My favourite author about cats, Dr. Desmond Morris, writes in his book Catlore that Hitler, Napoleon and Alexander the Great were all fanatical cat-haters. I believe it’s true that Napoleon was a cat-hater and perhaps Alexander the Great but Hitler wasn’t. Not on my research. Some websites say that Adolf Hitler had a fear of cats i.e. was an ailurophobe but I think they are wrong. Although it is hard to obtain hard and supported information on this topic.
I am reliant on the Quora.com website for my research. There’s not a lot about Hitler and his relationship with cats because he loved dogs and there are many photographs of him with his favourite German Shepherd Blondi, who was with him and her puppies at the end of his life.
My research indicates that he loved animals and preferred animals to people sometimes but didn’t hate cats. He was a great fan of birds and perhaps a little wary of cats because cats attack birds.
A cat called Peter visited Berghof, Adolf Hitler’s holiday home in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany. Apparently, members of staff became attached to Peter and the cat became a regular guest and in visiting regularly was able to endear himself to Adolf Hitler. The information is anecdotal but Hitler’s secretary, Christa Schroeder apparently said:
“He did not actually like cats, apparently because they went for birds, but he gradually accepted Peter to the extent that in the end, he would get jealous if the cat selected somebody else’s left to sit on.”
This has an air of plausibility about it so it appears that Hitler wasn’t a cat-hater or an ailurophobe (a person who fears cats) but that he accepted them and this may come from the fact that he is said to have been an animal lover and he adopted a vegetarian diet during World War II.
The Nazi party was apparently environmentally concerned and there are attempts by Heinrich Himmler to ban the hunting of animals and Herman Goring was an animal lover and wildlife conservationist.
People seem to get mixed up between Hitler and Napoleon in terms of cat hating. Hitler was not, as mentioned, a cat hater but a dog lover.
In 1933, in Germany, a law was passed which punished animal cruelty and in 1934 Hitler’s government passed regulations regarding the hunting seasons including permits which are still in place today. In 1935 Hitler was the first leader to pass wolf protection laws.
Not long before he committed suicide, he administered a cyanide capsule to Blondi to test its effects and to prevent the Soviet troops from getting to her. Blondi’s puppies were shot.
Hitler let them test the drug him and Ava were to use at the end on Blondi and when it killed her he had them kill her puppies too. Hitler ordered Spear to scorch earth Germany and the people near the end but Spear refused. Spear said he couldn’t do it anyway because they didn’t have the planes and bombs to do it. Hitler also ordered all animals killed too.
My step father was terrified of cats. I once brought home a tiny kitten and he went screaming into the bedroom and wouldn’t come out till I left the house with it. He was a jerk…
Your step father must have been an ailurophobe with an irrational fear of cats. Perhaps he had suffered some sort of traumatic event when he was a child. But a fear of cats is irrational unless we’re talking about a tiger!