Gunny G: Marines History and Traditions: German Myth 13: Teufelshunde - Devil Dogs

…..A Bavarian Teufelshunde Legend?

Most German Web references to “Teufelshunde” are for computer games with a kind of hellhound beast called a Teufelshund in German, but it seems to be closer to Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Greek mythology who guarded the gates to Hades. I also found a German rockgroup called “Teufelshunde” and at least one lyric reference to a Teufelshund that ends with these lines: “Drum Mensch tu’ recht und sei nicht schlecht; sonst holt der Teufelshund Dich in den H�llenschlund.� (“So do right and don’t be bad; otherwise the Devil Dog will drag you into the jaws of hell.”) And the poem seems to be related to Bavaria’s Chiemgau region around Bavaria’s Chiemsee. Another Sage is called “Der Teufelshund in der Sandwiese.” But did the Devil Dogs legend actually came about because German soldiers compared the Marines to “wild mountain dogs of Bavarian folklore”?

GyGRet (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

United States Marine Corps (USMC) World War I recruiting poster. A Marine bulldog chases a German dachshund, taking advantage of the German nickname for Marines as “Devil Dogs”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

H.L. Mencken & Floyd Gibbons

The American writer H.L. Mencken didn’t think so. In The American Language (1921) Mencken commments on the Teufelshunde term in a footnote: “This is army slang, but promises to survive. The Germans, during the war, had no opprobrious nicknames for their foes. The French were usually simply die Franzosen, the English were die Engl�nder, and so on, even when most violently abused. Even der Yankee was rare. Teufelhunde (devil-dogs), for the American marines, was invented by an American correspondent; the Germans never used it. Cf. Wie der Feldgraue spricht, by Karl Borgmann [sic, actually Bergmann]; Giessen, 1916, p. 23.” The correspondent that Mencken referred to was journalist Floyd Phillips Gibbons (1887-1939) of the Chicago Tribune. Gibbons, a war correspondent “imbedded” with the Marines (as we would say today), had his eye shot out while covering the battle at Belleau Wood and lived to tell the tale. He also wrote several books about World War I, including And They Thought We Wouldn’t Fight (1918, George H. Doran Company, New York) and a biography of the flying Red Baron.

So did Gibbons embellish his reporting with a made-up Devil Dogs legend, or was he reporting actual facts? Did the Germans truly come up with the term Teufelshunde for the Marines? Not all the American versions of who first used the German word agree with each other. One account claims that the term “originated from a statement attributed to the German High Command, in remarking on the determinedness of the Marines, to the effect of ‘Wer sind diese Teufelshunde?’, which means ‘Who are these Devil Dogs?’” Another version claims that it was a German pilot (perhaps the Red Baron?) who cursed the Marines with the word “Teufelshunde.” Was Gibbons aware of this? If so, how? Or did he invent the tale and put it into one of his dispatches from the front in France? So far I have been unable to find any German reference to Teufelshunde in connection with the Marines. Not a single one. I also have not been able to look at the archives of the Chicago Tribune to see the actual news article in which Gibbons is alleged to have first mentioned the “Teufelshunde” tale. (The 1918 editions do not seem to be available online. Can someone in Chicago help?)

Floyd Gibbons was known to be a flamboyant character. We also know that his biography of Baron von Richthofen, the so-called Red Baron, was not entirely accurate……

EXCERPT

via Gunny G’s Marines History and Traditions: German Myth 13: Teufelshunde – Devil Dogs.

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