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View Full Version : Nazi giant rabbit breeding program revealed



Skywizard
29th September 2013, 14:35
I found this and thought is was interesting enough to post.

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/images/news_large/news-angora-rabbit.jpg
Angora rabbits are a good source of warm clothing material. (what a rabbit!) :)

New details have emerged of a bizarre World War II program designed to provide fur for soldiers.

Details of a Nazi project to breed huge Angora rabbits in concentration camps to make fur clothes for Hitler's forces have been revealed.

Operation Munchkin - the idea of SS chief Heinrich Himmler - aimed to provide coats for Luftwaffe pilots and underwear for soldiers.

While the camps' inmates were starved and tortured to death, the rabbits got heated hutches and plentiful fresh vegetables.

Himmler's secret "Angora book" - found hidden in his home - about the project was kept in German archives but has now re-emerged.

He wrote: "Throughout Europe it is my intention to establish breeding stations in concentration camps."

The rabbits were bred in more than 30 concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. The breeding program began in 1941.

Himmler allegedly got the idea of using rabbit fur as a way to produce warm clothing for military personnel after reading about a small-scale experiment that took place during World War I.

Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/operation-munchkin-nazis-bred-giant-2309420


peace...
skywizard

Wookie
29th September 2013, 14:57
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fuzzy%20bunny
Fuzzy Bunny

sigma6
29th September 2013, 15:37
fur underwear? I bet those would feel comfy warm in the winter... LOL

Ellisa
30th September 2013, 00:09
My cat looks like this bunny at the moment! He is about to get a clip for summer- we have fluffy chairs, beds and carpets everywhere in the house! They would have been VERY itchy undies!

In the UK, after WW2, raising rabbits for meat was encouraged as other meat was severely rationed. We had a couple of ENORMOUS Dutch giant rabbits, which bred like rabbits, and so we had lots of rabbits--- which no one wanted to slaughter! Certainly not my dad who had had enough of fighting. I'm not sure how it was resolved, but it was out of sight, and we did enjoy rabbit stewed or in a pie! They were not fluffy and I wonder if they would shear these gorgeous animals- or is the fur an off-shoot of their meat? Seriously, the irony of raising meat producing animals in a concentration camp is quite offensive.

Bill Ryan
30th September 2013, 02:01
-------

Well, it certainly wasn't called "Operation Munchkin"!

That was a really terrible joke by a Daily Mirror sub-editor. And no-one in all the British media even raised an eyebrow. :)

Assuming this was real (and I guess it may have been!), it was called Projekt Angora.

Read the source article here: http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/ShowTopicAlbumBackground/a29527/l7/l0/F.html

Mulder
30th September 2013, 04:04
This is weird beyond belief - furry underwear?? I'd be too itchy to walk in furry underwear! Why not be normal and breed sheep for woolen clothes? I'm wondering if the original article is hyperbole as "the mirror" has a reputation for this.

Ellisa
30th September 2013, 06:52
Usually though I think NORMAL was not a characteristic of the Nazis.

Atlas
30th September 2013, 10:33
The Nazis had Angora rabbit farms at 31 concentration camps. When journalist Sigrid Schultz (1893-1980) presented her papers to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1965, they included a photo album labeled "Angora".

http://images.wisconsinhistory.org/700006070001/0607000002-l.jpg

The album documents the Angora rabbit project, an SS-administered program to breed rabbits in order to use their fur to line the jackets of Luftwaffe pilots. Schultz acquired the book during the winter of 1944-1945 while assisting the American Counter Intelligence Corps in the search for Nazi documents at Himmler's Alpine villa.

http://images.wisconsinhistory.org/700006070003/0607000018-l.jpg

"I vainly searched for the copy of Mein Kampf, which the CIC officers said they had not found. I noticed a box filled with albums of photographs showing Himmler and members of his staff strutting around Rome and such. A greyish book at the bottom of the box turned out to be Angora. It was covered in woven angora wool and it was dedicated to Reichsfuhrer Himmler by his SS forces. The first picture was startling indeed; it was a huge photograph of the head of a handsome, obviously contented angora rabbit." - Sigrid Schultz, summer 1967

http://images.wisconsinhistory.org/700006070008/0607000051-l.jpg

Farflung enterprises included mining and quarrying, food production, the manufacture of textiles, chinaware, and armaments, the bottling and sale of mineral water, the operation of night clubs, publishing houses, and baby farms, the cultivation of medicinal herbs and wild rubber plants, and—somewhere in the endless maze of bureaus, sections, and subsections—the raising of angora rabbits.

http://images.wisconsinhistory.org/700006070008/0607000050-l.jpg

Direct supervision of the economic enterprises of the SS fell to Amtsgruppe W, a complex of eight subordinate bureaus of which Amt W-V, concerned with agriculture, was the publisher of Angora.

