I only know what the article says and thought I would ask on here as it is interesting, this is what it says in the 2nd link I posted above, link:

'In the first decade of 1900, Von Stephanitz wrote a book (in German) about his loyal hard working dogs called "The German Shepherd in Word and Picture" in which he documents the above heritage and pleas to the breeders not "to add more wolf blood" into his dogs as he had ALREADY found the IDEAL combination. In 1923, an American version was translated VERBATIM. Not many copies were printed and few still exist. Fang@howling.com has a pricey (about $350) original and more may(?) be found by doing rare book searches. In 1932, an 8th Enlarged and 'Revised' (read sanitized) version was financed by English speaking 'interests'. All references to the positive wolf heritage were removed and most GSD fanciers have been denying RECENT wolf heritage ever since. '


Shame the book costs so much as it would be good to have a read,

In this country they were only called Alsatians because of anti German feelings. In 1919 the Kennel Club first gave them breed status as Alsatian Wolf Dogs but the wolf dog was dropped after 5 or 6 years. In Brtain they only got their correct title of German Shepherd in the lare 70s but in America they were called German Shepherds from 1931.
I find the remark about Von Stephanitz very strange as he himself was working on improving the GSD type within the SV right up till the late 30s when he died & I can't see people in England mating to wolves so unless it was addressed to breeders in the USA I find the remark most odd.
I have met several GSD wolf hybrids & with one exeption they were far more nervous than the pure wolves or pure GSDs. However I do not know whether the first GSD had any wolf in him I'd need to do more study on this.

I googled this and followed up the mentions and the only ones I could find traced back to this posting. I`m not saying it`s wrong, I`m just saying I find it a bit odd that the only extant proof is in a book that happens to cost 350 dollars. I`m wondering why a photocopy of the relevant page is not available? You`d think that would be all over the net, considering how much other Wolf stuff is out there (some of it a little distasteful - watch what you open!). The idea of a conspiracy theory to explain why the stud books now don`t carry this information is a bit X files for me as well.

I can certainly understand why the French guy said the GSD was `based` on the wolf - as I understand it Captain Max admired the functionality of the wolf and the GSD was designed along those lines.