Why did Hitler choose swastika symbol as the emblem in the Nazi flag?

For most people, the swastika symbol elicits a feeling of abhorrence or repulsion. It has been the penultimate insignia of intolerance and genocide and became an irredeemably torn symbol when it was adopted by Hitler, mainly because of the representation the mark used to hold.

It is great to note that the swastika symbol meant something completely different than what it has portrayed in its association with the Nazis. Today, some people still regard it as their sacred symbol.

Swastika’s history was incredibly broad. Different versions of the symbol were found in prehistoric carvings, Bronze Age stone adornments, Egyptian textiles dated from the Coptic Period, Neolithic Chinese pottery, and in the ruins of Troy. Its most famous and significant use, however, was in India, where it still remains an essential symbol for Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism.

Prior to the Nazi Party’s adoption to the swastika, it has already been used in the West and even became a trend. It was believed to be a symbol of good fortune. The mark was used in the commercial works of Carlsberg and Coca Cola and even used as the name of the magazine of Girls’ Club of America.

However, the swastika’s woeful linkage with the Nazi party traces from the surge of German nationalism after World War I, which aimed to build a superior racial identity. The identity stems from the concept that Germans have shared heredity with the dominant Aryan master race.

In 1871, Heinrich Schliemann, a German archeologist, first found the ruins of the lost city of Troy. During this renowned excavation, he discovered nearly 1,800 swastika marks, a symbol which has also been uncovered in the ruins of Germanic tribes.

Ernst Ludwig Kraust, a German author, later on, incorporated the swastika symbol into the political arena of the growing German nationalism, linking it to both Vedic and Hellenic heritage.

With that, a twisted ideology of Aryanism, a term implying the connections of Romance, Sanskrit, and German languages, started to form. It has become the basis of a distorted ethnic heritage, bringing swastika as the insignia of assumed Aryan dominance.

It is widely believed that Adolph Hitler picked the swastika symbol himself to be the mark of the Nazi movement. It was said that Hitler needed an insignia that would separate it from other groups and searched for a design that would bring the masses together. Since the swastika symbol was used the Aryan nomads, which was believed to the Germans ancestors in the Nazi theory, the mark was regarded as penultimately anti-Semitic.

The design started to become commonly used starting in the summer of 1920 and has been the official mark of the Hilter’s Nazi Party, the Nazionale-socialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.

The creation of this spurious identity and ethnic superiority was the center of Adolph Hitler’s movement. Driven by the said ideological project, the Nazis began to form a toxic nationalistic ambiance in their country and transformed what used to a sacred symbol into a mark of bogus racial hatred, and slaughtering inferior people like a juggernaut.

More Readings:

Related Posts: