newsHistory repeats itself: First as a Nazi salute and then as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm”
Elon Musk making one of his “awkward gestures” at a rally of Trump supporters in Washington
In the 1930s, giving the Hitler Salute was a way of demonstrating one’s loyalty to the Third Reich. TREVOR GRUNDY reports on why, 80 years after the suicide of Hitler it is in the news again
In 1936, the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was touring Germany where he saw a sign outside a church in Regensburg that stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Then, when he was only 30 years of age, the author of Waiting for Godot noted in his travel diary: “I walked away past the Dominikanerkirche, and saw on the portal above the northern door the words Gruss Gott (Good Day) had been crossed out and replaced by Heil Hitler.”
He added: “Even lavatory attendants greet you with the Hitler Salute and the words Heil Hitler.”
Adolf Hitler shows how it’s done at a rally in Berlin.
Isn’t it odd that the infamous Hitler Salute is in the news again, almost 80 years after the end of the Second World War?
One is tempted to say that at least two of the most prominent figures in USA at the start of Donald Trump’s Make American Great Again (MAGA) campaign would not have felt unduly out of place in the Third Reich.
As far as greeting one another in public places, that is.
One, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
The other, the former Donald Trump special adviser (aka) ventriloquist, Steve Bannon.
But were their raised right arms (palm facing downwards) really Hitler Salutes or just the way Romans used to say hello when Julius Caesar was telling everyone what to do around two thousand years ago.
Or, was it – as the Anti-Defamation League in America described Musk’s shock behaviour during the inauguration of Trump in January, just ‘an awkward gesture’ delivered in “a moment of enthusiasm.”
Take your pick.
In a week or so, no-one in America will give the proverbial damn.
But their salutes or waves or greetings from the heart could impact in other places, especially in Germany where the ultra- right-wing (some say neo-Nazi) Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) came second in last week’s general election.
Their gestures would have surprised Samuel Beckett and might even have inspired another of his theatre of the absurd performances.
For theatre of the absurd it most certainly was in Hitler’s Germany and the Frankfurt- based academic Tilman Allert tells us why in his short and fascinating book The Hitler Salute published by Metropolitan Books, New York, in 2005.
Steve Barron waving to supporters – waving or saluting?
Allert wrote that from the moment the Nazis came to power in 1933, this somewhat cryptic salutation (the Hitler Salute) dominated the culture of human exchange in Germany.
The Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick said moments after Hitler became Chancellor and Fuhrer: “Now that the state of bickering political parties has been defeated, the Hitler Salute has become the German greeting.”
He added: “The German greeting must become second nature to you. Disregard your Gross Gott, Auf Wiedersehen, Guten Tag, Servus. All who wish to avoid the suspicion of consciously obstructionist behaviour will use the Hitler Salute.”
Germans were required “without prompting” to raise their arms and utter a heartfelt “Heil Hitler” every time the new German national anthem, the Horst Wessel Lied was played.
In short, giving the Hitler Salute was a way of demonstrating one’s loyalty to the Third Reich.
And God help you if you refused.
Not many did.
Benito Mussolini demonstrating the “Roman” salute at a mass rally in Italy
And in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the French delegation in a show of deference to their German hosts, entered the stadium with their arms outstretched.
There are pictures of the entire English football team doing the same.
People admiring Musk and Bannon would have felt at home.
First the moral collapse.
Then the emergence of the strong man with charisma.
Then the salute and the anthem.
What follows moral bankruptcy?
What causes the collapse of national and personal morals that can prevent such depravations?
Allert attempts an answer: “A fractured relationship to oneself precedes the underestimation of change in social relations. Once those changes have taken place, charisma can let loose its monstrous power and as Max Weber might have said, turns “rules, traditions and all ideas of what is holy” on their heads. In Germany, this process took place imperceptibly but in plain sight.”
There is a great deal of moral collapse taking place in plain sight right now. Not only in America. Also, in Britain and so many parts of Europe.
