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The Nazi symbol is not the same as the ancient Hindu symbol. The swastika symbol is irrevocably contaminated by Nazi use during World War II. But it is also one of the oldest symbols in the world and has had a completely different meaning for much of history.
So what are the origins of the swastika and how has its meaning changed over time? The symbol was known by different names.The word “Swastika” – from the Sanskrit word “Swastika”; means something like “blessing” or “happiness”: that’s how it is better known today. But by the Anglo-Saxons it was called “fylfot”, by the ancient Greeks “gammadion” or “tetraskelion” and by the Germans of the Middle Ages “swastika” or “winkelkreuz”.
For perhaps 10,000 years, the swastika — both left-facing and right-facing versions — represented things like life, luck and well-being in many different traditions. But it underwent a chilling metamorphosis when it was adopted by the Nazis in Germany, and the swastika is now associated with the Nazi regime and atrocities of World War II.
Ancient symbol
“It’s a very old symbol,” said writer Steven Heller, author of “The Swastika: A Symbol Beyond Redemption?” (Allworth, 2010). “Dating from prehistoric times, it has different meanings in different cultures, nations, and religions.” Symbols like the swastika are now found on ancient sites from Mesopotamia to America, and it is not known in what relation – or at all – they to stand by each other. “The swastika also existed in Jewish culture”; Heller told WordsSideKick.com. In each case, the symbol had four mutually perpendicular legs (the three-legged versions are another matter), each leading to a different right angle, often terminating in straight lines but sometimes in curved lines, ha explained. In in the ancient Germanic tradition this symbol seems to be associated with the god Thor, perhaps because it represents his war hammer Mjolnir. Heller said its elements are contained in the Norse runic alphabet.
Nazi emblem
By the 19th century in German-speaking Europe, where the symbol was generally known as a “hakenkreuz,” it was generally thought to represent the sun and was adopted by several ethno-nationalist or “völkisch” movements and figures, Heller said. They included individuals who championed the racialist idea that ancient Germans were descended from Indo-European “Aryans” and who claimed the swastika used in India was originally the same as the Germanic hakenkreuz.
False construction
While the swastika is still used for religious purposes by some cultures, it’s now also linked to the Nazis. The symbol is now banned in Germany and reviled throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas.
But its use in many parts of the world is blameless, said Malcolm Quinn, a professor of cultural and political history at the University of the Arts London and the author of “The Swastika: Constructing the Symbol” (Routledge, 1994).
The idea that the Nazi symbol is related to the ancient swastika from India is “a false construction developed out of Indo-European language theory” in the late 19th century, he told Live Science.
That theory then formed the basis of the idea that ancient Germans were related to the “aryas,” or nobles, who are said in the Sanskrit epic Rigveda to have invaded India from the north more than 3,000 years ago.
“This fantasy dovetailed nicely with European colonialism and the false belief that ‘higher’ races were conquerors and ‘lesser’ races were conquered by them,” Quinn said.
The Nazis then used the symbol to promote their fascist ideology. “What Hitler wanted was to rebrand Germany through the use of the spurious idea of a conquering Aryan race, by turning the symbol of a racist party into the national symbol of Germany,” Quinn said.
Adolf Hitler then selected the right-facing hakenkreuz in 1920 as the central emblem on a new flag for his National Socialist German Workers Party — the “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,” or “Nazis” for short. But the symbol wasn’t called a swastika until later — the first version of Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf,” published in 1925, called it a hakenkreuz, Heller said.
“Even when it was adopted by the Nazis, it was not a negative symbol,” Heller said. “It was a symbol of power, strength, pride … and it was a nationalist symbol in some cases, and some people think nationalism is a good thing.”
