A question regarding swastikas

[Tellos Athenaios]

AFAIK: a swastika is a typical symbol of the sun; and the sun has always been compared to everything good/pleasant/happy in this world. Simple as that. However there are more forms of swastika than the one the Nazi's used as their eblem; and they are all fairly common. (Swirls, rounded of; backwards etc. etc. triangonal, etc. etc.) The one symbol we immediately associate the word Swastika with (the Nazi emblem) appears to be illegal (barring some exceptions) in for example Germany.

AFAIK: the people who make the units decided therefore that they would use other equally common symbols as shield motifs:
-You can only use one per unit; and out of accuracy reasons you don't prefer one over another;
-It prevents you from having to explain this to ignorant people who never think past the word Nazism whenever they see a swastika.
-It keeps your mod legal in countries who've forbidden swastika's; among them Germany.

@The_Mark: ye gods! Your forecast of when the next release of EB will be; is bound to make many people out there very, very unhappy when they realise it.

[overweightninja]

They could always include it as a separate option like the "modesty patch" for the Gesatae. Personally with all the legal/ethical issues swarming around it if an alternative was available I would use it though and just leave the whole damn thing alone .

Oh and as an aside IIRC the Jews actually had a symbol for peace or something that was a Swastika in reverse (although I can't remember where I saw this and how true it is, if someone could confirm for me would be interested!)

Cheers

EDIT oh and btw as The_Mark said, when I first saw this here I thought oh god here we go not in EB too! (Quite into Day of Defeat as well as EB and the amount of hassle I've had with clan recruits grr) but yes a surprisingly good question actually

[Hooahguy]

nope. its called a Chamtzah, IIRC.... im not sure- but is definitly not a swastica in reverse. its a hand.
btw, i dont get The_Marks calculation of the release date....

[Sakkura]

btw, i dont get The_Marks calculation of the release date....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number

[The_Mark]

Spoilsport

[overweightninja]

nope. its called a Chamtzah, IIRC.... im not sure- but is definitly not a swastica in reverse. its a hand.
btw, i dont get The_Marks calculation of the release date....

You changed it's name!
Any information/links on it?

[Hooahguy]

b/c i asked my rabbi and he told me what it was called.

EDIT: cant find any good info on it. sorry- but i know it means s/t good.....

[konny]

-It keeps your mod legal in countries who've forbidden swastika's; among them Germany.

If that would be correct, EB would already be illegal in Germany because the swastika is shown on Spanish Eleutheroi settlements. But fortunate enough, things are a little more difficult: sawstikas and a lot of other symbols are forbidden when are/might be/considered to be relating to the 'Third Reich', Neo-Nazi organization or anything like that (the term is "verfassungsfeindlich"). In the case of EB there is evidently no such meaning connected with the swastikas shown - neverless you would have problems selling it in shops.

[blitzkrieg80]

yep- basically ONLY Germans nowadays have to play it safe and not use their own ancient symbols of the Bronze age and earlier (which as commented: represent the SUN, hardly anything inappropriate or evil) for the sake of ignorance all over the world concerning the real symbol, simply because of Nazi stupidity... Hitler did more to destroy German heritage than anything he pretended in helping, since now (post ww2) it's even un-hip among academics nonetheless common people to be interested or discuss anything German... with the inevitable references to uber-men abounding
I suppose we should figure out a way to cover the Sun up so no one gets offended when they walk outside.

[The Celtic Viking]

Personally, I don't think they should be included just because they can (I mean, without straying from their path of historical accuracy - obviously the possibility to include them would still be there). But I also don't think that they shouldn't be included just because of controversy - if they existed they existed, and it's not something that should be swiped under the rug. So if it was common enough, it should find a place in the mod IMO. If someone then is offended by it, well, quite frankly I don't care. What a horrible person I am.

[Bootsiuv]

Wasn't the swastika originally reversed? Didn't the Nazis use a 'mirror image' for their swastika? I thought I heard it somewhere.

[macsen rufus]

Wasn't the swastika originally reversed?

The ancient swatika was intended to represent rotation, and the Nazi version reversed that rotation - probably derived from Himmler's occult obsession.

[Foot]

The original image appears both clockwise and anti-clockwise.

Foot

[Bootsiuv]

I thought so....thanks for the clarification guys. Who needs the history channel when you have the EB forums instead!?!

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
The Swastika on the walls of the ruins of Ani, ancient Armenian-Georgian (Bagrat) city in NE Turkey:



The photos were taken by me in Aug. 2006; crazily resized down here.
.

[mcantu]

RTR uses a reversed swastika on the shield of a skirmisher unit...

[Andronikos]

I agree with Blitz. When nazi liked german culture, should we ban it? Should we ban niebelungenlied, norse sagas or artworks of romantism containing german mythology? No, it would be crazy to ban it. And only because someone ill-minded liked it you cannot like it too without being silly like nazi?
But I also agree that it is better to don't use swastika and not have to solve problems about it.

[Kull]

If that would be correct, EB would already be illegal in Germany because the swastika is shown on Spanish Eleutheroi settlements.

Actually no. That symbol is set of "whirling tears". The appearance of the swastika is an optical illusion, but even that was probably enough to demote this symbol to second place when the EB Team was voting for the new Lusotannan symbol (replacing "Iberia").

This is an interesting topic, btw, and it mirrors a discussion that recently occurred among the team. Most members feel it's not worth using the swastika, as the resulting controversy would overshadow the 99.9999% that is "good" in EB.

For the curious, the difference between this controversy and that involving naked units is that we KNOW certain warriors of this time period fought nude, and to ignore that would be to blatantly change history. Much of our weapon and armor art is derived from ornamentation displayed elsewhere in the various cultures, but usually not something where we have hard evidence that it appeared on a sword, shield, or breastplate. However. If archaeologists unearthed a well-attested shield from this time period and it CLEARLY had swastikas on it? Well, that would be enough to sway me into recommending it's use in game. Otherwise, it's just gratuitous.