Description Edit

The salute was executed by extending the right arm to neck height and then straightening the hand so that it is parallel to the arm.[7] Usually, an utterance of "Heil Hitler!", or "Heil!" accompanied the gesture. If one saw an acquaintance at a distance, it was enough to simply raise the right hand.[7] If one encountered a superior, one would also say "Heil Hitler".[7] If physical disability prevented raising the right arm, it was acceptable to raise the left.[8] The form "Heil, mein Führer!" was for direct address to Hitler.[9] "Sieg Heil" was repeated as a chant on public occasions.[9] Written communications would be concluded with either mit deutschem Gruß ("with German regards"), or with "Heil Hitler".[10] In correspondence with high-ranking Nazi officials, letters were usually signed with "Heil Hitler".[11] Hitler gave the salute in two ways. When reviewing his troops or crowds, he generally used the traditional stiff armed salute. When greeting individuals, he used a modified version of the salute, bending his right arm while holding an open hand towards those greeted at shoulder height.[12]

Origins and adoption Edit

From 1933 to 1945 Edit

Sieg Heil Edit

Sieg Heil during a rally in the A massduring a rally in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district of Berlin in 1935 Sieg Heil was a verbal salute used at the Nazis' mass rallies, where enthusiastic crowds answered Heil (Hail!) to the call of Sieg (Victory).[54] For example, at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, Rudolf Hess ended his climactic speech with, "The Party is Hitler. But Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler. Hitler! Sieg Heil!"[55] At his total war speech delivered in 1943, audiences shouted Sieg Heil as Joseph Goebbels solicited from them "a kind of plebiscitary 'Ja'" to total war.[56] ('Ja' means 'yes' in German.) On 11 March 1945, less than two months before the capitulation of Nazi Germany, a memorial for the dead of the war was held in Marktschellenberg, a small town near Hitler's Berghof residence.[57] The British historian Ian Kershaw remarks that the power of the Führer-cult and the "Hitler Myth" had vanished, which is evident from a report given in the little Bavarian town of Markt Schellenberg on 11 March 1945: When the leader of the Wehrmacht unit at the end of his speech called for a Sieg Heil for the Führer, it was returned neither by the Wehrmacht present, nor by the Volkssturm, nor by the spectators of the civilian population who had turned up. This silence of the masses ... probably reflects better than anything else, the attitudes of the population.[57] The Swing Kids (German: Swing Jugend) were a group of middle-class teenagers who consciously separated themselves from Nazism and its culture, greeting each other with "Swing-Heil!" and addressing one another as "old-hot-boy".[58] This playful behaviour was dangerous for participants in the subculture; on 2 January 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered that the leaders be put in concentration camps to be drilled and beaten.[58]

In popular culture Edit

See also Edit

References Edit