Flag of Nazi Germany

The design of the Nazi flag was introduced by Hitler as the party flag in mid-1920, roughly a year before (29 July 1921) he became his political party's leader: a flag with a red background, a white disk and a black swastika in the middle. The flag was designed by Hitler himself, as described in his book Mein Kampf, in which he explained the process by which the Nazi flag design was created, after having presented several proposals:{{cite web |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika |title=The History of the Swastika |author=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |access-date=7 November 2024}}

{{Blockquote

|text="I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika.

|author=Adolf Hitler

|source={{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} (1925)

}}

The Nazi Party was not the only party to use the swastika in Germany. After World War I, a number of far-right nationalist movements adopted the swastika. As a symbol, it became associated with the idea of a racially "pure" state.

Soon after Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, the black-red-gold tricolour flag of the Weimar Republic was banned; a ruling on 12 March established two legal flags: the reintroduced black-white-red imperial tricolour national flag and the flag of the Nazi Party.{{cite web |url=http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/flaggen.html |title=Erlaß des Reichspräsidenten über die vorläufige Regelung der Flaggenhissung |author=von Hindenburg, Paul |work=documentArchiv.de |language=de |trans-title=Decree of the President for the provisional regulation of raising flags |date=12 March 1933|access-date=17 July 2010 |author-link=Paul von Hindenburg}}{{cite web |url=http://www.loeser.us/flags/germany_note_1.html |title=The German Swastika Flag 1933–1945 |author=Fornax |work=Historical flags of our ancestors |access-date=17 July 2010}} Despite this, the new flags were not introduced officially until 14 March 1933, although this usage may have formally started earlier.{{Cite web|url=https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/de1933.html|title=Third Reich 1933-1945 (Germany) Flags used 11 March 1933 - 15 September 1935}} On 29 April 1933, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick decreed that all merchant ships had to fly the black-white-red ensign at the stern and the flag of the Nazi Party on the signal stay or starboard signal yard.{{cite web |url=http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/flaggen.html |title=Erlaß über das Setzen der Hakenkreuzflagge auf Kauffahrteischiffen |author=Frick, Wilhelm |work=documentArchiv.de |language=de |trans-title=Decree on setting the swastika flag on merchant ships |date=29 April 1933 |access-date=7 November 2024 |author-link=Wilhelm Frick}}

{{Multiple image

| align = center

| image1 = Flag of Germany (1933–1935).svg

| caption1 = First national flag of Nazi Germany (1933–1935), corresponding the flag of the North German Confederation (1867–1871) and the German Empire (1871–1919).

| image2 = Flag of the NSDAP (1920–1945).svg

| caption2 = The flag of the Nazi Party (1920–1945). On this flag, the swastika is centred, making it slightly different from the national flag used after 1935, on which the swastika is off-centred.

}}

Initially, the official specification for the Nazi flag placed the white disk, containing the swastika, in the middle of the flag. However, on 20 December 1933 a decree was issued authorising an off-centred version of the swastika flag for use at sea.{{cite web |url=http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/flaggen.html |title=Verordnung über die vorläufige Regelung der Flaggenführung auf Kauffahrteischiffen |author=von Hindenburg, Paul |work=documentArchiv.de |language=de |trans-title= Ordinance on the provisional regulation of flag flying on merchant ships |date=20 December 1933 |access-date=7 November 2024 |author-link=Paul von Hindenburg}} This was purely a practical decision intended to make the emblem more visible (because when a flag is flying briskly, the outer half appears shorter than the half next to the staff and the centred white circle would appear to be more towards the fly). Moreover, although the Nazi flag on land had the swastika on both sides "right-facing," the Nazi flag at sea displayed the swastika on the reverse side as a "through and through" or mirror image, so the flag had a "right-facing" swastika on the front (or obverse) side and a "left-facing" swastika on the back (or reverse) side. It is not absolutely known when the reverse of the swastika flag at sea was changed, but it can be assumed that this change was made as part of the regulations of 20 December 1933. The reasons were the same in each case: to improve the appearance ("optical proportions") of the flag when used at sea, and improve the visibility of the important design elements (by eliminating potential reverse-shadowing of the dark swastika on the white circle, especially in bright sun light). The German Government's publication Die Flaggen des deutschen Reiches (1934 edition) illustrates both versions of the swastika flag, referring to the centred version plainly as the Swastika Flag ({{langx|de|Hakenkreuzflagge}}) and the off-centred version as the Swastika Flag on Merchant Ships ({{langx|de|Hakenkreuzflagge auf Kauffahrteischiffen}}).{{Cite web|url=http://flagspot.net/flags/de1933_o.html|title=Centred vs. Offset Disc and Swastika 1933–1945 (Germany)}}

File:SS Bremen incident illustration.jpg, United States on 26 July 1935]]

