Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

Two sig runes,

the symbol for the Schutzstaffel, the SS.

(dramatic music)

It was rugged. It was aggressive.

They stand for terror and depression,

for the most serious crimes against humanity.

What is so fascinating about that jagged S?

(dramatic music)

They had black pennants

with a sig rune on them, I thought that was great.

The runes supposedly have their origins

among the Teutons, the people of the North,

considered by the Nazis to be a superior race.

The SS rune stands for Germanic culture,

which the Nazis wanted to convey as part of their myth.

But the symbol of the SS has,

of all things, a Semitic origin.

And those sig runes are still used today,

for instance in popular music,

in order to cause a sensation, and with right wing radicals.

They sometimes use it in a modified form

to avoid prosecution, but also present it unaltered.

Today they're used to symbolize strength.

It says we're prepared to use violence.

So how should Germany

deal with the old runes of the SS?

Is a ban the correct approach?

You can ban symbols, but the conviction

itself has to come about through democratic means.

The signs of evil,

the work of an impoverished graphic designer.

We go on the trail of the history of a dangerous symbol.

(dramatic music)

East Westphalia, the heartland of ancient Gamalia.

It's a focus for delusions of race and native soil.

The Externsteine, 40 meters high,

became a Germanic sacred site.

And Hermann, the Cherusk, became a symbol

of the superiority of the German race.

The Wewelsburg was of special interest to the Nazis.

The Renaissance structure, once a Bishop's palace,

simply needed the right history.

And SS historians obliged.

The Wewelsburg was declared

to supposedly have ancient Germanic heritage.

Immediately after visiting for the first time,

SS Commander Heinrich Himmler

made it the headquarters of his black order.

The marshal new nobility, as Himmler called the SS,

was to have a kind of Camelot here.

(speaking in foreign language)

The SS considered itself

to be the avant-garde, and assumed that

the majority of Germans were not mature enough.

That applied to their horrible racist policies,

their murderous policies,

as well as to their bizarre cultic ideas.

Himmler's castle was only the beginning.

The village of Wewelsburg was to be moved,

and the castle complex was to provide space for

an SS Academy, an elite school for the master race.

Construction was set to start after the final victory.

Himmler gradually expanded the power and size of the SS.

Out of Adolph Hitler's household and security guards,

Himmler created a state within a state.

The SS took over control of the police,

and the concentration camps.

Later, it unleashed the Holocaust.

Himmler, who was shy

and very introverted was, if you will,

the ideal hand of a secret police

and operators of repression that operated covertly.

The genocide began on the Eastern Front.

a Memorial on the Northern outskirts of Kiev

commemorates one of the worst SS crimes of 1941.

In the ravine at Babi Yar,

33,000 Jews were shot dead over two days.

A survivor remembers.

They had to lie face down on the bodies

of the murdered, and wait for the shots from above.

Then came the next group.

Jews died for 36 hours.

(contemplative music)

The runes were the symbol

uniting the perpetrators.

They consider themselves guardians of blood purity.

Ultimately, the SS would have 800,000 members.

(speaking in foreign language)

They were mobilized by propaganda

that states we are superior to the others.

But for that they need someone

who is unequivocally beneath them.

And the antisemitic insanity, the world conspiracy theories,

led to an explosion of violent excess.

And within the framework of this dynamic,

symbols like this help.

Graphic artist, Walter Heck from the Rhineland

develop the double rune in 1929.

Later he wrote...

The initial designs were unsuccessful,

because I didn't like the soft lines of the customary S,

which also did not at all correspond

to the character of the Schutzstaffel.

I had the idea of representing the two S's

in the form of two lightning bolts.

And so unconsciously, came upon the runes.

It was the birth of the SS symbol.

Heck himself was an SS First Lieutenant,

and kept his head above water with casual labor.

He got this assignment through Yusef Guray,

the Director of Southern Rheinland.

Considering the later significance of the SS runes,

his payment was modest, just two and a half reichsmarks.

(dramatic music)

Walter Heck completely relinquished

the rights to his design.

Five years later,

once Himmler had eliminated all of his rivals,

the jagged lightning bolts came to signify

the terror spread by the self-proclaimed Arian elite.

Victor Klemperer, a journalist from a Jewish family,

closely observed the signs of that time.

He wrote...

Long before the Nazi SS existed,

you could see the symbols in red paint

on transformer sheds with a warning below.

