Bent Corner

It’s been 23 months since I discovered my local Wal-Mart selling t-shirts featuring a Nazi SS Totnekopf or “Death’s Head” image.  I took a crappy photo of it with my cell phone and I then decided to blog about it.

That stupid blog post almost immediately went viral. For some reason, people like to read blog posts linking Nazis to Wal-Mart. Go figure.  A couple of days after I posted it,  I was contacted by a reporter from the AP and he interviewed my for an article about the shirt.  The story really took off after that.

Almost two years later, people are still coming here to read about it. Yesterday that original dumb blog post got over 400 hits from a link generated by StumbleUpon.

I never thought Wal-Mart intended to sell t-shirts with a Nazi image on them. With that said, they certainly took their sweet ole’ time taking the t-shirts off the shelves after they said they were going to do it. Congress even got involved. In many cases, the t-shirts remained on the shelves for a very long time. Earlier this year someone found the shirts still for sale in a California Wal-Mart.

In retrospect, I wish I had done a few things differently. I wish that I had purchased one of the shirts as a souvenir. I bought one after the story had been out just to see if Wal-Mart had removed the shirt from their computer server. If they had, the barcode would have come up as a no-sale. I think I gave that one to my brother-in-law after he said he wanted one. At the time I didn’t think I’d want one. I’ve changed my mind since then.

I also wish that I hadn’t agreed to go down to my local TV station to do a sit down, on-camera interview. I didn’t want to do it, but I felt pressured by the reporter that did the interview. She threatened to come to my home with a camera crew and camp outside my door unless I went down there. For some unknown reason, I actually believed her.

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I stopped in at Wal-Mart today after I got off work. I had to pick up a few things. As I was walking past the men’s clothing area, something caught my eye. I noticed something weird over at a wall of t-shirts. One of the t-shirts had a design on it that looked remarkably like something related to Nazis. Specifically, the Totenkopf or “Death’s Head”.

I took a picture of it with my camera phone.

The Death’s Head symbol was worn by the members of the German Nazi SS. The Totenkopf on the Wal-Mart t-shirt looks very similar to the divisional insignia of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. As you can see, It’s almost an exact copy.

Neo-Nazi’s sometimes use the Totenkopf image because it is not as easily identifiable as other Nazi symbols such as the swastika. You might see one of these tattooed on someone’s arm while standing in line at Burger King and think it’s just an poorly done pirate skull. It’s not.

Is Wal-Mart purposely trying to sell clothing with Nazi symbols on it? I doubt it. They wont even sell CD’s with bad words on them. I doubt someone at Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas decided to sell clothing with Nazi symbols on it.

Whoever designed this shirt had to know where the skull image came from. I have no idea what the date 1978 refers to.