Why do people in different countries salute the way they do? I noticed that the American and Chinese military salute is a little bit different in terms of how the palm is turned, and the Germans during WWII did the heel-clicking salute. How are these things decided? What other ways of salutation are there?
bamf
A lot of the reason for the differences comes down to NIH (not invented here). The French don’t want their soldiers salutiing the same way that the English do or certainly not like the Germans. Since imitation is the greatest compliment no country wants their army to appear to be imitating another country’s army. 
[sup]That’s two reasons.[/sup]