Danger, high voltage.

Here the jagged S was apparently

a stylized image of a lightning bolt.

Lightning, which in its energy storage and speed

is such a beloved symbol of Nazism.

So the SS characters could also be

a pictorial expression of lightning.

(dramatic music)

(speaking in foreign language)

The SS rune has aggression in it.

In the it's designed, it stands for

the lightening bolts that it transmits,

but also for the Germanic, which the national socialists

wanted to convey in the form of myth.

Runes were the written characters

of the Germanic peoples.

Starting around 200 AD, they were carved into wood or stone.

They were used to inscribe objects, such as coins,

gifts, burial objects, and memorials.

(contemplative music)

Many Germanic tribes had different runes.

They stood for sounds and meanings, but also for numbers,

and supposedly also contained magical energy.

From the point of view of the cultivated Romans,

the Teutons seemed backwards.

(contemplative music)

The Teutons were barbarians,

and the ones who lacked a culture.

They were the primitives

who just scratched out a few things in runes.

The Romans had long had

a complex written language in which,

like the Persians and Greeks,

they wrote documents and literature.

They looked down on the barbarians in the North,

whom they considered to be simple savages.

Today, only a few experts are truly familiar

with the runic characters of the Germanic tribes.

Professor Klaus Duwel from Goettingen provides

an example of how the comparatively

primitive writing can be interpreted.

(contemplative music)

(speaking in foreign language)

This stone says,

King Sven had this stone set for Scarfee, his lead man.

It reads up here, then down, up again, then down again.

And he traveled far to the West,

and died here near High Tabu.

Historically, all Germanic languages

come from the Proto-Germanic.

That's supposedly the origin of the word

runo or rune, which means secret.

(speaking in foreign language)

But researchers are still

unsure about the origin of runes.

Of the 6,500 runic inscriptions that have been found so far,

several are based on an alphabet with 24 letters.

They are related to other European writing.

(contemplative music),

(speaking in foreign language)

Basically, there are four major theories

that ascribed the runic writing system

to one of the Southern European alphabets.

By the Greek, Latin, Etruscan, or,

and that has been investigated again in the modern era,

directly to Phoenician.

(contemplative music)

Whatever route runic writing took

until it arrived among the peoples in the North,

whether it came to the Teutons from the Etruscans,

ancient Rome, or ancient Greece,

it's origin is most likely Phoenecian.

The cradle of all European written language,

including Germanic runic scripts, lies in the Middle East

in what is today Syria, Lebanon, and Israel,

a small strip along the East coast of the Mediterranean sea.

(dramatic music)

The Phoenicians were a seafaring people

who influenced the world of the Mediterranean for centuries.

They belonged to the family of Semitic peoples,

and considered themselves descendants of Abraham.

(dramatic music)

Did Heinrich Himmler,

and his Germanic racists know all of that?

Probably not, as the researchers of the 1930s

still knew very little about the history of languages.

So it is a cruel irony of fate that perpetrators

of the Holocaust carried out that murderous campaigns

while wearing insignia with Semitic roots.

(dramatic music)

But for scholars today,

runes remain a worthwhile subject of research.

Runes are exceptional,

in that they have both a name and a meaning.

This dual aspect of the runes

as letters and as symbols is unique.

The M rune stands for the letter M,

but also for the word for person.

The S rune stands for the letter S,

but also for the word for sun.

The Teutons themselves could not explain

where their graphic characters came from.

They attributed magical powers to the characters,

and told stories about their energy and power.

A few literate people feared the characters power,

and change their names.

Klaus Duwel demonstrates using

the example of a clothing clasp.

(speaking in foreign language)

The name of the person

who made this inscription is hidden here.

So that it's magic would not work on him,

we suspect that he altered his name.

He should be called Boriso, but what's written is Buyiso.

(dramatic music)

The runes have yet

to reveal all of their secrets.

Runology is characterized

by a number of open questions.

So basically there's a lot we don't yet know.

And that leads to lay people

and enthusiastic getting involved.

That includes fantasists,

like the so-called folkish movement.

Aggressively antisemitic, this populous movement

laid the groundwork in the late 19th century

for that which was to come later.

Guido von List was one of them.

He believed in supernatural messages.

(speaking in foreign language)

During an illness,

when he nearly went blind, Guido von List

had an inspiration, an intuition, perhaps also a vision.

And he said that showed him this runic alphabet.