Men who should know better are articulating the fouler thoughts of the mob-minded, who can waft the flames of hatred one way or another at will.
I am not suggesting that all those who voted for the AfD last week are part of “a mob.”
But watch out when unemployed and angry young men and women start imitating the “awkward gestures” made in public by men like Musk and Barron.
Will they also be diplomatically described by the Anti-Defamation League as just “awkward gestures.”
Many are young people with a need for standards and ideals which they no longer see on their faces or in the lives of those who rule them.
They are looking for trustworthy leaders.
Watch out.
Or better than that, read The Weimar Republic, a short book by John Hiden (Longman, London , 1996) to see just what happened in Germany before Hitler came to power in 1933.
Try and recall the moment in the film “Cabaret” when Sally Boyles, her boy-friend (a fictional Christopher Isherwood called Herr Issywood in the book “Goodbye to Berlin) and their bi-sexual lover saw a boy in Hitler Youth uniform stand up and sing “Tomorrow belongs to me.”
I felt the audience in the cinema collectively shudder.
It could easily be turned into a new song – “Make Germany great again.”
The Weimer Republic . . .
. . . it was for Hitler and the Nazis the yellow brick road that led them to power in 1933
The need for the strong man (or woman) is part and parcel of our collective political DNAs.
Freud knew that.
So did Marx and Engels.
So did Hitler, Mussolini, Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin and now Putin.
Says Allert:
“The life span of the Nazi salute seems fleeting when viewed against the more enduring catastrophes produced by National Socialism, yet during the 12 years in which it held sway, its ghostly spectacle invested every human encounter with magical fascination and helped to silence a nation’s moral scruples. The Nazi Salute thus marked Germany’s regression into a stater of moral disregard in two ways: it stamped out the act of communication – the very heart of the human encounter – with the sign of the failure, and it signalled the triumph of social radicalism over the fragile space of human dignity and interaction.”
This state of “moral disregard” endured up until Hitler’s suicide in April, 1945.
Allert says: ”After the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, which was led by Wermacht officers, the commanders of the three main branches of the German military – desperate to prove their loyalty – asked the Fuhrer to personally approve their decision to introduce the Hitler greeting within the Wermacht itself. The change was officially instituted on July 24, 1944, completing the destruction of the military’s autonomy that had commenced a decade earlier with the new loyalty oath.”
A child’s guide on how to make a Hitler salute . . .
. . . while the English football team delivers the Nazi salute before a huge crowd in Berlin in 1938 prior to an international friendly against Germany
Some of the last words that ever came out of the mouth of Dr Joseph Goebbels need repeating.
They are chilling and relevant.
He said after the completion of a film called Kolberg and after 100,000 soldiers were withdrawn from the Russian front and turned into extras so that Goebbels could complete the Third Reich’s answer to Gone with the Wind, that in a 100 years from 1945 a new film would be made glorifying Hitler and the Nazis.
His words were: “Gentlemen, don’t you wish to play a part in this film, to be brought back to life in 100 years time? I can assure you that this will be a fine and elevating picture. And for the sake of this prospect, it is worth holding fast. Hold on so that in 100 years hence the audience does not hoot and whistle when you appear on the screen.”
TREVOR GRUNDY is the author of “Memoir of a Fascist Childhood” published by William Heinemann, London in 1998 and Arrow Books in 1999. A slightly revised edition was published by Routledge in 2023 under the title of “Love, hate and the Leader.”
The following is what the highly respected German Jewish author and journalist wrote about her meeting with Trevor Grundy in 1974 and her reaction, decades later, when she read about his childhood in London in thrall to the pre-war British Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley.
Trevor Grundy’s English Fascist Childhood
By Ruth Weiss
London England 1946- – – “Perish Judah!” shouted Trevor Grundy’s mother, standing at attention, arm raised in the fascist salute, before he dashed off to catch the bus to primary school. “Perish Judah!” the six-year-old shouted back.
