Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag bearing the swastika.

The **swastika** is one of the world’s oldest and most widespread symbols, with a history extending thousands of years before its association with Nazi Germany. Archaeologists have found swastika-like designs on prehistoric objects dating back several millennia, including artifacts from Europe and Asia. The name comes from the Sanskrit word *svastika*, meaning roughly “conducive to well-being” or “good fortune.” The symbol consists of a cross with four arms bent at right angles, and variations appeared independently or through cultural exchange in many societies. It was used as a decorative, religious, or protective symbol by peoples in ancient India, Central Asia, China, Japan, Greece, and parts of Europe and the Americas.

The swastika became particularly important in the religions of **Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism**, where it generally carried positive meanings. In Hindu traditions, it has been associated with prosperity, good fortune, the sun, and various deities, and it continues to appear on temples, homes, religious objects, and during festivals and ceremonies. Jainism gives the swastika an especially prominent religious role, while Buddhism carried versions of the symbol throughout much of Asia. Long before the twentieth century, similar designs were also found in ancient Greek and Roman art, early European artifacts, and Indigenous cultures in North America. Consequently, the symbol historically had many meanings rather than belonging to a single culture or religion.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, some European nationalist and racial theorists began appropriating the swastika. Archaeological discoveries of the symbol were incorrectly incorporated into theories about a supposedly superior ancient “Aryan race.” German nationalist and antisemitic organizations increasingly adopted it as an emblem of racial identity. In 1920, Adolf Hitler’s **Nazi Party** formally adopted a black, rotated swastika inside a white circle on a red background as its principal emblem. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the symbol became inseparable in Europe and much of the Western world from Nazi dictatorship, antisemitism, racial persecution, aggressive warfare, and ultimately the Holocaust, in which approximately six million Jews and millions of other victims were murdered.

Following Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945, public display of Nazi swastikas was prohibited or restricted in Germany and several other European countries, while the symbol became one of the most recognizable representations of Nazism and white supremacism. Yet its much older religious significance did not disappear. Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and other communities continue to use traditional forms of the swastika as symbols of spirituality, prosperity, and good fortune. This creates a striking contrast in modern understanding: in much of the West, the swastika immediately evokes Hitler and the atrocities of Nazi Germany, while in many Asian religious and cultural contexts it remains an ancient sacred symbol whose positive meaning predates Nazism by thousands of years.