The Real Origin of the Nazi Salute

In the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the National Fascist Party (i.e., the PNF) in Italy and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (i.e., the NSDAP or Nazi Party) in Germany both used a salute that consisted of a straight, rigid arm raised into the air above the shoulders with the hand parallel to the rest of the arm and the palm facing toward the ground. The Italian Fascists and the German Nazis both believed that this salute originated with the ancient Romans and tried to use the salute’s supposed Roman origins in order to bolster their own prestige and portray themselves as continuing the Roman legacy. Various modern-day fascists and Neo-Nazis have tried to do the same thing.

There is, however, no evidence that anyone in ancient Rome ever used the form of the straight-arm salute that was used by the Italian Fascists and German Nazis. The true origins of the Nazi salute are far more strange. The salute’s traceable history begins with a late eighteenth-century French Neoclassical painter. Over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it became incorporated into numerous stage plays and films set in ancient Rome, leading the Italian Fascists to adopt it, believing that it was Roman. The Nazis, in turn, adopted it from the Italian Fascists.

My main source for this article

Most of the information that I will be discussing in this article is based on research that comes from the book The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology, which was written by the scholar Martin M. Winkler, who is currently a professor of the classics at George Mason University, and published by Ohio State University Press in 2009.

Winkler has written multiple books dealing with the reception of classical antiquity in the modern world, particularly in films, and his book is more-or-less the definitive history of the straight-arm salute that eventually became used by the Nazis. The entire book is available online for free in PDF format through Project Muse, so, if you want to read the book for yourself, it should be easily accessible for you to do so.

The first sections of this article, which discuss ancient Roman gestures that resemble the straight-arm salute, are based primarily on Winkler’s first chapter (spanning pages 17–41). Most of the remaining portions of this article, which discuss the history of the Roman salute, are based primarily on chapters two through five of Winkler’s book (spanning pages 42–121).

ABOVE: Cover of the book The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology by Martin M. Winkler, published in 2009 by Ohio State University Press

The adlocutio gesture

There is no clear evidence to suggest that the ancient Romans ever used the straight-arm salute with the palm facing down that is so often attributed to them. This gesture is not clearly depicted in any surviving work of Roman art, nor is it clearly referenced in any surviving work of Roman literature.

As Winkler discusses in his book, however, there are many surviving works of ancient Roman art that depict men in positions of power making a gesture that kind of vaguely resembles the straight-arm salute. One such example is the Augustus of Prima Porta, a very famous marble statue depicting the Roman emperor Augustus that was most likely commissioned by Augustus’s wife Livia at some point between his death in 14 CE and her own death in 29 CE.

Winkler notes that the Augustus of Prima Porta seems to have originally depicted the emperor holding a spear, but the statue was broken at some point and repaired in antiquity. As a result of the changes to the right arm and hand that were made during the repairs, the statue now shows the emperor with his right arm outstretched to his side and the fingers on his right hand seemingly in the process of unfurling.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Augustus of Prima Porta, showing Augustus making a hortatory gesture with his right hand

This gesture, however, differs in both form and significance from the straight-armed salute that is so often attributed to the Romans. For one thing, the gesture that is shown in Roman sculptures like the Augustus of Prima Porta is clearly a loose gesture with the elbow slightly bent, the palm facing perpendicular to the ground, and the fingers not fully extended. It only really resembles the fascist salute in the sense that it involves an outstretched right arm.

The gesture shown in the Augustus of Prima Porta and other statues of Roman leaders also differs significantly from the fascist salute in terms of its significance, since this gesture is, in fact, not a salute at all, but rather a gesture of exhortation. The statues that depict this gesture are meant to depict adlocutio, which is when a military leader gives a speech in front of his troops. The gesture of the raised hand is meant to represent a powerful rhetorical flourish during a particularly rousing part of the speech.

We know this, in part, because there are surviving works written by ancient Roman authors about the art of rhetoric and the physical gestures that might accompany a Roman speech. The Roman orator Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (lived c. 35 – c. 100 CE) writes in his treatise Institutio Oratoria 11.3.84, as translated by H. E. Butler for the Loeb Classical Library:

“In continuous and flowing passages a most becoming gesture is slightly to extend the arm with shoulders well thrown back and the fingers opening as the hand moves forward. But when we have to speak in specially rich or impressive style, as, for example, in the passage ‘saxa atque solitudines voci respondent’ [i.e., “the stones and the deserts respond to his voice,” a quote from Cicero’s For Archias 8.19], the arm will be thrown out in a stately sidelong sweep and the words will, as it were, expand in unison with the gesture.”

