Nazi salute
The Nazi salute, also known as the Hitler salute, or the Sieg Heil salute, is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. The salute is performed by raising and extending the right arm forward at an upward angle with a straightened hand, fingers together, and palm facing downward. The salute is usually accompanied by a cry of "Heil Hitler!", "Heil, mein Führer!", or "Sieg Heil!".
Inspired by the Fascist salute used by members of the Italian National Fascist Party, the Nazi salute was officially adopted by the Nazi Party in 1926, although it had been used within the party as early as 1921 to signal obedience to the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, and to glorify the German nation. The salute was mandatory for civilians but mostly optional for military personnel, who retained a traditional military salute until the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944.
Use of this salute is illegal in modern-day Germany, Austria, and Slovakia. The use of any Nazi phrases associated with the salute is also forbidden. In Italy, it is a criminal offence only if used with the intent to "reinstate the defunct National Fascist Party", or to exalt or promote its ideology or members. In Canada and most of Europe, displaying the salute is not in itself a criminal offence, but constitutes hate speech if used for propagating the Nazi ideology. In Australia, publicly performing the salute is illegal unless for a religious, academic, educational, artistic, literary, or scientific purpose.
Description
The salute was executed by extending the right arm stiff to an upward 45° angle and then straightening the hand so that it is in the same direction and slope as the arm. Usually, an utterance of "Sieg Heil", "Heil Hitler!", or "Heil!" accompanied the gesture. If one saw an acquaintance at a distance, it was enough to simply raise the right hand. If one encountered a superior, one would also say "Heil Hitler". If physical disability prevented raising the right arm, it was acceptable to raise the left.Hitler's use
Hitler gave a right-armed salute with variations. He used the typical stiff-armed salute when reviewing his troops or when facing crowds, but sometimes held at more of a right angle. To return a salute, he raised his arm with the elbow bent back and his palm facing up.Origins and adoption
The spoken greeting "Heil" became popular in the pan-German movement around 1900. It was used by the followers of Georg Ritter von Schönerer, head of the Austrian Alldeutsche Partei who considered himself leader of the Austrian Germans, and who was described by Carl E. Schorske as "The strongest and most thoroughly consistent anti-Semite that Austria produced" before the coming of Hitler. Hitler took both the "Heil" greeting - which was popularly used in his "hometown" of Linz when he was a boy - and the title of "Führer" for the head of the Nazi Party from Schönerer, whom he admired.The extended arm saluting gesture was alleged to be based on an ancient Roman custom, but no known Roman work of art depicts it, nor does any extant Roman text describe it. Historians have instead determined that the gesture originated from Jacques-Louis David's 1784 painting Oath of the Horatii, which displayed a raised arm salutatory gesture in an ancient Roman setting. The gesture and its identification with ancient Rome was advanced in other French neoclassic art.
Image:Students_pledging_allegiance_to_the_American_flag_with_the_Bellamy_salute.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.23|From 1892 to 1942, the similar Bellamy salute was raised during the United States Pledge of Allegiance.
In 1892, Christian socialist minister Francis Bellamy revised the United States Pledge of Allegiance, which was to be accompanied by a visually similar salute. Years after the introduction of the Nazi salute, in 1942 the U.S. introduced a hand-over-the-heart gesture for civilian use during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem.
A raised arm gesture appeared in the 1899 American stage production of Ben-Hur and its 1907 film adaptation. The gesture also appeared in several early Italian films, including the 1914 silent film Cabiria, the screenplay of which featured contributions from ultranationalist and Italian fascism influencer Gabriele D'Annunzio. D'Annunzio adopted the salute during his occupation of Fiume and the Italian National Fascist Party began imposing it in the early 1920s.
By late 1923, and perhaps as early as 1921, some Nazi Party members were using the salute to greet Hitler, who responded by raising his own right hand crooked back at the elbow, palm opened upwards, in a gesture of acceptance. In 1926, the Nazi salute was made compulsory for all party members. It functioned as a display of commitment to the party and a declaration of principle to the outside world. Gregor Strasser wrote in 1927 that the greeting in and of itself was a pledge of loyalty to Hitler, as well as a symbol of personal dependence on the Führer. Even so, the drive to gain acceptance did not go unchallenged.
Some party members questioned the legitimacy of the so-called Roman salute, employed by Fascist Italy, as un-Germanic. In response, efforts were made to establish its pedigree by inventing a tradition after the fact. In June 1928, Rudolf Hess published an article titled "The Fascist Greeting", which claimed that the gesture was used in Germany as early as 1921, before the Nazis had heard about the Italian Fascists. He admits in the article: "The NSDAP's introduction of the raised-arm greeting approximately two years ago still gets some people's blood boiling. Its opponents suspect the greeting of being un-Germanic. They accuse it of merely aping the Fascists", but goes on to ask, "even if the decree from two years ago is seen as an adaption of the Fascist gesture, is that really so terrible?" Ian Kershaw points out that Hess did not deny the likely influence from Fascist Italy, even if indeed the salute had been used sporadically in 1921 as Hess claimed.