On 15 September 1935, one year after the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, the Nazi flag became the national flag and ensign of Germany.{{cite web |url=http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/1935/flaggen1935_ges.html |title=Reichsflaggengesetz (Eines der drei "Nürnberger Gesetze") |work=documentArchiv.de |language=de |trans-title=Reich Flag Law (One of the three "Nuremberg Laws") |date=15 September 1935 |access-date=7 November 2024}} One reason for the change may have been the "Bremen incident" of 26 July 1935, in which a group of demonstrators in New York City boarded the ocean liner SS Bremen, tore the Nazi Party flag from the jackstaff, and tossed it into the Hudson River. When the German ambassador protested, US officials responded that the swastika was not the German national flag (unlike the black-white-red tricolour) and therefore the perpetrators could not be criminally prosecuted and punished due to the absence of elements of crime, as the German national flag had not been harmed, but only a political party symbol.Brian Leigh Davis: Flags & standards of the Third Reich, Macdonald & Jane's, London 1975, {{ISBN|0-356-04879-9}} The new flag law, which had been issued as a part of the Nuremberg Laws, was announced at the annual party rally in Nuremberg in 1935,[https://web.archive.org/web/20121104135248/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,749071-2,00.html GERMANY: Little Man, Big Doings], Time, 23 September 1935 where Hermann Göring claimed the old black-white-red flag, while honoured, was the symbol of a bygone era and under threat of being used by "reactionaries".Statement by Hermann Göring, quoted in the {{lang|de|Völkischer Beobachter}} (17 September 1935) (in German) Until 15 September 1935, the use of the swastika flag was authorised in the centred version, providing for the off-centred version for use at sea only, but on 15 September 1935, the Swastika Flag and the Swastika Flag on Merchant Ships – elevated to the rank of the national flag and the civil ensign, respectively – were unified and were henceforth identical except for their reverse side – the regulations demanded the disk and swastika be "slightly" set off from the centre towards the flag pole. There was therefore some confusion after the war about this arrangement. Allied soldiers deemed the centred disk versions of the swastika flag to be "national flags", so a lot of publications later maintained, mistakenly, that the centred disk version was used until the end of World War II. In fact, the only centred disk versions of the flag used after 1935 were the party flags of the Nazi Party.

File:Flag (AM 695001-1).jpg about {{convert|4000|ft|m|abbr=off|sp=us}} west of Monte Cassino by J. McQuorkindale on the night of 17–18 February 1944. The swastika appears to be left-facing in this image.]]

The Nazi flag takes its colours from the imperial tricolour, with Hitler writing that he "was always for keeping the old colours", because he saw them as his "most sacred possession" as a soldier, and also because they suited his personal taste.[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt Mein Kampf at Project Gutenberg] Hitler added new symbolism to the colours, stating that "[t]he red expressed the social thought underlying the movement. White the national thought", and that the black swastika was an emblem of the "Aryan race" and "the ideal of creative work which is in itself and always will be anti-Semitic."

At the end of World War II, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the first law enacted by the Allied Control Council on 20 September 1945 abolished all symbols and repealed all relevant laws of the Third Reich.{{cite web |url=http://www.ena.lu/?doc=16808&lang=2 |title=Law N° 1 from the Control Council for Germany: Repealing of Nazi Laws |author=Allied Control Council |author-link=Allied Control Council |work=European Navigator |date=20 September 1945 |access-date=23 December 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120604132902/http://www.cvce.eu/obj/european_navigator-en-9d0c13eb-88f0-4158-8c78-a544b48f0b61 |archive-date= 4 June 2012 }} The possession, importation or display of swastika flags has been forbidden in several countries since then, particularly in Germany.

{{Multiple image

| align = right

| image1 = Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' Rally (35780274914) crop.jpg

| caption1 = Prominent alt-right activists were instrumental in organising the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States in August 2017. Here, rally participants carry Confederate battle flags, Gadsden flags, a Nazi flag and a flag depicting Mjölnir.

| image2 = Neonazi 2.4.2005 München.jpg

| caption2 = Participants of a nationalist march in Munich (2005) flying the Reichsflagge and Reichsdienstflagge of 1933–1935 (de). Even though the historical Nazis outlawed this flag in 1935 because of its "reactionary nature", the neo-Nazis in modern Germany resort to use it as a symbol, due to a ban on swastika flag usage (§ 86a StGB).

}}

Today, the Nazi swastika flag remains in common use by neo-Nazi supporters and sympathisers outside Germany, whilst in Germany neo-Nazis use the homeland's flag of 1933–1935 instead, since the above-mentioned ban on all Nazi symbolism (e.g. the swastika, the Schutzstaffel's (SS) double sig rune, etc.) is still in effect within today's Germany according to section § 86a of the German {{lang|de|Strafgesetzbuch}}. However, the imperial black-white-red flag did not originally have any racist or anti-Semitic meaning, despite its brief use in Nazi Germany.{{Cite web|url=https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/imperial-german-flag|title = Imperial German Flag |website=ADL |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211208140144/https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/imperial-german-flag |archive-date= Dec 8, 2021 }}

• Flag of Germany
• List of German flags
• Personal standard of Adolf Hitler
• Reichskriegsflagge
• List of flags of the Wehrmacht and Heer (1933–1945)
• List of flags of the Luftwaffe (1933–1945)
• List of flags of the German Navy (1935–1945)
• List of German standards at the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945
• Colours, standards and guidons

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__86a.html Provision in the German penal code making the display, ownership, manufacturing, trade or storage of the flag illegal (in German)]
• [http://www.flagsforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=35 Imperial German Empire Army Colours] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140102193821/http://www.flagsforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=35 |date=2014-01-02 }}

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