The Hitler Salute Was Never German

Wrong WarCommons.

it started during the 18th century in France with The Oath of the Horatii. It is pseudohistorically associated with ancient Rome afterwards.

Ancient Romans did not use that salute.

Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Regardless of where it originated or what it may have meant in other contexts, it’s been used enough to represent and be associated with the Nazi party and its ideology that today it’s almost universally recognized as a symbol of that history. Regardless of intent, that association is what it communicates.

Given the current rise of fascism around the world, this whole “well, actually, it’s really the Roman salute” discussion feels like a Nebelkerze — a smoke screen that distracts from the symbol’s actual, present-day meaning and function.

This overeggs a bit the idea that Hitler "lied about where it came from".

Hitler openly admired the Roman empire and alluded to Germany being the spiritual heir to it. Look at the neoclassical architecture, or the German imperial eagle, or even just identifying as the Third Reich, where the first Reich was the Holy Roman Empire.

If he was misleading about the links with Rome, it was in retconning the founders of Rome as Nordics or "Aryans" rather than the sallow-skinned Mediterranean people everyone else assumes lived there at the time.

Maybe more relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute

> Although it originated during the 18th century in France, it is pseudohistorically associated with ancient Rome.

> According to an apocryphal legend, the fascist gesture was based on a customary greeting which was claimed to have been used in ancient Rome. However, no Roman text describes such a gesture, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern "Roman" salute. The salute had in fact originated more than a millennium later, in Jacques-Louis David's painting The Oath of the Horatii (1784)