During the 1932 Hatzohar conference in Tel Aviv, one delegate, Leone Carpi, gave a Nazi salute as he entered the hall, which was met with similar salutes from some of the other delegates.
On the night of 3 January 1942, Hitler said of the origins of the salute:
Nazi chants
Nazi chants like "Heil Hitler!" and "Sieg Heil!" were prevalent across Nazi Germany, sprouting in mass rallies and even regular greetings alike.In Nazi Germany, the Nazi chants "Heil Hitler!" and "Sieg Heil!" were the formulas used by the regime: when meeting someone it was customary to greet with the words "Heil Hitler!", while "Sieg Heil!" was a verbal salute used at mass rallies. Specifically to the cry of an officer of the word Sieg, the crowd responded with Heil. For example, at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, Rudolf Hess ended his climactic speech with the words "The Party is Hitler. But Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler. Hitler! Sieg Heil!" At his total war speech delivered in 1943, audiences shouted "Sieg Heil!", as Joseph Goebbels solicited from them "a kind of plebiscitary 'Ja to total war.
On 11 March 1945, less than two months before the capitulation of Nazi Germany, a memorial for the dead of the war was held in Marktschellenberg, a small town near Hitler's Berghof residence. The British historian Ian Kershaw remarks that the power of the Führer cult and the "Hitler Myth" had vanished, which is evident from this report:
The Swing Youth were a group of middle-class teenagers who consciously separated themselves from Nazism and its culture, greeting each other with "Swing-Heil!" and addressing one another as "old-hot-boy". This playful behaviour was dangerous for participants in the subculture; on 2 January 1942, Heinrich Himmler suggested that the leaders be sent to concentration camps.
The form "Heil, mein Führer!" was for direct address to Hitler, while "Sieg Heil" was repeated as a chant on public occasions. Written communications would be concluded with either "mit deutschem Gruß", or with "Heil Hitler". In correspondence with high-ranking Nazi officials, letters were usually signed with "Heil Hitler".
From 1933 to 1945
Under a decree issued by Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick on 13 July 1933, all German public employees were required to use the salute. The decree also required the salute during the singing of the national anthem and the "Horst-Wessel-Lied". It stipulated that "anyone not wishing to come under suspicion of behaving in a consciously negative fashion will therefore render the Hitler Greeting," and its use quickly spread as people attempted to avoid being labelled as a dissident. A rider to the decree, added two weeks later, stipulated that if physical disability prevented raising of the right arm, "then it is correct to carry out the Greeting with the left arm." On 27 September, prison inmates were forbidden to use the salute, as were Jews by 1937.By the end of 1934, special courts were established to punish those who refused to salute. Offenders, such as Protestant preacher Paul Schneider, faced the possibility of being sent to a concentration camp. Jehovah's Witnesses came into conflict with the Nazi regime because they refused to salute Hitler, believing that it conflicted with their worship of God. Because such refusal was considered a crime, Jehovah's Witnesses were arrested and their children attending school were expelled, detained and separated from their families. Foreigners were not exempt from intimidation if they refused to salute. For example, the Portuguese Consul General was beaten by members of the Sturmabteilung for remaining seated in a car and not saluting a procession in Hamburg. Reactions to inappropriate use were not merely violent but sometimes bizarre. For example, a memo dated 23 July 1934 sent to local police stations stated: "There have been reports of traveling vaudeville performers training their monkeys to give the German Greeting.... see to it that said animals are destroyed."
The salute soon became part of everyday life, a historically unique phenomenon that politicised all communication in Germany for twelve years, superseding all prior forms of greeting, such as "Grüß Gott", "Guten Tag", and "Auf Wiedersehn". Postmen used the greeting when they knocked on people's doors to deliver packages or letters. Small metal signs that reminded people to use the Hitler salute were displayed in public squares and on telephone poles and street lights throughout Germany. Department store clerks greeted customers with "Heil Hitler, how may I help you?" Dinner guests brought glasses etched with the words "Heil Hitler" as house gifts. The salute was required of all persons passing the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, site of the climax of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, which the government had made into a shrine to the Nazi dead; so many pedestrians avoided this mandate by detouring through the small Viscardigasse behind that the passage acquired the nickname "Dodgers' Alley". The daughter of the American Ambassador to Germany, Martha Dodd, describes the first time she saw the salute:
Children were indoctrinated at an early age. Kindergarten children were taught to raise their hand to the proper height by hanging their lunch bags across the raised arm of their teacher. At the beginning of first grade primers was a lesson on how to use the greeting. The greeting found its way into fairy tales, including classics like Sleeping Beauty. Students and teachers would salute each other at the beginning and end of the school day, between classes, or whenever an adult entered the classroom.
In 1935, embryologist Hans Spemann gave a Nazi salute at the end of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.