The next time you visit Germany, don't try hailing a cab by stretching out your right arm. You'd risk being arrested for displaying a Nazi symbol. Take the Charlie Chaplin approach. 

Giving a “Hitler salute” is illegal even if there is no apparent political motive, a Lower Saxony court ruled this week, after an intoxicated homeless man provoked passersby with the Nazi-style raised arm gesture.

The court in Oldenburg, west of Bremen, ruled that Nazi expressions had to be banished from public spaces, regardless of whether there was any real political motive behind them.

The man had previously been sentenced to two months’ prison by an administrative court in the town of Leer, however this was overturned by a regional court in Aurich on the grounds that there had been no political meaning to the man’s gestures.

But the higher court in Oldenburg disagreed. The judges argued that any display of Nazi symbols or gestures had to be illegal in order to banish them completely from the public sphere. It did not matter, therefore, whether or not the drunk, homeless man had a solid political basis for his behaviour.

The Hitler salute, consisting of a raised right arm and open hand, is banned in public in Germany, as are most Nazi expressions and symbols, including swastikas and using phrases such as “Heil Hitler.” Breaches are punishable by up to three years’ jail. (Photo: Paris Hilton in St. Tropez, mimmicking Hitler. She later denied it.)

Ironic uses can, however, be exempt, though this has led to legal controversies over what constitutes irony.

Prince Ernst August of Hannover, husband of Caroline of Monaco, escaped punishment despite giving an airport official an “ironic” Nazi salute at Hannover airport in 2005.

In 2007, a 58-year-old Berlin man, Roland T., was sentenced to five months’ jail for teaching his pet dog, Adolf, to raise its paw in a Hitler salute.

The man had previously been investigated for Nazi-style displays but authorities had been lenient because he had a brain injury.

Also in 2007, a court sentenced Horst Mahler, former leftist radical-turned-neo-Nazi, to six months’ prison for what he claimed was an ironic Hitler salute to a Jewish television interviewer.

Similar bans can be found in other countries. In the  UK you can't walk sheep across a London bridge unless you have freedom of the city, but you can kill a Scotsman within the walls of York city if he is carrying a bow and arrow.

In Ohio it is illegal to get a fish drunk and in Indonesia the punishment for the 5 knuckle shuffle is to have your head cut off!

Question: We wonder how the German courts would deal with Hitler's  bent-arm salute, as shown here, or the two-arms salute, practiced by America's evangelical Christians?  

One reader sent in the following comment: "As years go by it will become apparent to Germany that restrictions against the Nazi salute are silly.

"But undoubtedly several more generations of Germans will need to pass on until the symbols of the 3rd Reich lose their emotional power. After 145 years the "Stars and Bars" flag of the Confederate South still has symbolic power in the USA."