(speaking in foreign language)

Guido von List coined the term siegrune.

It's a neologism by a charlatan.

You can't completely deny

that we're dealing with runic forms.

But he combined these runic forms, and above all,

changed them and gave them fake names by assigning the runes

designations that sounded like the real ones,

but were slightly changed.

With Guido von List,

terms that the Nazis end up adopting

are mixed with crude ideas about Germanic culture.

It's a mixture that was then turned against

the supposed, root of all evil, against Jews.

(speaking in foreign language)

The folkish thinkers 19th century

undertook a racist, folkish reinterpretation

of the entire runic system.

The Nazis incorporated it, because it fitted in

very well with their so-called ideology.

To that end, scholars at

the University of Goettingen were brought into line.

Starting in 1938,

there was a dedicated Institute of Runology.

The faculty were meant to provide proof

for the belief at the core of the Nazi madness,

the superiority of the Germanic race.

They asserted that it wasn't

the Greeks, Romans, or Phoenicians

who invented written language, but the Teutons.

Back in 1935, Himmler had created

an ancestral heritage research team,

to which he appointed dubious experts

more motivated by ideology than serious scholarship.

Many of them were esotericists and occultists.

They dug, grave robbed, and reinterpreted.

To them simple ornamentation

was enough to prove an ideology.

And if they couldn't find the proof they wanted,

sometimes they helped it along.

In 1938, Himmler sent his men to the roof of the world.

They were meant to find traces of the Aryans in Tibet.

Himmler imagined them as descendants of a civilization

that survived the downfall of Atlantis in the Himalayas.

The expedition found that the Tibetan nobility

especially showed Aryan elements, and were certainly suited

to be a partner people to the Germans.

(speaking in foreign language)

Of course, Himmler lived in part

in a fantasy world that was dominated

by those sorts of Germanic myths, and occult topics.

But one mustn't overlook the fact that

even with all these private hobbies,

he by no means neglected the power political realities

he had to deal with as SS Vice Fuhrer.

The SS Vice Fuhrer loved to surround himself

with willing henchman, those included Karl Maria Wiligut,

an a cultist from Austria with supposed psychic abilities.

Himmler believed that in Wiligut

he had found a descendant of an ancient clan,

in which ancient knowledge had been

handed down through the generations.

So when he dealt with him, and asked him questions

he believed that he was thus able to communicate

with the Germanic primeval world.

The SS Brigadier General became

Himmler's advisor for symbols and ceremonies.

Wiligut was also able to work as a designer.

The notorious skull ring was his creation.

He also had the rendering removed from

the outer walls of the Wewelsburg,

in order to make it look more Germanic.

But in 1939, Karl Maria Wiligut had to leave the SS.

He had failed to reveal the fact that he was

an escaped patient from an insane asylum.

Nonetheless, Himmler continued to maintain

a discreet contact with him.

The Nazis didn't care so much

about demonstrating a development.

Rather they wanted to prove above all,

that history was based on the permanence of races.

Investigating the past was meant to prove

that there is a superior race in human history.

The SS was meant to wage war,

not only for the state, but for the Aryan race.

That included especially fanatical frontline combat units,

as well as task forces for killing Jews,

and the units assigned to the death camps.

(dramatic music)

What they all had in common was the SS runes.

They were a form of identification.

In his messages to the front,

the leadership of the SS Senior District Southwest

expressed his enthusiasm for the symbols.

It's not for nothing that

the sig runes on the black lapels

of the Waffen SS seems so mysterious,

and yet are so simple to interpret.

Victory. Again and again, victory.

Soon, the double lightening bolts

are given their own key on typewriters.

The trademark of the supposed Nazi elite

is to be typed in a Germanic style,

even in official documents.

The fact that the symbol of the SS,

the double sig rune was made a character

on typewriters is unprecedented.

The new key was also meant

to help make typing more efficient.

Since the occupation of areas in the East,

the bureaucracy had swelled.

The runes of the SS became seen more commonly in Germany.

(speaking in foreign language)

People began to notice that apparently

those wearing this label were allowed to do things

that a government is normally not allowed to do.

And this label was in great demand.

It represented power and advantages.

There was also an opposite label,

and that was the yellow Jewish badge.

Those who had to wear that were nothing.

They had no power.

They were vermin to be eliminated.

Victor Klemperer observed

the coarsening of German society.

He wrote...

Today I asked myself again,

which was the worst day for the Jews?