The sweeping hand gesture that Quintilianus describes here is almost certainly the one that is depicted in so many Roman sculptures, including the current version of the Augustus of Prima Porta.

Nonetheless, people can easily mistake the adlocutio gesture for a straight-arm salute, especially if they view a particular version of it from the wrong angle. For instance, another famous surviving Roman statue that depicts the adlocutio gesture is the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, which was originally created in around 175 CE and is now on display in the Musei Capitolini in Rome. This statue depicts Marcus Aurelius with his right hand outstretched to his side at shoulder height and his index finger slightly raised from the rest of his fingers.

Most people see the statue from below, since it is a colossal statue and it is displayed at above human height. When viewed from below, Marcus Aurelius’s arm looks like it is raised above his shoulder in a raised-arm salute, even though it is really only at the same height as his shoulder.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Musei Capitolini

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Musei Capitolini from below, from a view that makes Marcus Aurelius kind of look like he’s giving the Fascist salute

Depictions of people acclaiming men in positions of power

In Roman art, when people acclaim men in positions of power, they do so using a couple of different gestures, which can sometimes bear a vague resemblance to the straight-arm salute. One gesture is an open hand with the palm facing perpendicular to the ground and the thumb sticking up. The other is a pointing gesture with the thumb and index fingers extended and all the other fingers closed.

Both of these gestures can be seen in a scene depicted on Trajan’s Column, a Roman monumental victory column in the center of Trajan’s Forum in the city of Rome. The emperor Trajan commissioned the creation of this column to commemorate his victory in the Dacian Wars (lasted 101–102 and 105–106 CE). It was completed in 113 CE. The column bears bas relief scenes in a spiral progression depicting scenes from Trajan’s conquests.

Scene LXXXV on the column depicts members of a crowd acclaiming the emperor. One man in the midst of the crowd is shown making a gesture with his open hand perpendicular to the ground and his thumb pointing up. All the other people in the crowd are shown making the pointing gesture with their thumb and index fingers extended and all their other fingers closed.

ABOVE: Detail from Wikimedia Commons of a scene depicted on Trajan’s Column, Scene LXXXV, showing people raising their arms to acclaim the emperor

How the ancient Romans actually greeted each other

At this point, I think it is fairly clear that the few gestures shown in Roman art that vaguely resemble the straight-arm salute that was used by the Nazis are not, in fact, the straight-arm salute—at least as far as we can tell. At this point, my readers may be wondering how the Romans actually greeted each other, if they did not do so using the so-called “Roman salute.”

One of the most common ways the Romans greeted each other was using verbal greetings. There are a couple phrases in particular that the Romans often used to greet each other. The first phrase is “Salve,” which means “Be well” or “Be strong” and is the closest ancient Roman equivalent to our English phrase “Hello.” The second phrase is “Ave,” which means “Hail” and was commonly used to address figures of authority.

In addition to these phrases, the Romans also had a number of physical gestures that they used to greet each other, which I discuss in this article I wrote in June 2018. As I discuss in the article, Roman men of equal status most commonly greeted each other either with a simple right-handed handshake or with a kiss. This kiss might be given on the hand, the cheek, or the lips, depending on how intimate a person was with the person they were greeting.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Greek relief carving dating to 403 or 402 BCE, shows the goddesses Hera (right) and Athena (left) shaking hands as a show of peace between their respective poleis of Samos and Athens

ABOVE: Photograph from Pinterest of an ancient Roman gravestone on display in the British Museum depicting two men shaking hands

Marcus Valerius Martialis (lived 38 or 41 – c. 103 CE), commonly known in English as “Martial,” was a Roman poet who lived in Spain. He was of Celtic and Iberian ancestry, but he wrote in Latin and held Roman citizenship. In his Epigrams 2.21, Martial makes fun of a man named Postumus who apparently gave people he met a choice between shaking his hand or receiving a kiss. Martial writes, as translated for Bohn’s Classical Library:

“To some, Postumus, you give kisses, to some your right hand. ‘Which do you prefer?’ you say, ‘choose.’ I prefer your hand.”

When an enslaved person stood before their master, it was common for them to kneel or prostrate themself on the ground, but, during the Republic and the Principate, there were no circumstances under which it was generally expected for a free person to kneel or prostrate, since the Romans viewed kneeling and prostration as barbarous and slavish.

During the Principate, when a free citizen greeted the emperor, they were normally expected to do so respectfully, but in an overall manner not too different from how they would greet any other free citizen. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus (lived c. 330 – after c. 391 CE) records in his Res Gestae 15.5.18 that the emperor Diocletian (ruled 284 – 305 CE), whose reign is generally considered to mark the beginning of the Dominate, was the first emperor who required all subjects to kneel or prostrate before him.

