Assume they use a cross of Christ instead. Would a cross be stigmatized like the swastika has been OTL?
Just a thought experiment.....
Just a thought experiment.....
Assume they use a cross of Christ instead. Would a cross be stigmatized like the swastika has been OTL?
Just a thought experiment.....
Probably not as much. In eastern Asia, where swastikas were used as religious symbols for centuries, they still are without any qualms about that. robably Christianity would act similarly with the Cross. However, why the hell would the Nazis pick the Christian cross as a symbol? Its implications do not fit with their ideology.
But they did pick the cross, in two ways. One, the Christian cross figured massively in Nazi Propaganda anyway, two, the Nazis didn't use the "Swastika" they used a bent cross (Hakenkreuz from the Dutch Hakenkruis). They never called it a Swastikia, and they never referred to Asian mythologies as their inspiration. The bent cross (or German Cross) was a informal logo of the Freikorps during the Weimar Republic and a symbol of luck used in the trenches of WWI, Hitler probably choose the bent cross to appeal to right-wing veterans who already regarded it as 'their' symbol. He didn't 'steal it from the Hindu's' due too some nerdish obsession with the occult, as the Robert Langdon's of the world would have us believe.
By not using the Hakenkreuz, Hitler would be robbing himself of a clever symbolic flourish that helped him associate himself with the Freikorp.
No because it has very obvious and well known meanings away from Nazism. It might mean that the USSR has yet more rope to try to hang Christians with but it wouldn't actually mean much in practice.
But they did pick the cross, in two ways. One, the Christian cross figured massively in Nazi Propaganda anyway...