The Salute to the Flag?

When I first saw this picture I was like, “What the heck are those kids doing?”  The picture is one that was found in my Grandmother Mabel’s  photos, unlabeled.   She took many pictures of her students when she was a teacher.  This was outside a one-room schoolhouse in the mid-1930s in York County, Nebraska.  After doing a little bit of internet research about why these kids might be “Heil Hitlering” the U.S. Flag, I found out that that was actually the way we Americans did it in the beginning.  After Hitler and WWII we changed our salute to the one hand over the heart salute so as to disassociate from the whole nazi image.  I also found that the man who wrote our Pledge of Allegiance was a nationalist socialist - Hitler and he might have been compatriots.  Which gives me a whole new outlook on the whole pledge thing.  In fact, the “Under God”, part wasn’t added until the late 50s.  As a conservative Christian, I find it amazing that I never knew that something I thought was so great growing up was actually part of a socialist agenda.  Who knew?