September 19th, 1941.

From that day on, they had to wear the yellow badge.

Now that it's been introduced,

it doesn't matter anymore if Jewish homes are far apart,

or form their own neighborhood, because every Jew

with a yellow star carries the ghetto with them,

like a snail with its shell.

Victor Klemperer, son of a rabbi

survived the Nazi regime thanks to the help of his wife,

considered Aryan in Nazi parlance.

(dramatic music)

Gefreiter Joseph Growe put in a good word for the creator

of the SS symbol, graphic artist Walter Heck.

Growe asked Himmler for some money

for the impoverished designer, arguing that

such a deserving comrade should not come away empty handed.

Growe wrote...

Despite his plight,

Heck did not lay claim to any copyright,

and agreed to a very small payment.

He got two and a half reichsmarks.

It should be taken under consideration whether

SS-Oberfuhrer, Walter Heck

could not be accorded recognition.

(contemplative music)

SS Leader, Himmler

wanted to show his gratitude.

Four months later, he wrote to Walter Heck.

Once the war is over,

I intend to give you a single family house,

with a garden, as a visible sign of my appreciation.

However, I expect you to have already

started a family by then, with at least two children.

Shortly before that, Himmler had ordered

his highest officers to Wewelsburg.

He wants to prepare them for what was being called

a struggle of annihilation.

(speaking in foreign language)

A few days before the start

of the Russia offensive, there was a meeting

at Wewelsburg of high ranking SS leaders,

who where be put in the mood, so to speak,

for the imminent historic war against the Soviet Union.

And that required a certain intimate atmosphere.

Later, one of the SS officers would say

that Himmler spoke of the decimation

of the Slavic race by 30 million.

For his speech, Himmler used a hall called the

(speaking in foreign language)

Here, around the so-called black sun,

The race fanatics forged their plans

for the Third Reich, as Himmler imagined it.

(contemplative music)

This hall, designed by the SS during

the remodeling of the Wewelsburg,

today has special significance for neo-Nazis.

In its black sun, they see 12 sig runes,

or three swastikas laid on top of each other.

Graphic designer, Andreas Koop

studied the symbol extensively.

Some see it as a black sun, others simply as a sun wheel.

The strength of this symbol

is that it leaves a lot of room

for interpretations like that.

Everyone can see in it what he wants to see.

But as with the SS rune itself,

the design of the symbol is one thing.

But the loading of it with meaning is something else again.

Some of Himmler's esoterics

believe the black sun produced the light

from which the Proto-Aryans arose.

Others see a connection with the Teutonic order,

with the Nordic era saga, or even with King Arthur.

Right below the ornament is a hall with a decorated dome.

It feels like a crypt.

To make it,

several floors in the Wewelsburg's north tower were removed.

That kind of work was done by forced laborers

from the nearby Niederhagen concentration camp.

It's still not clear

what the domed hall was meant to be used for.

These occult symbols and rituals

had great meaning for the SS,

when you consider the cohesion of the organization,

and its differentiation from the rest of the world.

Himmler's SS provided thousands

of perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Many of them were motivated to kill

by a deep racist delusion.

Hitler was aware of how valuable

his loyal Heinrich, as he called him, was.

But he was suspicious of his fondness for the supernatural.

There are very clear statements

from Hitler made in trusted company,

where he considered this, as he called it, occult nonsense

as advocated by Himmler to be out of the question,

and thought it was a very unfortunate development.

In his culture speech at the party rally,

he said decidedly that the Nazi party

was not a cult movement, but a political movement.

At the Nuremberg rally in 1938,

Hitler declared that the insinuation into the movement

of mystically inclined occult explorers of the beyond,

must not be tolerated, saying that national socialism

was a cool doctrine of reality.

Hitler and the SS began wrestling

over interpretational sovereignty.

What do the signs of evil ready stand for?

Back in May, 1933, the Nazi regime

passed a law protecting national symbols.

(contemplative music)

(speaking in foreign language)

The Nazis had a greater awareness

that symbols were hugely important

for the cohesion of the organization.

That must not be allowed to be sentimentalizes.

That's why there was that early law

against the misuse of Nazi symbols.

There was a real industry that produced

the most outlandish things, which of course tended

to contribute to making those symbols look ridiculous.

Christmas tree ornaments with Hitler's face,

Nazi party boxes, and swastika clothing were banned.

