Swastikas and Model Airplanes and Confederate Flags

Back in the 1950s or 1960s when you bought a model kit of a Nazi warplane, say a Junkers Ju 87 Stuka or the Heinkel He 111 bomber, you got a set of decals that included all of the major markings except for the swastika, which was more often than not missing. Several of the major kit makers refused to include the swastika, usually including another German cross instead. In the case of Lindberg, a popular maker of the time, authenticity wasn't the greatest in the illustrations on the kit boxes, the paint schemes of the aircraft always being just the same green of the plastic in which the kits were molded. There was one curious variation to Lindberg's swastika aversion: The illustration of the Stuka in their catalog actually bore a swastika, whereas it was missing from the kit's decal sheet and nearly identical box art. Companies such as Lindberg, Hawk and perhaps other prominent makers of my boyhood were apparently sensitive to the controversial nature of the swastika less than two decades after the end of the war. On the other hand, they may have been trying to avoid legal hassles. German law forbade displays of swastikas. The law did provide for exceptions for artistic and historic purposes, but the model makers might have felt that it was better to be safe than sorry. But I was amazed to learn that today, with the war over fifty years behind us, some model makers are still omitting the swastikas from their kits. I can't say that as a boy at the time I was particularly sensitive to the issues surrounding the swastika, and at first I didn't even notice that the markings on these kits was incorrect. But I did know all about Germans and Nazis, and was able to distinguish the concepts. At that time I was living in North St. Louis, and my neighborhood had up until very recently been the home of a large German-American community. A couple of miles away was a part of town called Baden. There was even one four family flat on Shreve Avenue almost directly across from St. Engleberts church that had brickwork in the shape of a swastika. The placement of this symbol almost certainly predated the rise of Hitler to chancellor, but perhaps not the appearance of the Nazi party. There was a contingent of Nazi sympathizers well entrenched in the German bunds of St. Louis in the period before the war. One St. Louisian, Martin James Monti, a disciple of fascist-loving Father Coughlin of Detroit, was even among the few Americans who defected to Germany during the war, flying an F-5 (recon version of the P-38) to a German airbase in Milan, and then joining the SS to make pro-Nazi radio broadcasts. But St. Louis also had a large community of liberal and socialist Germans descended from the immigrants who fled their homeland after the failed revolution of 1848. These were some of the first Americans to recognize the evil of Nazism, and were instrumental in curtailing Nazi influence in America. As a boy in the 1960s I was well aware of the basic issue of Nazism, and did not confuse it with German nationality. The Nazis did such a good job of putting the bad rap on swastikas that nowadays any swastika is met with reproach, even if it had nothing to do with the Nazis. At about the same time Hitler and his henchmen were uglying up world history, the Finns were also using swastikas as insignia on their aircraft. The Finnish Air Force actually used it first, painting it on the sides and wing of their first airplane in 1918. They chose that symbol in tribute to a Swede who donated the plane and for whom the swastika was a personal emblem and good luck charm. The Finnish swastika was displayed as a blue cross against a round white background, and in contrast to the Nazi swastika was normally presented with the arms horizontal and vertical. But these distinctions haven't prevented model kit manufacturers from also omitting Finnish swastikas from their kits. Sheesh! While I can certainly sympathize with the contempt and even disgust many people feel toward the swastika, history cannot be buried and it shouldn't be hidden. The fact is that the swastika is just a symbol, and in and of itself it never hurt anyone. But the bomber that the swastika adorned, did, in fact, kill quite a few people. One should, perhaps, feel at least equal horror in the fact that people build these machines to kill other people. If one is concerned over children building models which might be seen as glorifying the Third Reich, might there be equal grounds for concern that children play with the concept of war? When the child plays with the Heinkel bomber, is he or she reenacting the killing of civilians in Guernica, Prague or London? Does the absence of the swastika really make the entire scenario any less disturbing? Construction of models presents youngsters with an opportunity to learn about the world. That would include an unpleasant episode called World War II. Unfortunately the cult that used the swastika as its symbol played a major role in that disaster. If we are going to learn anything from it, it's better that it be dealt with openly. There isn't anything fearful or mystical about the swastika. Like the Confederate flag, it just represented a really, really bad idea. Copyright 2003 by Patrick Inniss. All rights reserved.