As far as salutes go, Winkler notes that numerous surviving works of ancient Roman art actually depict people holding their right hands to their foreheads in a gesture almost identical to the standard modern military salute and, in some cases, they are clearly shown doing this as a sign of respect for someone else in the scene. He therefore argues that, if the Romans had a salute, then it was basically identical in form to the standard military salute that is used today.

ABOVE: Photograph featured as an illustration in Winkler’s book on page 32, showing a scene of a person giving a salute-like gesture from a Roman marble sarcophagus dating to the third century CE that is now on display in the National Museum in Rome

Jacques-Louis David’s The Oath of the Horatii

So, if we have no evidence that the ancient Romans ever actually used the straight-arm salute, where does it really come from? As it turns out, as Winkler discusses in the second chapter of his book, the first person to popularize the salute by associating it with ancient Rome seems to have been the French Neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David (lived 1748 – 1825).

David’s 1784 painting The Oath of the Horatii is based on an ancient Roman legend that is best known today in the version told by the Roman historian Titus Livius (lived c. 59 BCE – c. 17 CE) in his Ab Urbe Condita 1.23–26. According to Livy, the cities of Rome and Alba Longa were at war, but they wanted to minimize the number of casualties, so they agreed to an arrangement that each city would select three champions who would fight the other city’s champions to the death.

The Romans selected a set of triplet brothers with the family name Horatius (the plural form of which is Horatii). The people Alba Longa selected a set of triplet brothers with the family name Curiatius (the plural form of which is Curiatii). When these two sets of triplets came together to fight, the Curiatii killed two of the Horatii almost immediately, but the Curiatii were all injured in the fight, leaving them weakened so that the single remaining Horatius, who was uninjured, was able to fight them one-by-one and slay them all, leading Rome to victory over Alba Longa.

Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Oath of the Horatii depicts a scene of his own invention in which, before the fateful battle in which two of them will perish, the three brothers Horatii swear an oath to their father that they will kill all the Curiatii or die themselves fighting on behalf of the Roman state. The painting shows the brothers raising their hands in a straight-arm salute, with their palms facing the ground and their fingers pointing out.

None of the brothers in David’s The Oath of the Horatii are making the exact salute that fascists used in the twentieth century. The brother in the painting who is closest to the viewer has his arm almost perfectly horizontal, not raised in the air. Meanwhile, the brothers in the middle and back—who do have their arms raised—are saluting with their left arms, rather than their right. Nonetheless, David’s painting is clearly the main source of inspiration for the salute that would later become associated with fascism.

ABOVE: The Oath of the Horatii, painted in 1784 by the French Neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David

David’s adaptation of the straight-arm salute for a modern political context

The Oath of the Horatii, however, only marks the beginning of Jacques-Louis David’s role in the popularization of the straight-arm salute. David later went on to become an ardent supporter of the French Revolution and he began using the straight-arm salute in his paintings representing people whom he regarded as heroes of the revolution.

In 1791, David made a drawing titled The Tennis Court Oath, which depicts a historical event that took place on 20 June 1789 in which representatives of the French Third Estate swore an oath in the indoor Jeu de Paume tennis court, located near the Palace of Versailles, that they would not leave until they had drafted a new constitution for France. Naturally, David depicts dozens of representatives making straight-arm salutes towards the center of the drawing.

The drawing deliberately evokes David’s earlier painting of the Horatii to convey the message that the men who swore the Tennis Court Oath in June 1789 were the new Horatii brothers, prepared to fight selflessly on behalf of their fatherland. In fact, if you look toward the left side of the drawing, you can see a group of three men whose arms are in almost exactly the same positions and even facing in the same direction as the Horatii in The Oath of the Horatii.

ABOVE: The Tennis Court Oath, drawn in 1791 by Jacques-Louis David

After the French Revolution, David became an ardent supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1810, he painted an oil painting titled The Distribution of the Eagle Standards, which depicts a military ceremony that Napoleon held in 1804 after he assumed the title “Emperor of the French.” The painting draws heavy inspiration from the scenes on Trajan’s Column and depicts supporters of Napoleon using the straight-arm salute to hail the eagle standards that are the primary subject of the painting.

Thus, over the course of David’s paintings, we can see a transition in how the straight-arm salute is represented. He first represents it in an ancient Roman context in The Oath of the Horatii. Next, he represents it in a modern republican revolutionary context in The Tennis Court Oath. Finally, he represents it in a modern, explicitly imperialist context in The Distribution of the Eagle Standards.

