Swastika (pronounced swos-ti-kuh (Germanic) or swas-ti-kuh (English-speaking world)).
(1) A
figure used as a symbol or an ornament in the Old World and in America since
prehistoric times, consisting of a cross with arms of equal length, each arm
having a continuation at right angles.
(2) The
official emblem of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP; the Nazi party)
and (after 1935) the German state (Third Reich).
1850–1855:
From the Sanskrit स्वस्तिक (svastika), from svasti (prosperity), the construct being सु- (su-) (good, well (cognate with Greek eu-) + अस्ति (asti) (that being as- (be) + -ti- (the abstract
noun suffix)) + क (ka) (the diminutive suffix), hence "little
thing associated with well-being", best understood in modern use as “a lucky
charm". It was first attested in English
in 1871, a Sanskritism which replaced the Grecian gammadion. After adoption in
the early 1920s by the German National Socialist Workers’ Party (the Nazis),
swastika was increasingly used to refer to the visually similar hooked cross which
in German was the Hakenkreuz (literally
"hook-cross"), English use first noted in 1932. The su-
element is from the primitive Indo-European (e)su- (good), a suffixed
form of the root es- ("to be”);
the asti element is from the same
root. It was known in Byzantium as the gammadion and in medieval heraldry as
the cross cramponnee, Thor's hammer, and (although this is contested), the fylfot,
a similar shape though most usually rendered in mirror image to the swastika. Swastikaed was the rare adjective.
For
thousands of years, the swastika was used by almost every culture as a symbol
of good fortune before, in the Western world, becoming synonymous the Nazis and
thus a byword for racism and barbarism. Translated
literally as "well-being" in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit
and for millennia shared between Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, it was the
positive connotations associated with the shape, as well as its pleasing,
adaptive geometry which inspired the early Western travelers visiting Asia to
bring it home, examples found in the archeological record of the Ancient
Greeks, Celts, and Anglo-Saxons, some of the oldest examples in eastern Europe,
stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans.
In the 1800s it became a popular shape among jewelry designers and by
the turn of the twentieth century there was quite a fad for it among graphic
designers who applied it from everything from tiled floors, fabrics,
architectural motifs and advertising.
Carlsberg and Coca-Cola both used it on their bottles and Swastika was
the title of the magazine of the Girls' Club of America, the young ladies being
awarded swastika badges to wear as a prize for selling copies. In one especially interesting example of
timing and placement, some war planes of both the Aeronautical Division of the US Signal Corps (predecessor
of USSAF & USAF) and
the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) were adorned with swastikas, beginning in the
1920s. Use declined, obviously, during
the 1930s but there’s evidence the symbol was used as late as 1939. The Finnish Air Force adopted it in 1918,
discretely painting over the last examples in 1945 but the symbol continues to
be used by some squadrons and on decorations.
The
Nazi’s use of the swastika is another example of the quasi-scientific links
they claimed existed between Germans and ancient civilizations. Nineteenth century German scholars
translating old Indian texts had notice the structural similarities between
their language and Sanskrit; their conclusions were equivocal but the some
among the Nazis concluded this was proof of a shared ancestry with a race of
white warriors they called Aryans. Even
at the time, the linguists and anthropologists were appalled at the misappropriation
of their work; their findings had been about the structure of language and
nothing more. The Nazis however grasped
at straws wherever they fell. Single
swastikas began to appear in the Neolithic Vinca culture across south-eastern
Europe around some 7,000 years ago and during the Bronze Age were widespread
across the continent but, when clay pots embossed with swastikas dating from
circa 2000 BC were looted after the occupation of Kiev in WWII and were
exhibited in Berlin as evidence of a shared Aryan ancestry. Displays of the swastika have been banned in
Germany since the end of the war but attempts to extend the ban EU-wide have
never succeeded.
Derived
from the streamlined version of the W125 Grand Prix car run on the high-speed
Avusrennen in Berlin, the Mercedes-Benz
W125 Rekordwagen was used in 1938 to
achieve a speed of 432.7 km/h (269 mph) over the flying kilometre. Then the fastest timed speed on a public road,
the record stood until 2017. Adding to the aerodynamic enhancements crafted for the Avus circuit with its two, long straights, the Rekordwagen
used a V12 engine rather than the W125’s big-bore straight-eight, the lower
bonnet line further reducing drag. It’s now on display in the Mercedes-Benz
Museum in Stuttgart, although, the swastika with which it was once adorned has
been removed from the aluminum skin.
U-Boat U-576 was sunk on 15 July 1942, 30 miles (48 km) of Cape Hatteras,
Hatteras Island, North Carolina. The Kriegsmarine’s
(German navy) War Ensign, flown from all combat vessels between 1935-1945, was raised when submarines were entering or leaving port but
otherwise rarely displayed. The swastika
was never painted on the hulls, a point of some legal consequence in the first
Nuremberg trial (the IMT, 1945-1946) when evidence was presented in the matter of the steam
trawler Noreen Mary, sunk by gunfire
from U-247 about 20 miles (32 km) west of Cape Wrath on the north Coast of Scotland. The witness provided sworn testimony he saw a
swastika painted on the submarine’s conning tower but it was proved no U-Boat
had ever been so decorated and, combined with other evidence, this weakened the prosecution case against Großadmiral
Karl Dönitz (1891–1980; Supreme Commander of the Kriegsmarine 1943-1945).
The Bund Deutscher Mädel (Band of German Maidens) was the girls' wing of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), the Nazi Party's youth movement, intended to train boys to be ready to become good soldiers and prepare girls for their traditional role of motherhood. It was abbreviated as BDM. Perhaps unfortunately, some mixed activities such as the girls and boys going on camps together resulted in much practical preparation for motherhood, revelations of this promiscuity leading Germans to conclude BDM might be better understood as the Bund Deutscher Matratzen (Band of German Mattresses).
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