The party alone was allowed to decide

where and when its symbols would be used.

The dictator learned from his opponents.

In "Mein Kampf" he wrote...

After the war, I experienced

a mass Marxist rally in Berlin,

in front of the Royal palace and guns.

A sea of red flags, red armbands, and red flowers

gave this rally, which was attended by about 120,000 people.

A tremendous appearance, purely superficially.

I myself could sense and understand how easily

an ordinary man could succumb to the suggestive allure

of such a terrifically potent spectacle.

Nazism was supposed to exude

a similarly potent allure.

Nazi symbols decorated city centers on holidays.

The party marketed itself with flags and bunting.

Eva Sternheim was a member of the league of German girls,

and was thrilled by all the symbols.

(speaking in foreign language)

I liked the sig runes.

And I envied The Young Folk, the parallel organization

to the Young Girls League, for boys ages 10 to 14.

They had black pennants with a sig rune on them.

And I thought that was great.

So I stole a sig rune pennant,

and appointed my Young Girls group with it.

But that didn't go down so well with one of my rivals.

And I got in trouble.

The Nazi signs and symbols

seemed made for each other, homogeneous,

as if they'd been created by an agency.

(dramatic music)

(speaking in foreign language)

The color code the Nazis used

fed very well into their whole ideology.

You have the brown, which stands for

the militaristic aspect for the SA, and the SS.

Then you have black, of course,

which was later used for the SS,

and which exuded an incredible aggressiveness and brutality,

especially in connection with the image of the skull.

And you have the signal color of red,

used along with a swastika,

which has a great pithiness and recognizability.

(dramatic music)

It's an ensemble of terror.

Nazi propaganda was aggressive.

It was accusatory, and direct.

(dramatic music)

(speaking in foreign language)

The blatant, the loud,

the openly propagandistic elements

certainly helped this regime

be very effective and efficient back then.

Not least because before this, no one else in politics

had used these mass media in such an intense way.

So the effect on the population was,

of course, especially intense.

But appearances are deceiving.

The design of the Nazis, their signs and symbols

were not part of a unified strategy.

What unified them was simply their style.

Even font choices were ideologically determined.

Gothic or fraktur were all the rage.

They were considered Teutonic, German fonts.

(speaking in foreign language)

Traditionally in those folkish circles,

there was the notion that the German or Aryan person

also had to distinguish himself through a special font.

So there was a real cult surrounding

these fraktur typefaces, German typefaces.

Official documents were printed in fraktur.

And film posters use the old fashioned fonts.

In 1937, Jewish owned publishers

were forbidden from using Gothic typefaces.

Designer Andreas Koop has studied

the effect of fraktur type faces.

(speaking in foreign language)

Here, we have an original poster

for a speech by Hitler in 1923, typeset in a fraktur font,

a broken script, and next to it, redesigned.

I think you can clearly see here

what a great role the typeface plays.

A font could almost have a textual influence.

I believe the message is clearly rich.

It simply has something focused, populist, not elitist.

And if you compare it to this reconstruction of the poster,

it's almost like a technical lecture.

It has a completely different feel,

which does not correspond to that of Hitler.

But from 1941, Hitler,

along with Martin Bormann, suddenly espoused Roman type.

It was an about face, away from the allegedly old Germanic.

Bormann issued a circular in which he polemically stated

that for him, fraktur was only made up of schwabacher

Jewish letters, presumably a reference to the fact

that Jewish publishers had earlier dealt in books

printed with the schwabacher fraktur typeface.

They came from the fraktur typeface,

which of course had a strongly Germanic heritage,

and which was meant to demonstrate how important it was

to the Nazis to carry on this Germanness and its tradition.

Later they switched to a more modern antiqua font,

which was meant to symbolize, we are also

a modern, progressive, and above all global movement.

That was the point, expressing the idea

to the people out there that the Nazis represented

a movement that would eventually conquer the world,

which luckily didn't happened.

Hitler wanted to use

the new typeface as an ideological message.

In 100 years, our language will be

the European language, he asserted in a speech.

And the prerequisite for that was Roman type.

It's understandable

that Hitler preferred antigua.

This font, in capital letters,

ideally centered along the central axis,

is the typographical expression of power.

Fraktur typefaces had to disappear

from party pamphlets, newspapers, and announcements

to be replaced by Roman type,

the script of the ancient Romans.

(speaking in foreign language)

The entire presence of the Nazis was,

of course, completely aimed

at preventing any kind of individuality.

