What made Hitler choose the Hooked Cross as his symbol?

Question

Why did Hitler invert the Swastika and make it the hooked cross and use it as his symbol???

Answer 1

If you think about it, it is his way of directly harassing the jews by slightly altering a jewish symbol. And Put it this way Hitler was thought of himself being the opposite of the Jews therfore Inverted!

Answer 2

Hitler and Himmler were looking for a symbol to give the Nazi movement a religious like meaning. They were trying to make the Nazi movement a replacement for religion much like the communist, There is the Nazi party and to serve the Nazi party is to serve god etc.. Hitler was looking also to separate himself from Ernst Rohm and the SA. Hitler being a fan of Mussolini who was reviving the old Roman Empire using the old roman eagle etc. Decided to look for something with an Aryan meaning. Himmler apparently presented the design Hitler supposedly changed the angle and direction and thus the Swastika became the Nazi symbol. That has overshadowed all other meanings and associsication.

Answer 3

Hitler did not "invent" the swastika. He thought it was an "Aryan" symbol, but it has been in use since neolithic (new stone age) times.

From wikipedia article:

The Swastika has an extensive history. The motif seems to have first been used in Neolithic Eurasia. The swastika is used in religious and civil ceremonies in India. Most Indian temples, entrance of houses, weddings, festivals and celebrations are decorated with swastikas. The symbol was introduced to Southeast Asia by Hindu kings and remains an integral part of Balinese Hinduism to this day, and it is a common sight in Indonesia. The symbol has an ancient history in Europe, appearing on artifacts from pre-Christian European cultures. It was also adopted independently by several Native American cultures.

The discovery of the Indo-European language group in the 1790s led to a great effort by archaeologists to link the pre-history of European peoples to the ancient "Aryans" (variously referring to the Indo-Iranians or the Proto-Indo-Europeans). Following his discovery of objects bearing the swastika in the ruins of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann consulted two leading Sanskrit scholars of the day, Emile Burnouf and Max Müller. Schliemann concluded that the Swastika was a specifically Indo-European symbol. Later discoveries of the motif among the remains of the Hittites and of ancient Iran seemed to confirm this theory. This idea was taken up by many other writers, and the swastika quickly became popular in the West, appearing in many designs from the 1880s to the 1920s.

These discoveries, and the new popularity of the swastika symbol, led to a widespread desire to ascribe symbolic significance to every example of the motif. In Germanic countries examples of identical shapes in ancient European artifacts and in folk art were interpreted as emblems of good-luck linked to the Indo-Iranian meaning.

Western use of the motif, along with the religious and cultural meanings attached to it, was subverted in the early twentieth century after it was adopted as the emblem of the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). This association occurred because Nazism stated that the historical Aryans were the forefathers of modern Germans and then proposed that, because of this, the subjugation of the world by Germany was desirable, and even predestined. The swastika was used as a conveniently geometrical and eye-catching symbol to emphasize the so-called Aryan-German correspondence and instill racial pride. Since World War II, most Westerners know the swastika as solely a Nazi symbol, leading to incorrect assumptions about its pre-Nazi use in the West and confusion about its sacred religious and historical status in other cultures.

Answer 4

Why? It was a stroke of Hitler's genius to use this old symbol. Insofar as inversion, it depends on how you view it.

*Note: Not a fan of Hitler.