ABOVE: The Distribution of the Eagle Standards, painted in 1810 by Jacques-Louis David

That other misconception David generated…

As a side note, since I’m talking about Jacques-Louis David, I thought I would note that the so-called “Roman salute” is not the only misconception about ancient history that he is responsible for promoting. As Peter Gainsford, a classics professor at the Victoria University of Wellington, discusses in this post he wrote on his blog Kiwi Hellenist in October 2016 and I also discuss in this post I wrote on my own blog in November 2019, David also painted another painting titled Leonidas at Thermopylae.

This painting depicts how David imagined it might have looked when the Spartiate soldiers were preparing to make their final stand at the Battle of Thermopylai in 480 BCE. David originally worked on this painting from 1799 to 1803, stopped working on it for ten years, started working on it again in 1813, and completed it in 1814.

In historical reality, the Spartiates at Thermopylai all wore armor, but, in the painting, David depicts them completely naked except for red capes. David’s Leonidas at Thermopylae is where the comic book artist Frank Miller got the idea to depict the Spartiates fighting naked in his 1998 limited comic book series 300, which later became the basis for the 2006 fantasy action film of the same name.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t realize that 300 is a work of fantasy, so many people have come away from the film believing that the Spartiates actually fought naked—even though, if you really think about it for more than two seconds, going into battle completely naked without armor is a pretty dumb idea.

ABOVE: The painting Leonidas at Thermopylae by Jacques-Louis David, which is probably where Frank Miller got the idea of portraying the Spartans fighting naked

Further nineteenth-century popularization of the straight-arm salute in art

In any case, returning to the main subject of this article, over the course of the nineteenth century, the straight-arm salute became widely used in paintings of scenes set in ancient Rome. Not all of these depictions show exactly the same salute that was later used by the Italian Fascists and German Nazis, however.

For instance, the French Academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (lived 1824 – 1904) depicts a version of the salute in his famous painting Ave Caesar, Morituri te Salutant!, which he painted in 1859. Gérôme’s painting depicts a group of captives saluting the emperor with raised arms, but none of them are making exactly the same gesture.

Notably, all the men are holding weapons in the hands that they are saluting with and some of them are saluting with their left hands. We can imagine, though, how paintings like this probably influenced the perception of raised-arm salutes in general as “Roman.”

ABOVE: Ave Caesar, Morituri te Salutant!, painted in 1859 by Jean-Léon Gérôme

The Bellamy salute

In August 1892, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and self-avowed “Christian Socialist” from the state of New York, wrote a pledge for American schoolchildren to swear their allegiance to the United States of America. He believed that this pledge would help instill the spirit of nationalist devotion into children’s hearts at a young age. Bellamy’s original 1892 pledge reads as follows:

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

My readers who live in the United States should recognize this as an early version of the Pledge of Allegiance that every child in every public school in the United States is required to swear every morning before class, with their hand over their heart while facing the flag of the United States.

Bellamy’s original version of the Pledge, however, did not require the person reciting it to place their hand over their heart. Instead, it required the person reciting it to begin with their right hand in a military salute over their forehead. Then, when the person spoke the words “to the Flag,” they were supposed to raise their right hand toward the flag with their arm perfectly straight and rigid and their palm facing the ground in a gesture exactly identical to the Fascist salute.

Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance was published for the first time on 8 September 1892 in The Youth’s Companion, a popular magazine for children. Bellamy and his friends convinced President Benjamin Harrison to issue Presidential Proclamation 335, which required all schoolchildren across the United States to swear the Pledge of Allegiance using this salute as part of the observances in honor of the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of America. Thus, on 12 October 1892, millions of schoolchildren across the country were forced to recite the Pledge.

Although this nation-wide observance of the Pledge of Allegiance was originally only intended as a one-time occasion, the Pledge soon became a deeply entrenched daily ritual of the American public school system. Over the following decades, the wording of the Pledge and the salute associated with it changed slightly, so that, instead of starting with a military salute, people started with their hands over their hearts and then, upon speaking the phrase “to the Flag,” raised their hands toward the flag in a salute that was, once again, identical to the one later used by the Nazis.

Eventually, on 22 December 1942, after the Bellamy salute had been used in American public schools for almost exactly fifty years, Congress changed the salute for the Pledge of Allegiance to remove the straight-arm salute and simply require people saying the Pledge to keep their hand over their heart for the entire Pledge. They did this out of embarrassment over the fact that American schoolchildren were making exactly the same salute that the Nazis were using.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing American schoolchildren performing the Bellamy salute to the flag of the United States in a classroom in the year 1941

Broadway’s Ben Hur and early twentieth-century films

In his book, Winkler argues that, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stage plays and films set in ancient Rome played an enormously influential role in the popularizing both the straight-arm salute itself and the perception of it as “Roman.”

