The shocking history of the Pledge of Allegiance is at http://rexcurry.net/book1a1contents-pledge.html (with frightening historical photographs) and for fascinating information about symbolism see http://rexcurry.net/book1a1contents-swastika.html       Hear audio on worldwide radio at http://rexcurry.net/audio-rex-curry-podcast-radio.html

There is no reason to believe that the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party was even aware of any meaning for the swastika other than as a symbol of an existing socialist group.  There is no evidence anywhere that he was aware of any sanskrit origin or meaning for the swastika.

The popular old angle is all built on myth.  Hitler and German socialists called the symbol a Hakenkreuz, not a swastika.

John Toland’s lengthy book “Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography” on page 86 states, “Drexler [Anton Drexler] suggested calling their group the German Socialist Party (the same name of a similarly motivated party founded a year earlier [1916?] in Bohemia [Czeckoslovakia], whose emblem incidentally, was the swastika).

Toland asserts that when the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party adopted the swastika, it was already in use as a symbol for a socialist group, a fact known by Hitler when selecting the symbol.

Toland provides no footnote or reference for his claim, and it is unfortunate that Toland died in 2004 and cannot be asked for details about the earlier Party’s use of the swastika.

On page 105 Toland writes "Finally, a dentist from Starnberg submitted a flag which had been used at the foundiing meeting of his own party local: a swastika against a black-white-red background."

Another entry in Toland’s book (p 183) makes reference to Hans Knirsch, founder of the National Socialist Workers Party in Czeckoslovakia also known as the Sudetendeutsche National Sozialistische Partei or Sudeten-German National Socialist Party.

If the swastika was a symbol of the Sudetendeutsche National Sozialistische Partei, then it provides another interpretation for the swastika's two overlapping "S" letters: "Sudeten Socialism" or even "Southern Socialism."  The word "Sudeten" came to mean "Southern" for many Germans, even though the original etymology is unclear.

The German Army marched into the Sudetenland on 1st October, 1938.