired Bavarian Shnufflehund

Ruined by the wrong people

The story goes that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Shnufflehund was one of the most popular hounds in southern Germany. Then, just after the Second World War, it fell sharply out of fashion.

Because they were such good trackers, the Nazis used them to hunt down Jewish people in hiding. They became the Gestapo's hound of choice, and the breed never shook off that association.

None of this was the dogs' fault. It's humans who ruin a good breed, never the dog.

After the war, people stopped breeding them. Numbers dwindled until only a handful of working hounds were left.

The shadow has never fully lifted. Because of the part the breed was forced to play in the persecution of Jewish people, the Shnufflehund is still banned in Israel to this day.

The legend of Brunhilda

A second, less reliable story claims Hitler himself was rather fond of the Bayerische Kurzhaar-Schnüffelhund. He kept two as pets, a brother and sister called Claus and Brunhilda.

Apparently Hitler liked to practise his speeches while wandering around the house completely naked. One evening, Brunhilda clearly took offence at whatever he was ranting about and bit him, savagely, in the privates.

He lost a testicle as a result, which some say is the true origin of the old wartime song "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball".

Furious at the attack, he ordered as many Shnufflehunds as could be found to be rounded up and shot.

Just as the breed was vanishing from Europe, a small and unexpected colony appeared on the other side of the world.

In the summer of 1945, two German U-boats surrendered at the Argentine seaside resort of Mar del Plata. Around the same time, a wave of well-dressed German "holidaymakers" began arriving in the area. Few gave their real names, most were vague about what they'd done in the war, and a surprising number had brought a short-haired Bavarian hound.

By the late 1940s, Shnufflehunds were a familiar sight on Playa Grande, the town's smartest beach, trotting beside pale, unsmiling gentlemen in very high-waisted swimming trunks.

Locals called them los perros de los señores sin apellido: the dogs of the gentlemen with no surname.

The Argentine line never spread far. Their owners kept to themselves, avoided photographers and registered as little as possible, least of all their dogs. By the 1970s the colony had faded, though some Mar del Plata families still swear their mongrels have a Shnufflehund nose.

Hikers on the Obersalzberg, high above Berchtesgaden, have been telling the same story for decades. Folklore

This is where the Berghof once stood. It was bombed in 1945, and what was left was blown up in 1952 so it could never become a shrine. Today the site is little more than trees, rubble and the odd broken wall.

But at dusk, walkers say a lean, short-haired hound appears among the trees where the house used to be. She circles the ruins with her nose to the ground, as if tracking someone who left in a hurry.

Those who get close describe a dry, hacking cough, the unmistakable sound of a dog bringing something up. She drops a small, half-chewed object on the path, looks up with enormous satisfaction, and fades into the trees.

Some say she's trying to give it back. Others say she's just showing it off.

Locals know her as Brunhilda. Nobody has ever been brave enough to pick up what she leaves behind, and by morning it's always gone.

She's said to appear most often when someone nearby whistles a certain old wartime tune.