I started wondering about this for no particular reason I can think of. Who’s idea was it? Was it supposed to be symbolic of something? Did they just start passing out pamphlets at rallies titled: “Forget everything you THINK you know about public greetings!”?
I don’t know. James Upham is credited with inventing the Bellamy salute and may have been inspired by the Roman Empire, or more likely by contemporary portrayals of it. Anyway, by 1930, nobody was heiling Caesar that way, but the salute was in use by American schoolchildren. On that basis, I stand by the claim that the Nazis stole it, directly or indirectly, from either the US, the Roman Empire, or Mussolini’s Italy. It’s a kind of cultural appropriation I find more palatable when done by people who don’t then proceed to violently annex most of Europe.