THE NAZI EMBLEM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 46, 23 January 1936, Page 6

THE NAZI EMBLEM.

It has long been a matter of general curiosity that tile Nazis m Germany sliouhl have selected the swastika as their emblem. The general belief in Germany is that it is the age-long symbol of Nordic culture; sanctified by thousands of years of usage, anil used solely by Germans ana Nordic peoples. Rut the actual history ol the swastika does not harmonise with the German assumptions, declares an authority. The earliest recorded use of tne swastika is on the pottery of Elam, in Mesopotamia, which dates back to the very origin of civilisation in the Mesopotamian plains and Persian lulls. from the mid-Urient, the symbol seems to have worked westward to Anatolia, and its first popularity as a common ornament occurs at Troy. It was known to the Trojan settlement which belonged ito somewhere about 30UU L.O. On the numerous Trojan spindle wheels which bear the swastika one can trace its growth. Of the popularity of the symbol there is no doubt at all. Troy at all periods is full of it. if it is a Nordic symbol, then the Nordic peoples borrowed it from Troy, with which later on they were certainly in contact. Later, it spread into Europe from Troy, up the Danube Valley, and it was of fairly frequent use on pottery as a pattern for many centuries. It was known also in Crete, long before any hint of Nordic influence reached that island. It appears as a symbol on seals found in the shrine of the Snake Goddess at Chossus, and may have developed here quite independently of Asiatic origins, being derived from a simple cross of equal limbs which was a common Crete religious symbol in the early centuries of the second millennium. In Greece the swastika achieved a great popularity as anment on pottery of the “Geometric” age, in. the ninth and eighth centuries. It had n*o significance for the Greeks beyond that of an ordinary pattern. Its whirling, mobile appearance attracted designers, and it was easy to draw. Sporadically the swastika appears all over the world. Once designed it caught the fancy of simple-minded potters and painters. Its association with Nordic peoples as some mysterious sign of potence and value has no support from archaeological evidence. A variant of the swastika of some popularity is the triskeies symbol, which is best known from its use as a kind of armorial bearing for the island of Sicily, and also for the Isle of Man. The triskeies is merely a three-legged swastika. If the Nazis attribute to a simple pattern of Elamite and Trojan origin a Nordic value they are indulging in a merely imaginative statement of theory. There is only one fact which might encourage them, and that fact is the almost complete absence of the swastika in Semitic lands. It is almost unknown in Palestine. Rut there are many other regions which are not Semitic which do not employ the swastika in their designing. The Nazis might have been better advised to have adopted the Nordic battle-axe as their symbol. The stone battleaxe, a formidable weapon of offence, is a characteristic object of Nordic peoples. Wherever Nordic races have spread the battle-axe accompanied them.