I agree. I have to admit I was bit sceptical before I had seen the outfit. I mean, almost 200-year-old symbol of military tradition created for the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon or not, had you worn a plain red cloth armband with an iron cross in a white circle together with your everday outfit at work, you would have raised a few eyebrows. This way I don’t see a problem.
Don’t ever wear it in public.
I belong to a Sherlock Holmes society and we have a quiz each year where the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes are beautiful handcrafted medals made by a jewelrysmith who makes jewellry for movies and tv, she’s quite good, for example she made all the crowns and tiara’s for the Princess Diary movies, the pirate coin medallion for Pirates of the Carribean and so forth.
Well, we had a quiz based on a Holmes story that takes place right before WW1, in which Sherlock defeats a german spy ring. The medal was an iron cross with a bee perched on top, to symbolize the beekeeper (Holme’s nickname) triumphant over Kaiser Germany. OK so far?
I’ve been to several banquets with up to 300 fellow Holmesians, people who love history and accuracy and nit picking details, peole who have a sense of humor, people who love costumes, and yet, I’ve given up on the idea of ever wearing it again because I’ve been cussed at, stared at, glared at and admonished for wearing a “nazi” medal.
Oh well.
When I was a kid, in the early seventies, I had some felt wall hangings of the Peanuts gang. Snoopy was flying his dog house. His doghouse had an Iron Cross on it.
Now I always thought that was wierd, because in my book, Snoopy vs. the Red Baron, Snoopy was trying to shoot the plain with the Iron Cross down.
I’ve always thought of Snoopy when I saw the Iron Cross. And by association, the Red Baron. (I know it should be the other way around)
Now I’ll always think of Giant_Spongess. From what little I can see, hubba hubba…
Sometimes symbols get hijacked. Sometimes they are seen to mean something different than you want them to. The swastika meant something different for a thousand years, now it doesn’t. The iron cross is now used widely by neo-nazis, skinheads, The Aryan Nation and violent outlaw biker gangs. Do you think they do it out of love for the Kaiser or the Gemnan unification in the 1800s? It doesn’t have the same hatred and emotion attached to it as the swastika but be prepared for some dirty looks.
Willy Brandt?
But anyway, I think the neo-Nazis have been a little too successful in coopting the Iron Cross for me to be comfortable with it as part of street attire. Of course, your subculture matters and all that, and people can generally fill in the blanks, but still. The other thing is that the Iron Cross looks a lot like other symbols of neofascist and racist groups – for example, the Klan’s, or the Russian example I cited earlier.
And here, just to reinforce the Nazi link, is a picture of Hermann Goering wearing not just one, but two (or maybe three?) Iron Crosses.
Why? A good pair of boots is a good pair of boots. I didn’t get my nickname by leaving them in the closet all the time, y’know. I don’t catch any flak for it.
Just a nitpick:
The symbol you’re referring to is a Maltese Cross. The Iron Cross is a German military decoration which incorporates a Maltese Cross design, first established by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and first awarded in 1813. It was awarded during the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian War, and the First and Second World Wars.
So, cabinet member poses wearing medals he probably didn’t earn? Big shock there.
What do you think the odds are that he was wearing them to show a link between the Kaizer (the second reich) and the third?
Hitler and other top nazis were also fond of Wagner. Wagner expressed his own racist views in Parcifal.
My father loves the Ring cycle.
Why not take the symbols back from the nazis?
Actually, here is the crux of the confusion.
German military “stuff” was popular among early biker clubs as a sign of flouting conventions. Skinheads picked up the “flouting conventions” aspect of the symbolism that then acquired Nazi overtones primarily because they are displayed by skinheads.
There are, of course, people (noted by BMalion) who simply equate German militarism with the Nazis, (primarily because either they or their parents encountered German militarism under the Nazi banner), but the Cross Formé is not a Nazi symbol.
When I was younger, I would get upset at my mother when she used to paint swastikas on our sidewalk. Did I mention that we lived (and still live) in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood? And an uncle of mine has a tattoo of a swastika on his arm. I made sure that I never went to the beach with him.
When I asked my mother to stop painting these symbols during Indian/Hindu holidays, she would get upset at me. I asked her to please consider how offended many of our neighbors would be as they walked by. Even my father agreed with me at the time.
