Nazi Propaganda

watching a film on Leni Rien--something or other lol I am not about to try and spell it without it being on teh screen, so I will edit this later no doubt


anyway I keep asking but no one seems to know

why did the nazi's "salute" the way they did? you know the arm stretched out all the way.... it's always been something I've wondered, but I can never find anything on why that was the chosen salute.

Well, since you asked....in modern history it began in the good ol' USA.

It was an extension of the arm toward the flag during a pledge that was created in 1892 by some now defunct boy's magazine. The pledge ultimately under went many changes to become adopted offically as the Pledge of Allegiance. The US used the arm stretched this way well into the 1930's when it was dropped like a hot potato as being too similar to that adopted by the National Socialist party in Germany.

I think it's always been around in various forms of earlier civilization - "Hail Caesar", "Heil Hitler" and our own use to indicate specifically to whom the veneration is bestowed.

Did that help?

a little, Aloft thanks!


basically you're saying Hitler and his followers couldn't figure out how to be original?

^^^ Heh, well no. Remember how Hitler called his 'empire' the Third Reich? That wasa reference to the days of Rome, when Charlemagne ruled what is considered the First Reich. Then Bismark founded the Second Reich, the German Empire. Hitler wasn't trying to be original, he was trying to harken back to the glory days of Rome and the German Empire, and his adoption of the Roman salute was one way of connecting his "Third" Reich to the other two.

Strange this would come up; I just read about this the other day.

This is from the "Encyclopedia of Bad Taste" (no, I am not making that up), under the entry NUDISM:

"The raised-arm salute of 'Heil' was in fact revived by the Wandervogel, a nature-worshipping youth league [in Germany] that had been founded in the 1890s and believed the ancient gesture to be a more natural form of greeting than the popular military clicking of heels."