The Nazi salute , also known as the Hitler salute , [ a ] or the Sieg Heil salute , is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. The salute is performed by extending the right arm from the shoulder into the air with a straightened hand. Usually, the person offering the salute would say " Heil Hitler! The salute was mandatory for civilians [ 5 ] but mostly optional for military personnel , who retained a traditional military salute until the failed assassination attempt on Hitler [ 6 ] on 20 July Use of this salute is illegal in modern-day Germany Strafgesetzbuch section 86a , Austria , and Slovakia.
If one saw an acquaintance at a distance, it was enough to simply raise the right hand. Hitler gave the salute in two ways. When reviewing his troops or crowds, he generally used the traditional stiff-armed salute. It was also adopted by those with rank who would themselves be saluted. The spoken greeting "Heil" became popular in the pan-German movement around Schorske as "The strongest and most thoroughly consistent anti-Semite that Austria produced" before the coming of Hitler.
The extended arm saluting gesture was alleged to be based on an ancient Roman custom, but no known Roman work of art depicts it, nor does any extant Roman text describe it. In , Francis Bellamy introduced the American Pledge of Allegiance , which was to be accompanied by a visually similar saluting gesture, referred to as the Bellamy salute.
By autumn , or perhaps as early as , some members of the Nazi Party were using the rigid, outstretched right arm salute to greet Hitler, who responded by raising his own right hand crooked back at the elbow, palm opened upwards, in a gesture of acceptance.
Some party members questioned the legitimacy of the so-called Roman salute, employed by Fascist Italy, as un- Germanic. Its opponents suspect the greeting of being un-Germanic. They accuse it of merely aping the [Italian] Fascists", [ 38 ] but goes on to ask, "and even if the decree from two years ago [Hess' order that all party members use it] is seen as an adaption of the Fascist gesture, is that really so terrible"? On the night of 3 January , Hitler said of the origins of the salute: [ 40 ].
