Translators changed “hakenkreuz” to “swastika.” Who was the first bad
translator and why did others repeat the misrepresentation? This website
is researching.
"Swastika" translators might have wanted the National Socialist German
Workers' Party to stain a foreign symbol rather than their own. "Hakenkreuz"
is a reference to a cross. http://rexcurry.net/swastikacross.html
The cross reference might have been a reminder that in ancient times
it was for torture and execution. The Nazi Hakenkreuz was used in
the persecution of people for various reasons, including religious differences.
It came to represent the socialist sins of the Nazis.
The Nazi Hackenkreuz combined the German-Prussian Iron Cross
(Ritterkreuz -"rider cross" or "Knight's Cross") with the pre-Nazi Hackenkreuz
to form new overlapping "S" shapes for the "socialist" dogma of the horrid
National Socialists.
Interest in the swastika / hakenkreuz grew when the ruins of ancient Troy
were uncovered by German archaeologists in the mid-19th century.
An ominous parallel is that interest in reviving the Olympic games grew
also when the ruins of ancient Olympia were uncovered by German archaeologists
in the mid-19th century. http://rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html
The modern Olympics used a straight-arm salute similar to the salute
of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and both were derived from
the USA's pledge of allegiance and military salute as written by a national
socialist in the USA, a discovery made at http://rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html
The USA's chief National Socialist was Edward Bellamy, a fan of the Prussian
military and its educational system. The Prussian system was Bellamy's
blueprint for "military socialism" that he espoused three decades before
the Nazis. His book "Looking Backward 2000-1887" was an international
bestseller in 1888 and in its German translation.
Bellamy spent a year in Dresden (1868-9), learning to speak and write
German and attending lectures. His stay occurred shortly after the war between
Prussia and Austria. Saxony, of which Dresden was the capital, had
sided with Austria, had been conquered by Prussia, and then had joined the
North German Federation. While Bellamy was there the German Workers'
Party issued its program of socialist cliches that Bellamy repeated in his
bestseller and for the rest of his life. Who influenced who the most?
Edward Bellamy was cousin and cohort to Francis Bellamy, creator of
the straight-arm salute of the pledge of allegiance. Both Bellamys
were leaders in the "Society of Christian Socialists" that called its dogma
"Christian Socialism" in the USA.
Prussia led to the formation of the German empire, and after World War
I, Prussia continued to exist as the largest Land (state) within the Weimar
Republic and under the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. After
World War II it was dissolved by decree of the Allied Control Council in
1947.
The Hakenkreuz used many names besides swastika. Armed Cross, Twisted
Cross, Crooked Cross, Lucky Cross. The eponymous northern Ontario village
of Swastika was named after a swastika "good luck" charm, and gold was discovered
in the town, and a Lucky Cross Mill stood there in 1918.
