If you consider Nazism a political religion, Blutfahne, or Banner of Blood, was one of its most important relics. But how did it happen that a piece of cloth with a swastika "rose" to the rank of the greatest sanctity?
Initially, it was a simple swastika banner belonging to the 5th company of the Sturmabteilung (Assault Squads, SA), a party militia also known as brown shirts.
In November 1923, during the failed NSDAP coup attempt in Munich, this banner was soaked with the blood of three killed Nazis :Anton Hechenberger, Lorenz Ritter von Stransky-Grippenfeld and Andreas Bauriedl. They died when the Bavarian police opened fire on marching putschists.
Hitler was awarded the Blood Banner after his release from prison in December 1924. The banner quickly became a key element of the Nazi ceremony. At the end of the spar, a new swastika head was added, with a silver ring below it bearing the names of three of the sixteen "martyrs" killed in the Munich coup:Hechenberger, Stransky-Grippenfeld and Bauriedl.
Special Needs Banner
The banner was solemnly presented during all important events in the life of the party, and Hitler used it to "bless" other Nazi flags and banners and to take the oath of new SS men. The Blood Banner has been given the status of a holy relic . It was kept in a place of honor in the lobby of the so-called Brown House - the headquarters of the NSDAP in Munich.
An interesting fact is a fragment of Roger Moorhouse's book "The Third Reich in 100 Objects", published by the Znak Horyzont publishing house.
The banner was so venerated that it was assigned its own standard bearer whose sole task was to accompany her to all ceremonies. This honor went to Jakob Grimminger, an SS man who did not stand out with anything other than a characteristic mustache similar to that worn by Hitler himself (...).
The Blood Banner was last presented to the public in Berlin in October 1944, during the swearing-in of the first members of the Volkssturm, a formation that would constitute the last ranks of the defense of Nazi Germany, and consisted mainly of boys and older men. After this event, the Nazi relic disappeared.
Of course, it is possible that it has survived to this day, perhaps deposited somewhere in the attic of an American soldier who unknowingly took it as a war booty in 1945 and forgot about its existence. More likely, however, was destroyed in January 1945 when the Brown House collapsed as a result of an Allied bombing. The Blood Banner could also have disappeared during the chaos that engulfed Germany just after the war. Grimminger survived the war and died forgotten in 1969.
Source:
The above text originally appeared in Roger Moorhouse's book The Third Reich in 100 Objects , which was published by Znak Horyzont.
The title, illustrations with captions, boldface text, explanations in square brackets and subheadings come from the editors. The text has undergone some basic editing to introduce more frequent paragraph breaks.