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/feature/angora/essay/images/45285.jpg

Until evidence is discovered to the contrary, it may be assumed that the Mass Communications History Center's copy of the book is unique, made for Himmler's use alone.

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/feature/angora/essay/images/45431.jpg

Shannow
30th September 2013, 12:55
Oddly remembered "facts" about rabbits...off memory, so if anyone wants to go nitpicking, go your hardest. This was hand me down stuff from my Grandparents mixed with my Y2K stuff.

Many Europeans kept rabbits. They could harvest grass along roadsides and canals, and bring it back home, creating edible meat out of that which could not be digested by humans. It was easy for a child to walk with a pocket of grass and not be accosted by either authority or thief while harvesting forrage (It's a concept not dissimilar to the Dutch ??? who harvested grass from their allotments to bring back to their cattle at their home)

Important point when keeping rabbits in such environments, they must be able to gain access and eat their faeces, as they aren't ruminants. deny them "recycling" and they won't thrive.

American Indians had a preferable blanket made of rabbit skin and fox skin (pretty sure that it was fur to fur to create an insulating pocket blanket, rather than a fluffy to the skin blanket).

Rabbit fur makes the best steel capped work boot liner...this, I can confirm as an absolute fact, as I've lined the soles of my own workboots and they are delightful.

Australia made it through some very tough times on the flesh of the rabbit.

Clubbing them (either against fences, or chasing them downhill, which made them overbalance to be clubbed), and the carcasses brought to town and sold door to door kept millions fed. There's a football club http://www.rabbitohs.com.au/ have a tradition dating back to the street vendors of rabbits.

Myxamitosis was introduced into Australia to stop rabbits (personally, I believe it was to limit self sufficiency), and worked for a while. When it became ineffective, the calicivirus that they were "experimenting with" at the time jumped ship and came to the mainland...immediately they had to vaccinate the big cats at the zoos, in a completely unrelated campaign.

Man cannot live on rabbit alone. You can live on most animals (if you eat the majority of it, not just rump steak). A pure rabbit diet will starve you, as it misses something or other in the protein stakes.

If you've ever bought a "modern" farm raised rabbit, it is fatty and tasteless.

Rabbit pellets (food), at least in Oz, are mostly lucerne, and make a great nitrogen fertiliser for lawns and gardens. Somebody mined their farm for the nutrients in them, and they are really cheap...I just did a hegelkultur strawberry mound with rabbit food (and comfrey) to make up for the nitrogen consumption of decomposing wood...maybe soon I will have a rabbit hutch to provide manure for the next.

Cheers.

Carmody
30th September 2013, 14:36
Himmler was a failed ex-chicken farmer, before he became connected to the Nazis.

william r sanford72
30th September 2013, 15:07
also.what was the jimmy carter story??from the 70s.i have read it somewhere..i cant recall source.his accounts on ufos.and there was a strange story about him and a giant sized rabbit.one when hes was fishing.comes to mind.wittnessed by his security team to i bielieve.thought it one odd story.just food for thought.

Mulder
30th September 2013, 15:42
Oddly remembered "facts" about rabbits...off memory,
Man cannot live on rabbit alone. You can live on most animals (if you eat the majority of it, not just rump steak). A pure rabbit diet will starve you, as it misses something or other in the protein stakes.

If you've ever bought a "modern" farm raised rabbit, it is fatty and tasteless.
Cheers.

This is true, in fact you can eat all the rabbit meat you want and you will eventually starve to death (if you're eating nothing else but rabbit). I'm thinking this could be a good way to diet - you get to eat all you want, but still loose weight - LOL.

¤=[Post Update]=¤


The Nazis had Angora rabbit farms at 31 concentration camps. When journalist Sigrid Schultz (1893-1980) presented her papers to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1965, they included a photo album labeled "Angora". ......

I wasn't doubting the Nazis did breed rabbits at the camps, but I was saying the Mirror article has blown it up out of proportion e.g. with with the wrong name for it.

Atlas
30th September 2013, 20:37
Hi Mulder,

Yes, Bill was right, the name was Angora, so there may be something we've missed in this story. Myself, I had never heard of Nazi rabbits before and I wonder if the wool was for the pilots or for some secret base in Antarctica... I have no idea.

dianna
30th September 2013, 21:31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q6DAG1nMCM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40VDq0KqgDM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BqBpdy75fU&feature=share&list=PLAB36D30271CBF076


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXA3SMNl60&feature=share&list=PL40372BD63BDE01E4




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6T-a73rccU


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqprgBY70qM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATBsnI7bL-M





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