The main symbol for which Nazism was known was the swastika, also known as gamada cross or Greek cross with equal arms. However, there are numerous traces that thousands of years ago before the Nazis adopted the swastika as a symbol, it was used by other peoples.
The word swastika is derived from Sanskrit, an Indian language. Your Sanskrit spelling would be this: sva sti ka. Its meaning would be “good luck”. However, the swastika was and is used as a religious symbol by different peoples, such as Celts, Etruscans, Greeks, Trojans and even Maya. There is no explanation as to why so many people from such different places use the same symbol.
Even the swastika design does not follow a single pattern, being represented with both the tips of the arms indicating a clockwise and a counterclockwise direction. In some cases, the swastika is not represented with straight lines, appearing in more curved shapes.
Buddha image, with the swastika in the center of his chest
The fact that the arms of the cross point to the right or left gives the notion of a rotation movement around a center, which remains always immobile. Furthermore, this notion of movement can indicate cycles or even a path of progress, as a continuous action, with society being regenerated in this movement. In the case of Nazism, the German people would revolve around Hitler, the leader who represented the center of that people's supposed progress movement.
But in Germany it wasn't just the Nazis who used the swastika as a symbol. During the process of German unification, which resulted in the so-called II Reich, the swastika symbolized national unity in the new state. Possibly this was one of the reasons that led the German poet Guido List to propose the swastika as a symbol of the Nazi party.
Another reason would be linked to the archaeological discoveries of the German Heinrich Schliemann. In excavations in the region where the city of Troy could have existed, Schliemann found artifacts with the swastika similar to others he himself had found on the banks of the river Oder, in the Germany. The discoveries would have suggested to the archaeologist a link between the peoples of Ancient Greece and the Germanic peoples, guaranteeing a classical ancestry to the Germans.
Despite the different meanings, it was the Nazi propaganda machine that gave the swastika the constant link with Nazism, as it is done today. It is up to us to research the origins of the symbol and realize that there are other meanings.
By Tales Pinto
Graduated in History
