Central London was largely in ruins during the Second World War when the German Luftwaffe struck the city. And with the estimated 384,000 soldiers and 70,000 British civilians killed in the war, the idea of a Nazi memorial in London is not one that would sit well with most people.
Yet technically there is such a thing in central London, just a short walk from Buckingham Palace, next to the towering statue of the Duke of York. Just outside The Mall at the foot of a large tree, you will see the small memorial inside a plastic-fronted wood-framed box with the inscription: “Giro, ein treuer begleiter! Im London Februar 1934” (Giro, a faithful companion! In London February 1934).
It is signed ‘Hoesch’ as it was created in 1934 by the then German Ambassador to the UK, Leopold von Hoesch. While von Hoesch was a Nazi, as he represented the government at a time when Hitler’s rise to power had just ended, he was outspoken against Hitler’s aggressive moves and did much to improve relations between Great Britain and Germany after arriving in London in 1932.
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Von Hoesch spoke out against Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland which violated the Treaty of Versailles. After World War I, Germany was not supposed to have an army. But after Hitler completed his rise to power after the fire at the Reichstag, or German parliament, building, gave himself emergency powers, and merged the positions of president and chancellor to become Führer, the Nazis had total control of Germany and began rebuilding the armed forces.
So while von Hoesch was indeed a Nazi because of his position as a diplomat for the German government, he did not necessarily share the same ideals. In the same year – 1934 – in London, the tragedy occurred at 9 Carlton House Terrace, a building that still stands today and was then the German embassy where Leopold von Hoesch and his dog Giro lived.
Giro, who may have been an Alsatian or a terrier depending on various sources, chewed through an exposed electrical cable in the embassy garden and died of electrocution. Confused, von Hoesch dug his pet a grave and buried him in the garden with the small tombstone and its touching inscription. Von Hoesch himself would die just two years later, in April 1936 when he suffered a heart attack while dressing in his bedroom at the embassy.
So beloved was von Hoesch by British politicians, who saw him as an able diplomat and a friend of the British government, that he was awarded full military honors on his journey from London back to Germany. It seems bizarre now but his coffin was draped in a Nazi flag and carried through the streets of London, with senior British politicians walking in the funeral home as a 9-gun salute rang out from Hyde Park and he made his way to Victoria station then on to Dover and back to Germany on a Royal Navy destroyer.
But this was three years before the outbreak of World War II, and since von Hoesch had spent most of his time in London during the previous four years, he was seen more as a Nazi in the eyes of Hitler than as a true Nazi, which is perhaps why this small grave remains in London today, as Britain’s only memorial to a “Nazi”.
After being largely forgotten, the grave and headstone were rediscovered in the 1960s during building work at 9 Carlton House Terrace and moved to the foot of a large tree, where they remain, placed behind locked wrought iron gates, between the statue of the Duke. of York and 9 Carlton House Terrace.
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