Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
Who invented the Nazi salute?
SHORT ANSWER Not the Romans, although artwork about the Romans did have something to do with it
LONG ANSWER As they did with the swastika, the Nazis may have forevermore corrupted the image of the straight-armed salute, but they didn’t invent it. The Americans had been using a strikingly similar salute since 1892 when giving the Pledge of Allegiance, as had the Olympics.
In fact, the Nazis weren’t even the first fascists to stick their arms out in such a manner. The Italians under Benito Mussolini began using the salute in the 1920s, having themselves pinched it from an early forerunner of fascism, Gabriele d’Annunzio. To him, such a gesture was a link to the glories of Ancient Rome – the salute had been strongly associated with their toga-wearing forebears, despite there being no contemporary evidence to suggest the Romans actually used it. Instead, the salute emerged in neoclassical artwork in the 18th and 19th centuries – starting around the time of ‘Oath of the Horatii’, a painting by Jacques-Louis David in 1784 – and early films in the 20th century.
Hitler envied the salute, yet didn’t want to look like he was adopting something markedly un-German. Simple, he just re-named it the ‘Hitler salute’ and came up with a phony nationalistic heritage, erroneously claiming that German theologian Martin Luther had received the gesture at the Diet of Worms in 1521.
18 The number of months