Essentially, you can say that democracy stands

for colorfulness, and dictatorships stand for monotony.

That has a lot to do with the concept of humanity behind it,

meaning that they wanted to bring everyone into line,

in the truest sense of the word.

With the memory of defeat still fresh,

the Nazi regime adheres to its signs of evil.

Under their impact, resistance is opposed with deadly rigor.

Deserters are hanged.

Prisoners are executed.

Obedience until the bitter end.

Many believed to the last in a final victory,

under the banner of the SS runes.

(speaking in foreign language)

In our memory, they stand for Auschwitz,

for a time when there was no room for humanity,

or at least in Germany.

They stand for World War II, and for a totalitarian regime

that was unique in its ideological power of destruction.

And they stand for an entire country,

and many people in that country who looked away.

(dramatic music)

After the surrender,

hundreds of thousands of people were arrested by the allies.

And suddenly the SS runes were revealing.

The symbol of evil identified perpetrators.

(dramatic music)

Sometimes a tattoo indicating a blood group

was the key evidence.

Often simply belonging to Himmler's SS

was enough for the victors as proof of guilt.

Some prisoners were executed immediately.

(guns firing)

Others were put on trial.

For Eva Sternheim,

the end of the war meant the end of her world.

(speaking in foreign language)

That scene, and the Vice Chancellor.

Above was a big imperial eagle holding a laurel wreath

in its talons, with a swastika on it.

And that was blown up.

That still really affects me, because that was the downfall.

It was all over, the end.

Later, she reckoned

with her own history, and with Germany's.

The German title of her book means,

was I the only one who cheered?

(dramatic music)

In October of 1945, the allies passed a law forbidding

the Nazi party, and all its organizations, including the SS.

The newly founded Federal Republic of Germany

went one step further, penalizing the use of Nazi symbols.

(speaking in foreign language)

After that massive phase of propaganda,

which really did permeate the entire German population,

it was important to ban those symbols from public life,

in order to expedite de-nazification,

just as it was right to ban certain literature,

certain statements, in order to rebuild democracy.

But the fatal attraction has not gone away.

The old symbols appear again and again,

whether out of ignorance,

an assertion of convictions, or as a provocation.

The rock band, Kiss, gained notoriety worldwide

by using the double lightning bolts, especially

when the runes appeared at their concerts in Germany.

(rock and roll music)

Of course, it leads to real conflicts

when a foreign band uses SS runes in its name.

And this band sells albums here in Germany,

or goes on tour here, and then comes into conflict

with the peculiarities of German law.

When lawyers and fans protested, the band's

German record company offered to change Kiss's logo.

Shortly thereafter the label announced in a statement...

We would never dream of suspecting the band

of glorifying Marxism because of their logo.

We're pleased that the band's management

has agreed to the change.

So Kiss, with a double S runes,

becomes Kiss without them, but only for a short time.

The band singer's insists it's not meant to be

a Nazi symbol, since he himself is Jewish.

(upbeat music)

An incident from 2015 shows how sensitive

many people are to these signs of evil.

At Berlin's eternally unfinished new airport,

already a public laughing stock,

suddenly SS runes appeared on a wall.

(upbeat music)

They can especially be seen online,

but rarely on the wall itself.

Closer investigation reveals that fixtures

for hanging advertising signs were casting

compromising shadows under certain lighting conditions.

(upbeat music)

Once you find you have to seriously consider

whether there is someone deliberately behind the fact

that whenever it's sunny, the main entrance

of the airport is covered in these runes,

due to the way the shadows fall, then you need

to take action simply to avoid misunderstanding.

right wing extremists like to cause

provocation using slightly altered symbols.

They know exactly what is allowed, and what is not.

Extremism and racism,

signaled through slight variations of the old symbols.

The inhuman messages of Heinrich Himmler and his henchmen

are still behind these tattoos of the posters.

And the black sun continues to be used

(speaking in foreign language)

In this country,

you were allowed to have, and to express extremist views.

As painful as that might be, it's a part of our liberty.

The line is drawn, either where other persons

are disparaged, or where specifically

outlawed organizations are promoted or advertised.

And that does not apply to the black sun.

The black sun falls

through the cracks of German criminal law.

It was not the symbol of a Nazi organization,

so it has not been banned.

12 runes, which the SS used for their purposes.

