The question of the new flag - that is, its appearance occupied us intensely. From all sides came suggestions, for the most part admittedly more well-intentioned than successful.
The new flag was expected also to be highly effective as a poster. Anyone who has to concern himself much with the masses will recognise these apparent trifles to be very important matters. An effective insignia can in hundreds and thousands of cases give the first impetus towards interest in a movement.
I myself after innumerable attempts laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika. And this remained final.
Along the same lines armbands were immediately ordered for the monitor detachments; a red band, likewise the white disk and black swastika. The party insignia was also being designed along the same lines: a white disk on a red field, with the swastika in the middle.
In the midsummer of 1920 the new flag came before the public for the first time. It was excellently suited to our new movement. It was young and new, like the movement itself. No one had seen it before; it had the effect of a burning torch. We ourselves experienced an almost childlike joy when a faithful woman Party comrade for the first time executed the design and delivered the flag. Only a few months later we had half a dozen of them in Munich, and the monitor troop, which was growing bigger and bigger especially contributed to spreading the new symbol of the movement. And a symbol it really is! Not only that the colours which all of us so passionately love, which once won so much honour for the German people, attest our veneration for the past; they are also the best embodiment of the movement's will. As Nation Socialists, we see our programme in our flag. In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory for the Aryan man, and by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which has such always has been and always will be anti-semitic.
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