That's The Swastikas, a Canadian girls' hockey team from Edmonton circa 1916. Before it became associated with the Nazis, swastikas had been used for hundreds of years as a symbol of good luck and prosperity:
For many millenia, before it was appropriated by the Nazis, the swastika was a symbol of good luck and prosperity. Almost every race, religion and continent honored the swastika -- a perfect example of the universal spread of a symbol thru the collective unconscious used by American Indians, Hindus, Buddhists, Vikings, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Mayans, Aztecs, Persians, Christians, and neolithic tribes. There are even Jewish swastikas found in ancient synagogues side-by-side with the star of David!
The swastika was associated with the hammer of Thor which returned to him like a boomerang, the footprints of Buddha, the emblem of Shiva, Apollo, Jupiter, and even Jesus Christ! The swastika was the first Christian symbol and is found in the catacombs in Rome. Hindus and Buddhists to this day still revere the swastika as their sacred sign. Jains make the sign of the swastika similar to the Christian sign of the cross.
In the early part of the twentieth century Rudyard Kipling used the swastika as his coat-of-arms, Coca Cola made a swastika-shaped lucky watch fob,American pilots used it on their planes when they fought for the French in World War One, it was the symbol for the Ladies Home Journal sponsored Girls' Club and the Boy Scouts. A town in Ontario was named Swastika in 1911 because of a lucky gold strike.
Gentle Swastika at ManWoman.net has a large collection of such swastikas: http://www.manwoman.net/swastika/index.html
Previously on Neatorama: "I am Not a Nazi" Swastika | Swastika Town Refused to Change Name
I JUST finished posting (and fixing, and fixing, and fixing) an entry on my Blogspot. I finally finished, then came here and see this article.
Why do I think this is so weird?
I got a 1944 Deutsches Reich 5 pfennig piece in change last week. From a convenience store. In Lancaster PA.
Just discovered it yesterday when I was doing laundry.
http://sparkbox.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
I know of a few cases where people had to change their name.
Also a picture of their factory with the swastikas on the elephants out front.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsberg
(friki - I think the bad guys reversed the swastika and rotated it 45 degrees)
Swastikas also appear prominently as architectural ornamentation on buildings constructed before the late 1930's in my part of the country... Western South Dakota.
I certainly hope the symbol loses its evil connotations and is re-instated as a sign of peace and prosperity in the not too distant future...
2. While the Nazis often rotated their swastika 45 degrees (as aarron notes) from what is shown in this pic, that is not a hard and fast rule. They also frequently had it in banners oriented just like it is shown in this picture. If you've ever watched Leni Reifenstahl's "Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will)" you'll have seen LOTS of banners in the non-rotated orientation. This wiki page has a picture of one at an SA (Brownshirt) Rally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-swastika26sep26,0,2973328.story?coll=la-home-center