But today, I completely agree with what my mom. We can’t help it if others use our symbols for purposes that we don’t agree with. We don’t see the symbol that way. This symbol has been part of Indian culture for centuries. Should we allow others to steal it from us, and worse, to use it for purposes that are completely opposite to what we believe in? (Same concept as: If we stop displaying the symbol, the terrorists have already won!) For a while, I’d still get upset when she displayed the swastika. It was embarrassing. But one comment she made stayed in my head and finally converted me to her way of thinking:
“If Hitler had used the cross as the Nazi symbol (instead of the swastika), would all the crosses displayed at churches come down?”
Actually, Wagner is hated by a lot of Jews, and not just because the Nazis were fond of him. He was so anti-semitic that he took a break from composing at one point in order to create anti-Jewish diatribes. In fact, there was an unspoken rule in Israel against playing Wagner that lasted until fairly recently. That said, Wagner was a composer of genius, and if you can dissociate his music from his person, you can get something worth keeping. With the Iron Cross, I don’t know – maybe there’s something of value there, but even stripping out the Nazi associations, you still have the suggestion of German militarism – the Rape of Belgium and all that.
And whether Goering earned his Iron Crosses or not, the point is you kind of expect to see them on his chest. The evocation of Naziism is pretty strong to me, as I think it is to many others.
hijack- I’m not an expert on German military decorations but I do know that Goering was a war hero before there was a Nazi party. He was a highly decorated pilot who took over for Richtofen when he died. He earned many of his medals during WWI. Hitler needed a well known war hero on his side when he was starting out and Goering fit the bill. Not saying he may not have pinned a few extra medals on when he became head of the German military.
Shouldn’t the outer sides of the bars of a Maltese cross be angled inward like this? It’s true that the name comes from the decoration, but for a long time it has also been used for the specific design influenced by the “Tatzenkreuz” (whatever that is in English) of the Teutonic Order.
The third one is the far more prestigious “Pour le Mérite” that he won in WWI. He also won two classes of the iron cross in WWI and a few more in WWII. It may be debatable whether he deserved his WWII awards, but as the highest ranking soldier he was certainly eligible.
Actually, there were at least three separate awards that were popularly called the “Iron Cross.” The only one that actually used a Maltese Cross was the Pour le Merite (ironically in French) that was also known as the Blue Max.
The other two “Iron Cross” medals were both based on the Cross Formé, which is the image depicted in the OP’s link.
Was it really rooted in nonconformism? I have always been given to believe that it was because early motorcycle clubs had a predominantly WWII-veteran membership, and that the German helmets, medals, and other accoutrements were war trophies – and for the generations that followed, just an established part of biker chic.
Oh, and Giant_Spongess? Hot. Totally.
Could you elaborate? It’s been a while, so I don’t remember the racist stuff in Parcifal.
I do remember thinking that Albrich in the ring cycle seemed like he was supposed to be stereotypical jew.
That is a possibility. GusNSpot has proferred a similar theory.
I suspect that there was no single actual source. Biker clubs and gangs predated WWII, and there were “outlaw” gangs soon after the war. It is entirely possible that there were different reasons why different groups chose to display the same emblems. Note, however, that while Japanese battle flags were displayed as trophies, only German helmets and medals were worn as ornamentation. (An argument against this point would be the fact that the Japanese rarely awarded medals, so it was difficult to wear them, but one does not encounter Japanese helmets, belts, insignia, etc. worn in the late 1940s–early 1950s in the way that one often finds German paraphenalia.) Similarly, I cannot recall ever encountering clothing or medals from the Italian Army. And, as the biker culture really took off in the 1950s, it is notable that there was no similar practice of wearing captured North Korean or Chinese paraphenalia.
I am sure that many guys wore captured paraphenalia either as trophies or to honor fallen buddies, but I suspect that greater volume of such memorabilia worn by the generation of bikers a few years too young to have participated in WWII was chosen deliberately from German sources as presenting an image of toughness and a disregard for polite society.
Certainly, by the 1960s, aspiring “outlaw” bikers were using German memorabilia much more as a statement of anti-social tendencies than to “honor” fathers or older brothers who may have actually captured it.
That’s odd - it’s usually the guys who use that line. 
Oh my. Oh my.
I’m really missing that “true glory” right about now.
The German cross predates Hitler, and is an established German military symbol. The runes and swatiska were, however, symbols of the NAZI movement. It makes sense that the German military would keep the cross whilst discarding the runes and swastiska, as an act of repudiating the NAZI stuff.
The fact the cretins misuse or hijack the symbol is not relevant: the correct response is eduction of the mis-led.