Back then, as today, signaling right wing views,

and a threat to all who believed differently.

We Germans are a special case.

Germany is more than just the Federal Republic of Germany.

And it isn't, we who are the wrong way drivers,

but everyone else is a wrong way driver.

And I'm showing these wrong way drivers.

Watch out, bear in mind what this symbol once meant.

And I who now where it, think it is right.

I think it is wrong that Hitler was unable

to complete the job, and now I'm here to do it.

(speaking in foreign language)

So how should a nation of law

deal with this sort of provocation?

Can it combat dangerous views with the code of law?

Or does it require above all, courage,

conviction, and fortitude in order

to break the spell of the signs of evil?

How watchful must democracy be?

(speaking in foreign language)

We are witnessing how people have

no inhibitions to say things about other people that

at best are insulting, and at worst are formulated

with the energy of spiritual arson and violence.

And we are seeing how

the spiritual arson becomes real arson.

According to the law,

only what is expressed publicly can be penalized.

It was only when Neo-Nazi and NPD politician,

Marcel Zech was photographed shirtless

at a swimming pool that he became culpable.

His back is tattooed with a slogan

from the Birkenau Concentration Camp,

"Everyone gets what he deserves."

(speaking in foreign language)

You may indeed have yourself

tattooed with Nazi symbols.

But you are not allowed to display them publicly.

Marcel Zech, who was seen at a swimming pool with

a concentration camp tattoo was convicted of hate speech.

Paragraph 130 of the criminal code also condemns

denying, condoning, or making light of

the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis.

(speaking in foreign language)

Marcel Zech also lost his case on appeal.

In November, 2016, he was sentenced

to eight months in prison without parole.

(contemplative music)

Many right wing extremists want a society without tolerance,

and without solidarity for the marginalized, like back then.

They identify themselves through the clothes they wear.

A favorite label of many radicals is Thor Steinar.

(contemplative music)

What set the Thor Steinar logo apart

was that it combined two runes that were

widely known and familiar in Nazi circles.

The company symbol consists of the S rune,

and the tiwaz rune, the Germanic symbol for battle.

The label has been taken to court in Germany.

(speaking in foreign language)

Initially the court focused on

the individual components, the sig rune and the tiwaz rune.

And they said both are unconstitutional symbols.

The label lost its first case,

and then won on appeal.

(speaking in foreign language)

When you take different symbols,

each of which is actionable on its own, and create

a new symbol that has it's own optical content,

and has never been used by a banned organization,

then it truly does not have the elements of an offense.

Until the court lifted its ban,

the company briefly used a new logo.

In the meantime, it has returned to the previous two runes.

These fashion labels are important

for the right wing camp to project their views outwardly,

and make themselves identifiable,

while at the same time strengthening the community inwardly.

A small group from the state

of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern uses humor

to take aim at the right wing label.

Its owners have created the label Storch Heiner,

Stork Heiner, an entire stork themed collection

with similar designs to those of Thor Steinar.

Sales of Storch Heiner products are donated

to projects working against right wing extremists.

(calm music)

(speaking in foreign language)

They're doing exactly that,

which should distinguish a democratic state.

These initiatives work with words on the one hand,

but also with the distortion of the original symbols.

In doing so, they make fun of the things the other side

takes especially seriously, and wants to venerate.

Thor Steinar took the parodists

to court, and lost.

But how should Germany proceed?

Some in the country think lifting the ban on Nazi symbols

would make them less appealing as a gesture of rebellion.

(contemplative music)

(speaking in foreign language)

'What signal would it send,

if these were no longer banned?

The message would be spread that they were allowed.

And if the symbolism were allowed, it would seem

that there would no longer be anything questionable

about the thoughts and convictions behind them.

(speaking in foreign language)

There are certain symbols

that can very easily be exploited.

That includes, of course, the symbols from the Nazi era.

For some people they still have a great

identification potential, they still have appeal.

And that's why it is right to keep these symbols

out of the public eye as much as possible,

so as not to encourage these people

to fall prey to this ideology again.

(speaking in foreign language)

Combating the signs of evil

is about more than just a right wing

clothing label, or historical details.

It's about liberty, and the future.

(speaking in foreign language)

The ban on using these symbols

will surely be maintained for a long time to come.

As long as there are still people who suffered

under the Nazis, for instance people

whose parents were killed back then,

the sensitivity is so great

that these symbols will continue to be banned.

(dramatic music)