swastika as a mnemonic device the article needs more information about the swastika's use as a modern mnemonic device although the swastika was an ancient symbol professor rex curry discovered that it was also used sometimes by the national socialist german workers party as alphabetic symbolism including meshed s letters for their socialism the leader of german national socialists at that time altered his own signature to use the same stylized s letter for socialist and similar alphabetic symbolism still shows on volkswagens professor curry showed that many modern myths use a false belief that nazis called themselves nazis the myths cause widespread ignorance of the eytmology of the word nazi party members called themselves national socialists not nazis dr curry showed that many modern myths about swastikas use the false belief that nazis called their symbol a swastika german national socialists did not call their symbol a swastika another person conceded the point with the comment that it does seem to be the case that the national socialist german workers' party originated the orientation though they did not necessarily originate that use the german national socialists did independently alter their use of the symbol for their specific desire to highlight the s letter for socialism of course the additional comment that they didn't use the degree orientation consistently also concedes professor curry's work showing that their leader deliberately altered evolved the symbol from its historic orientation into meshed s letters for socialism the graphic resonance is highly suggestive and in fact it is compelling in fact one of the flags that dr curry cites argues for that thesis the swastika itself comprises two s's and that is shown to have been known consciously when the german national socialists overlay two additional s's for another group as german national socialists had other examples of similar alphabetic symbolism hitler even altered his own signature to reflect the same s for socialism and similar alphabetic symbolism still shows on volkswagens the leader of the german socialists had no reason to harp on this idea because he was an ex artist nevertheless he did allude to the alphabetic symbolism in his own comments in his notorious book of course he would not drone on about it just as he did not drone on about what the stylized sa symbol meant or the side by side ss symbol or the vw all of which other writers concede for some inconsistent reason the only reason it is so hard for most people to understand today is because they have been trained to use the hackneyed shorthand for the party and most people are ignorant of the name of the actual party and thus have no idea that the party actually espoused a dogma that they called socialism even to this day people repeatedly delete dr curry's work in an effort to perpetuate the ignorance and the myths