The dachshund has a very spicy history. It is because they are quite an intelligent breed of dog.
The Nazi regime viewed canines as being almost as intelligent as humans and they attempted to build an army of fearsome “speaking” dogs.
From 1930-1945, the Nazi regime had an institution for performance dogs, called the Hundesprechschule Asra, based in Leutenburg. The institute utilized Tierpsychologie (animal psychology) to train dogs to communicate through speach, code and telepathy for the war efforts. There are documented findings that the dogs would speak, “Heel Hitler”, “Furred Reich”, “Wooffan SS”, and “Arf Wiedersehen”.
A dachshund named Kurwenal was a top performing dog at this institute that could “speak” in coded barks and was trained to work alongside the German SS and guards in concentration camps to free up officers.
Kurwenal the dachshund was said to be the wisest and noblest of dogs. But it was Kurwenal’s intelligence that gave him this spicy history.