![Atop Empire State- in construction; Chrysler Bldg & [Daily] News in middle foreground. (1931)](http://cdn1.retronaut.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Atop-Empire-State-in-construction-Chrysler-Bldg-Daily-News-in-middle-foreground.-1931--199x123.jpg "Balancing on the Empire State, 1920s")
“Following a brief surge of popularity in Western culture, the swastika from the 1930s became strongly associated with its iconic usage by Nazi Germany, and it has hence become stigmatized and to some extent taboo in the Western world; it has notably been outlawed in Germany if used as a symbol of Nazism.”
Did you know that there’s a swastiki painted on the inside of the nosecone of Charles Lindbergh’s ‘Spirit of st Louis’? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_swastika_in_the_early_20th_century
You find them everywhere.
But amazed to see one on a 1960s laundry van!
Brilliant.
Oh the Swastika laundry! What memories that brings from my childhood in Dublin where it used to collect our laundry in one of those vans every week.
It was an ancient Indian religious symbol I believe. Here it appears as a Halloween costume; http://tinyurl.com/26mdto5
You find it used in its original form (clockwise) in a lot of buddhist temples, especially in Korea… Sign of auspiciousness and prosperity.
Before Hitler got his filthy hands on it, it had been a sign of peace for over 5,000 years.
“Hitler be damned – This is our sign since 1922″
Love that slogan…And that Ontario town still has the name!
Is that Jim Thorpe in Photo #19?
Yes it is Jim Thorpe.Very good eye.
Italian football team ACF Fiorentina’s 1992/93 away shirt looked like this: http://i26.tinypic.com/19nkw6.jpg
It was soon withdrawn. Can you guess why?
When I was a kid in the 1970s, I attended the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial near the Wisconsin Dells. A number of the Native American dancers had swastikas worked into their costumes. The MC explained that these symbols were traditional to the various tribes.
Towards the end of the 19th century, there used to be the Swastika Coal Company in Raton, New Mexico. Their railroad cars had a swastika painted on the side. This company had a building with small medallions on it emblazoned with swastikas.
The building was still standing, and the swastikas still visible, in the 1980s. I haven’t been in Raton since then, so I don’t know if the building still exists, or has been altered.
A photo of the railroad car can be found in Ghost Railroads of New Mexico.
this symbol can be found in many cultures, espacially in asia and its 6.000 years old!
5000 russian rubles (1918) with Hackenkreuz from the times of Civil War.
http://matthewprevett.org.uk/photo/wm-chapel/
Second one along, spot the swastika in the college chapel in Cambridge.
Also at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.
The church where I went to sunday school as a child has a swastika in a row of symbols on an exterior wall.
i was suprized to see a swastika at every vertical junction on the iron gates that surround the san francisco mint
There’s another example in the Customs House in Circular Quay in the middle of Sydney. It’s a large, beautiful mosaic that dominates the lobby and is impossible to either cover up or overlook. I was thunderstruck when I first saw it as a kid. Of course it was made in the 19th century (1840s) and is nothing to do with Nazis.
Having said that, not all of the examples above are definitely free of Nazi taint. For example the fighter plane (a Messerschmitt Bf 109, I think) was in Finnish service, but it was provided by Nazi Germany. The Finns were not Nazis but were allied to them due to mutual hostility to the Soviets, and it is by no means impossible that the swastika was meant as a reference to Nazi allies.
Similarly, the Tsingtao Brewery was founded by Germans. Between the wars it was sold to the Japanese (who of course were allies of Nazi Germany) but still partly operated by German technical experts.