Musk raised his right arm in the air. Was it a Hitler salute?

Elon Musk bounced across the stage, clenched his fists, let out a primal scream and shouted to a room full of Trump supporters: “This is what victory feels like!” A little later he thanked those present for their efforts, hit the left side of his chest with his right hand and then raised his hand diagonally. He repeated the motion, then put his hand on his chest and said: “My heart goes out to you.”

What followed: commotion. Did the boss of Tesla, SpaceX and

Only he knows Musk’s intention, but the fact is that the gesture he made was very similar to the salute that was mandatory in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Like everything in the Third Reich, this act was subject to strict rules. The right arm should be raised at an angle of between 105 and 165 degrees – preferably 135 degrees. The arm had to be raised straight up, with the fingers tightly next to each other and the palm facing down. Those who did not have a right arm – because it had been amputated as a result of a war wound, for example – were allowed to use their left arm. Hitler himself regularly gave a different salute, with the right arm in a nod backwards, with the palm up.

In his book Der deutsche Gruß. History of an unwholesome gesture (2005), sociologist Tilman Allert describes that the Nazis borrowed their salute from the Italian fascists, who in turn thought they were harking back to Roman history with the arm gesture. That was a gross mistake, which probably had its origins in the painting The Oath of the Horatii by the French painter Jacques-Louis David from 1784.

David showed here a heroic scene from the (mythological) past of the Roman republic. Three brothers of the Horace family raise their right arms and swear to defend Rome to the death in the war against the city of Alba Longa (around 660 BC). The fact that this salute subsequently became the official ‘Roman salute’ is stated in no ancient source confirmed, written or visual.

It was not only the Italian fascists who were charmed by this powerful gesture in the early twentieth century. In The Roman Salute (2009), art historian Martin M. Winkler describes its reception in the United States. The American pastor Francis J. Bellamy came up with a text for the 1892 Pledge of Allegiance came up – the saying with which Americans swear allegiance to their country and flag. James B. Uphamm, his colleague at the Christian children’s magazine The Youth’s Companionread the edifying words and thought that only one gesture was appropriate: an outstretched right arm.

And so Americans stood by, until this greeting became increasingly controversial for understandable reasons in the 1930s. In 1942, Congress therefore established that the Pledge of Allegiance it could only be spoken with the hand on the heart.

The greeting did not disappear. It is banned in Germany, Austria and Italy, but is still used elsewhere in the world – including the Middle East – as the ‘Roman greeting’.

Of course, the outstretched right arm is also very popular with neo-Nazis.

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