After watching countless hours of WWII footage on the History Channel, one thing strikes me as strange. When people give the Nazi salute to Hitler passing by in his car, or at a general rally, or each other, there is a crisp motion of the right hand and arm. The fingers of the hand are usually pressed together, the thumb is tucked in next to the pointer finger, and the arm is outstretched straight and rigid at approximately a 45 degree angle.
However when Hitler gives his return salute, it is more of a limp-wristed version, where his right elbow is held close to his body, he flips his right forearm up, and puts his hand up with no strength or conviction. Just a flip of the wrist as a token salute.
He’s the ONLY one I’ve ever seen give this version of the salute. I guess two questions from this.
Why did Hitler do this?
Why didn’t the rest of Germany and/or the Nazi’s mimic their leader’s salute?
It was just the expected move that told the ones making the salute that the leader accepted their praises. Hitler was not against making the usual salute himself too.
As mentioned, it was a salute back to tell the lower ranking soldiers that he was accepting their salutes, other Nazi rulers also accepted the salutes in the same way.
It was called the Bellamy Salute, it was a fine salute until the Nazis ruined it, then Roosevelt changed the pledge salute to the hand to the heart that we have today.
You’ve gotten your cite, but addtionally G. Gordon Liddy talks about giving the Bellamy salute to the flag in the 30s when he was in grade school in his autobiography, Will.
I also heard somewhere that Hitler didn’t like it if you came up to him and said “Heil Hitler!” to him directly. You were supposed to say “Heil, mein Führer!” if you were addressing him directly.
In pictures where Hitler is shown with the full salute, it appears to be at the start or end of a speech. He salutes the crowd once then stops.
I’d guess there was a practical issue for Hitler. If you are walking or driving past a large number of saluting people, you can’t hold a high arm salute for a long time. So, you develop an abbreviated version, which allows you to acknowledge many salutes.
As a parallel, look at any picture of the British Queen travelling in an open car past crowds of people. She waves to the crowds as she moves along. However, she makes a very limited waving motion, using only the lower half of her arm, twisting her hand slightly. It can be repeated constantly over a period of time, without straining the arm, but everyone has a sense of being waved at.
On a more serious note, the late historian Gordon A. Craig was 1935 a student in Munich and witnessed the following eerie scene (from his book “The Germans”, preamble):