Born in 1940, English journalist Trevor Grundy grew up with fervently fascist parents, Sidney and Edna. They were ardent supporters of the British Union of Fascists leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, even before World War II and considered old guard.
Trevor literally sucked up fascist ideas with his mother milk. He had no friends apart from Black Shirts. The Grundys only read newspapers and political pamphlets. Prejudice, intolerance and lies were coupled with deep love of their “leader,” Mosley. Hitler too was a cult figure of Trevor’s youth. No wonder that at seventeen he gave a fiery speech for the movement at Trafalgar Square.
Already as a toddler he knew his father’s favourite song in English, the Nazi’s “Horst Wessel” song.
This was the same song belted out by Hitler Youths, terrifying me as a nine-year old in the streets of Nuremberg, as they marched past my mother and myself.
Trevor Grundy in Jerusalem during a speaking tour about his childhood in post-war London. He and his parents were in thrall to the pre-war British Union of Fascists leader, Sir Oswald Mosley
A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from Trevor Grundy. He was the colleague who had taken over from me at the Times of Zambia and as Financial Times correspondent after I joined the Voice of Germany. I was glad to hear from him, though we had not seen each other for some 45 years.
I had no idea of his fascist past, which came as a shock. Nor had I known that in 1998, he had published, Memoir of a Fascist Childhood – A boy in Mosley’s Britain (William Heinemann, London 1998), a brutally honest account of his first twenty years, which were dominated by anti-Semitism, racism and hate.
It is more than commendable that given his distorted upbringing, Trevor began to question his parents and the movement’s views. As one reviewer noted, decency and truth prevailed. The young man broke loose and took flight, spending almost all his working life in Africa.
Grundy’s memoir gives an insight into the psyche of such individuals as the perpetrator who attacked the synagogue in Halle last October, on the Jewish Day of Atonement. He was prevented from staging the planned massacre by the strength of a door, so that in frustration he turned his gun on two unfortunate victims on the street.
Trevor Grundy (right) with Sir Malcolm Rifind, former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs at the end of a tour of British universities and colleges where Grundy spoke about his up-bringing in Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement (UM). Picture courtesy of David Kaplan
Trevor Grundy revealed how often people settle on a scapegoat who can be blamed for their failings and fate. This allows them to think unbelievable allegations are true, such as the illogical belief Jews were responsible for Germany’s defeat in the first of the World Wars and the Allies’ Declaration of War in the second. Or as Germans say: Jews and bicyclists are to blame for everything!
Unfortunately, this is not past history but part of current affairs. In 2019 more than 1200 anti-Semitic attacks were recorded in four German states alone. An AfD (Alternative for Germany) party representative claimed in 2018 that the ‘Central Council of Jews’ allegedly used “Islam” in order to turn Germany into a multi-cultural society. In the US, the number of anti-Semitic assaults and acts of vandalism, and harassment rose in 2019 to an all-time high of 2000, the highest since the Anti-Defamation League started keeping records over 30 years ago.
Ghosts of the Nazi era and earlier times have re-emerged. As happens so often during a crisis, Jews are currently blamed by anti-Semites for Covid-19, reflecting the familiar antiseptic trope connecting Jews with disease. In Bavaria, masks have appeared at demonstrations with yellow stars and slogans such as “anti-vaccination”. At one lockdown protest, placards were warned of a “social holocaust”. During the plague years of the 14th century, Jews were alleged to have poisoned the wells, despite Pope Clemens VI declaration that this was false.
Prejudice can only be defeated by means of common sense and human decency, as Trevor Grundy proved.
Ruth Weiss with the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa
RUTH WEISS, author, journalist, anti-apartheid activist. Born in Germany, she was brought up in South Africa and became the respected correspondent for Deutsche Welle, the BBC and Financial Times in different parts of Africa and Europe. She now lives in Denmark and recently celebrated her 100th birthday.