It was an image that not only traveled across cultures in Europe and Asia but has shown up in the art of Native Americans, Aztecs, and Mayans. The swastika was around 3,000 years before Hitler and the Nazi party made it an emblem of hate. It took one group of people a splinter of time to completely ruin its meaning and leave it desolated as an iconic symbol of disgust.

Swastika, svastika in Sanskrit, literally means “good to be”, and was predominantly used as a holy symbol in Hindu texts to mean luck or rebirth. Some say that the use of the symbol was spread across India, to Persia, Greece, and eventually landing in Europe in the first millennium B.C. By the middle Ages the swastika was a well-known symbol held close to the hearts of many cultures from China to England. Up until the beginning of the 20th century the swastika could be seen on many well known products, and by many well known people. Coca-Cola has a pendant with a swastika on it. The famous author Rudyard Kipling used a swastika as his personal mark in his signature. Even the United States used the swastika as a positive symbol when the American 45th Infantry division wore an orange swastika as a shoulder patch. But all this would change when the Nazi party and its anti-semitic message attempted to take hold of Europe.

Germany became a unified country in 1871 while watching France and Austria form huge wealthy empires around the fledgling nation. Germans, feeling vulnerable, needed something to rally around. They found solace in associating themselves with the white Aryan/Indian tribes that conquered much of Central Asia. Early Germany used the swastika to represent a German/Aryan linked history. This symbol would quickly become a symbol of German nationalism and could be found in many places throughout the country.

After WWI, a desecrated Germany fell into desolation. With hyperinflation making it more practical to burn money than to buy firewood, and industrialization taking a nosedive, the country needed a new backbone. Hitler rose to power shortly after the Weimar Republic and branded the image of the swastika, draped in red and black, into our minds forever. For the 14 or so years that the Nazi’s were in power, the swastika would become their image. And with the image of Hitler and the Third Reich came the gruesome acts that they divulged on the Europeans at that time, especially the Jewish people. Now the swastika is synonymous with WWII and the Holocaust. The Nazi’s were so effective with their propaganda that many do not even know that it had an alternate meaning before Hitler. It is now a million miles away from where it started as a multi-cultural symbol for peace.