The New York Times recently ran a story about a mysterious gigantic swastika in Kyrgyzstan. The swastika in question is 600 feet across, at least 60 years old, and made out of fir trees:

Legend has it that German prisoners of war, pressed into forestry duty after World War II, duped their Soviet guards and planted rows of seedlings in the shape of the emblem Hitler had chosen as his own.

More than 20 years later, the trees rose tall enough to be visible from the village beneath. Only then did the swastika appear, a time-delayed act of defiance by vanquished soldiers marooned in a corner of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

For all the tidiness of legend, however, the tale is not quite true. [Link]

The article then goes on to present various explanations for the swastika, none of which quite click. A major reason why they don’t click is that the swastika in question obviously not a Nazi swastika (based on its orientation) but a Hindu/Parsi/Buddhist/Jain one:

The mystery’s persistence is in its way surprising, given that as a Nazi swastika the symbol is imperfect, whether by design or because of uneven terrain. Hitler’s swastika was tilted 45 degrees; the formation here is almost level. Moreover, the arms do not mimic the Third Reich’s symbol, but its mirror image — a swastika in reverse. [Link]

Left facing swastikas long predate the Nazis and are common in Asia. One explanation for the swastika is that it is in some way connected to Hinduism. The swastika is known as the “Eki Naryn swastika” and is located in a town of the same name. The phrase “Ek Narayan” means “One God.”

However, we don’t know it was Hindus for sure. It could be the Chinese:

[The left facing] swastika is often found on Chinese food packaging to signify that the product is vegetarian and can be consumed by strict Buddhists. It is often sewn into the collars of Chinese children’s clothing to protect them from evil spirits. [Link] [It is a well known fact that Chinese spirits are afraid of children of dyslexic Nazis - ed]

In Taiwan, the swastika is a generic symbol for temple:

On maps in the Taipei subway system a swastika symbol is employed to indicate a temple, parallel to a cross indicating a Christian church. [Link]

Synbols on a Taipei subway map

In fact, China’s first “red cross” society was the Red Swastika society, founded in 1922. [Both India and Sri Lanka tried to have the Red Swastika approved as an official part of the Red Cross society, but had to back down].

Wikipedia lists a very long list of cultures who use the Swastika as their symbol, none of which have anything to do with Nazis. In Asia, the symbol shows up first amongst Parsis and Hindus, spreading from there to Buddhists, and from Buddhists to the rest of East Asia:

The use of the swastika by the indigenous Bon faith of Tibet, as well as syncretic religions, such as Cao Dai of Vietnam and Falun Gong of China, is thought to be borrowed from Buddhism as well. [Link]

Not all the uses of the symbol can be explained by cultural diffusion, however. It arose on its own amongst Native Americans as well, most notably the Navajo and Hopi. Wikipedia conjectures:

The ubiquity of the swastika symbol is easily explained by it being a very simple symbol that will arise independently in any basketweaving society. The swastika is a repeating design, created by the edges of the reeds in a square basket-weave. [Link]

Coming back to the Eki Naryan swastika, I don’t think it’s a Nazi symbol at all. People with a hammer will see every problem as a nail, and former Soviets are likely to see every swastika as associated with the Nazis. Occam’s razor suggests that the symbol has more local roots than some Indiana Jones type story. Personally, my money is on stranded Buddhist time travellers who were trying to signal their spacecraft …