What if the Soviets came up with the Nazi salute?

What if instead of the Nazis popularizing the Roman stiff arm salute, it was instead the Soviets? Would it still be in use today and how would people react to it?
 
I guesss the early twentieth century revolutionary Left was open to influence from the classical age, the Sparticists being the thing that comes to mind.

If the Bolsheviks decide that all good comrades should use the Roman salute, and aren't bothered by the early twenties Italian fascists doing the same thing, then the Nazis might just use it after all. The military salute is pretty transnational/transideological, the Roman salute might achieve the same status across totalitarian regimes.

Though Stalin did ban displays of military hierarchy, only reversing that ban just before the Great Patriotic War. He might do the same with a communist Roman salute.
 
What if instead of the Nazis popularizing the Roman stiff arm salute, it was instead the Soviets? Would it still be in use today and how would people react to it?

IIRC the Roman salute was already used by a number of organisations before the rise of Fascism. The Boy Scout salute was originally a Roman salute, for example. It's not that the Nazis popularised it- it's that after WW2 it, like the swastika, became almost toally linked with Fascism in the popular conciousness.
 
IIRC the Roman salute was already used by a number of organisations before the rise of Fascism. The Boy Scout salute was originally a Roman salute, for example. It's not that the Nazis popularised it- it's that after WW2 it, like the swastika, became almost toally linked with Fascism in the popular conciousness.
It was also the salute used by American schoolchildren for the Pledge of Allegiance until 1942:
Pledge_salue.jpg
 
It probably would still be in use today. China is a big place.

The Chinese don't really do it last I checked...

Back to the OP. Yes, if the Soviets came up with it and the fascist decided to do a little copy work, the Roman salute would definitely be associated with totalitarian regimes.

However, knowing the Nazis, they wouldn't want to steal ideas from someone they viewed as inferior and as such, another salute would have been used instead. Maybe they would have stole the current Boy Scouts salute and told them to screw off.
 
The Chinese don't really do it last I checked...

Back to the OP. Yes, if the Soviets came up with it and the fascist decided to do a little copy work, the Roman salute would definitely be associated with totalitarian regimes.

However, knowing the Nazis, they wouldn't want to steal ideas from someone they viewed as inferior and as such, another salute would have been used instead. Maybe they would have stole the current Boy Scouts salute and told them to screw off.
:confused:

The question was what if the Soviets rather than the Nazis mimicked the Roman salute. Now, if this was the case, I suspect there would be a Communist explanation for such a salute, meaning it transferred over to other Communist regimes such as China.

Of course China doesnt give that salute iotl, but in ttl I rather suspect they would.
 
Back to the OP. Yes, if the Soviets came up with it and the fascist decided to do a little copy work, the Roman salute would definitely be associated with totalitarian regimes.

However, knowing the Nazis, they wouldn't want to steal ideas from someone they viewed as inferior and as such, another salute would have been used instead. Maybe they would have stole the current Boy Scouts salute and told them to screw off.

It would be ironic if the fascists/Nazis had adopted a clenched fist 'blackpower' salute because the Soviets went with the Roman one (yet the USSR adopting the Roman salute isn't necessarily ironic--they are Russians, after all, the people who styled the name of their emperor after 'caesar.' Besides the Sparticists I mentioned above, it makes a weird kind of sense for Lenin to want to stress the pan-European ambitions of the Revolution by invoking the legacy of the Roman empire.)

"Of course Musso wouldn't use the Roman salute when he finally made it into power, what with the Comintern parties having recently appropriated it to use along with their new catchcry, 'Long live Marx!'"

Or maybe il duce does keep it for Italy, but Hitler never adopts it. I can see historians explaining a clenched fist Nazi salute as being a fulfilment of Hitler's muscular style. "You know Hitler wasn't so much bothered by the Bolsheviks also using the fascistic open handed salute, as he was by the fact the gesture invoked the decline and fall of the decadent Romans, what with their baths, their sodomy, and their conversion to Christianity."
 
It was also the salute used by American schoolchildren for the Pledge of Allegiance until 1942:
Pledge_salue.jpg
My God that's a scary picture...

Anyway, if the Soviets used it instead of the Nazis, we would probably see it being used by the black power movements of the 1960s and throughout the Soviet sphere of influence. After all, the black power movements don't want to use the same symbols as the hyper-reacist Nazis.
 
Though Stalin did ban displays of military hierarchy, only reversing that ban just before the Great Patriotic War. He might do the same with a communist Roman salute.

Depends how it is popularized. If it comes into use in Russia as a military salute (especially if it becomes associated with a general or formation that Stalin doesn't care for), then sure. But if it becomes a gesture of communist solidarity or something, I can see him keeping it around as a sort of gestural propaganda.

My God that's a scary picture...

So much photoshop potential...
:eek:
 
The picture is interesting. It's really a shame that so many things were ruined by the Nazis. I think that, fascism aside, we can all agree that the Roman Salute was badass, as is a raised fist. So if the right and the left both have sweet salutes, why doesn't the center have one? We need a meh salute.
 
Top