What Are The Origins Of The Nazi Salute? – Mythbusting Berlin

“No one gave the salute a second thought for fifty years. It was simply what one did… The meaning of a gesture, however, is not fixed. It is contingent, contextual, and contestable.”
Richard J. Ellis, To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance

The classroom is silent, save for the rhythmic chant of young voices. Rows of children, scrubbed and neat, stand beside their wooden desks, their eyes fixed on the flag at the front of the room.

At a signal from the teacher, right arms shoot forward, angled slightly upward, palms down. The children’s faces are earnest, their voices clear as they recite the daily pledge, a promise of loyalty to their nation and its ideals.

A scene of disciplined patriotism, a ritual of unity and belonging. Anyone could be forgiven for picturing a schoolhouse in 1930s Bavaria, the air thick with the nascent fervor of the Third Reich.

The year is 1892, and this classroom is not in Germany, but in the United States of America.

Here the gesture that would one day become infamous as the ‘Nazi salute’ exists as a seemingly innocuous, patriotic, American counterpart.

Known as the ‘Bellamy Salute’ for fifty years it was how millions of American children greeted their flag.

“The case of the Bellamy Salute shows in a particularly poignant way how a gesture, once created, can take on a life of its own… It demonstrates that a symbol’s meaning is not inherent in its form, but is imposed upon it by those who use it and by those who observe it.”
Martin M. Winkler, author of ‘The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology’

The story of the Bellamy Salute begins with a magazine and a marketing campaign.

In the late 19th century, Daniel Sharp Ford, the owner of the popular Boston-based family magazine The Youth’s Companion, launched a nationwide drive to place an American flag in every schoolhouse. Ford, a canny marketer, saw this as a way to sell flags and subscriptions, but he also genuinely believed in the project’s civic value.