The Jobs of Dogs in WWII

Did you know that dogs have historically played a huge part in the war effort? Over 50,000 dogs were used in World War I alone! During World War II, the Soviets came up with a cunning canine plan… anti-tank dogs! They decided to train up our furry friends to become lean, mean, tank-destroying machines! Or that was the idea, anyway. The plan was solid enough – the pups would carry timed explosives, which they would then drop underneath German tanks, blowing them to smithereens. Flawless, right? Wrong. The dogs often got confused and ran straight back to their handlers. Rough. Cue version two – furry kamikaze fighters. This time, the dogs would carry explosives that detonated as soon as they dropped, killing both them and anything in a nearby radius. One problem though… in the confusion of battle, the dogs naturally gravitated to the familiar smell of Soviet, diesel-fuelled tanks, rather than the petrol-filled German ones. We don’t know how many tanks were lost this way, but suffice to say the programme was quietly dropped in 1943, and dogs were free to return to terrorising postmen instead.