“I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle,” Adolf Hitler wrote with satisfaction in Mein Kampf of his efforts to design a flag for his new political party. “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.” In finalizing his design, the aesthetically-inclined Hitler transformed what had been an innocuous symbol with antecedents in Indian as well as Native American culture, that had once been employed by the Boy Scouts and Coca-Cola, into an emblem permanently associated with racial hatred, fascism, and genocide.
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