On 29 November 1899, the stage play Ben Hur, based on the bestselling novel Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace, which had been published nineteen years earlier in 1880, premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York City. The play was a smash hit. It ran on Broadway until 1920 and, by the end of its run, over twenty million people had seen it. The play also went on to be performed at thousands of theatres all across the United States.

Although neither Wallace’s 1880 novel nor the script for the Broadway production of Ben Hur mention of the straight-arm salute, surviving photographs of the Broadway production show various characters using the salute. Most notably, a photograph included in a souvenir album depicting Act IV, Tableau 1 of the play shows Ben-Hur greeting Sheikh Ilderim by saluting him with his right arm in the air perfectly straight and his palm facing the ground in exactly the same manner that the Nazis would later salute Hitler. Winkler reproduces this photograph as an illustration on page 74 of his book.

ABOVE: Souvenir photograph of the Broadway production of Ben-Hur, Act IV, Tableau 1, reproduced as an illustration in Winkler’s book on page 74, showing Ben-Hur greeting Sheik Ilderim with the straight-arm salute

In turn, the stage play Ben-Hur seems to have played an enormous role in popularizing the straight-arm salute, because it appears in nearly every early twentieth-century production about ancient Rome after it. Winkler chronicles how the 1907 American silent film Ben Hur, the 1908 Italian silent film Nerone, the 1913 Italian silent film Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompeii, and the 1913 or 1914 Italian silent film Spartaco all include the straight-arm salute.

ABOVE: Shot from the opening scene of the 1908 Italian silent film Nerone, reproduced as an illustration in Winkler’s book on page 86, showing people hailing the emperor Nero using the straight-arm salute

Cabiria and Gabriele D’Annunzio

There is, however, one film in particular that seems to have cemented the straight-arm salute as a symbol of Italian nationalism: the 1914 Italian epic silent film Cabiria. This film is so important in the history of the salute that, while Winkler discusses all the other early twentieth-century films in a single chapter, he devotes a whole chapter to discussion of this one film (spanning pages 94–121).

Cabiria was written, directed, and produced by the Italian filmmaker Giovanni Pastrone with considerable input from the Italian nationalist “poet-soldier” Gabriele D’Annunzio, who wrote all the intertitles for the film and gave all the characters their names. The film is set during the Second Punic War (lasted 218 – 202 BCE) between Rome and Carthage and contains extremely heavy Italian nationalist undertones. It portrays the Romans as noble and virtuous and the Carthaginians as heinous, backwards, and barbaric savages who sacrifice hundreds of young children to their god Moloch.

With a run time of 148 minutes, Cabiria was the very first full-length epic film. It did a similar thing for Italian nationalism to what the more notorious film The Birth of a Nation, which came out a year later, did for white nationalism in the United States. It promulgated the very same rituals that would later become incorporated into Italian Fascism by portraying these rituals in an ancient Roman context.

ABOVE: Promotional poster from 1914 for the Italian epic silent film Cabiria, which contains heavy nationalist undertones and helped popularize the straight-arm salute among Italian nationalists

Gabriele D’Annunzio’s occupation of Fiume

Cabiria is important not just because it was the very first full-length epic film, but also because Gabriele D’Annunzio in particular was so heavily involved in the making of it. D’Annunzio was not only an extremist nationalist, but also a close associate of none other than Benito Mussolini and he became a formative influence on the future Fascist dictator. He has been described as “the John the Baptist of Italian Fascism.”

On 12 September 1919, D’Annunzio invaded and occupied the city of Fiume (which is now the city of Rijeka, Croatia), declaring himself “Duce” of the “Italian Regency of Carnaro.” The occupation only lasted until 30 December 1920, but, during the occupation, D’Annunzio standardized and implemented the rituals of Fascism that had previously been displayed in Cabiria, including the straight-arm Fascist salute.

A little less than a year later, Mussolini founded the Italian National Fascist Party with himself as “Duce” on 9 November 1921. Mussolini adopted the rituals that D’Annunzio had pioneered, including the straight-arm Fascist salute. The Nazis, in turn, adopted the salute from the Italian Fascists. In 1926, the Nazi Party officially made the salute mandatory for all party members. Thus, the so-called “Roman salute” became the Nazi salute.

ABOVE: Photograph from the Bundesarchiv (Bild 101II-MW-4012-04) taken in 1941, showing Karl Dönitz and the officers of the German Wehrmacht giving the Nazi salute