A flag bearing a Nazi symbol was hung during the Rangers Saturday’s soccer match against Aberdeen, the Scottish daily newspaper, the National, reported on Sunday.
The Rangers Football Club has subsequently begun an investigation into the occurrence.
According to the Scottish news organization, the incident occurred as the Rangers marked Armed Forces Day, an occasion intended to honor the British military.
In respect of the day, the football organization featured 150 active duty members of the British Army, Air Force, and Navy.
That same day, an image surfaced on X, formerly Twitter, showing match-goers standing over a flag hung from the banister in front of them.
The flag is solid blue and, in large white letters, reads, “Rangers Active Unit. 936. The Firm.” In the middle of the flag is a large white skull and crossbones.
Horrible nazi cunts. Supposed to be British pic.twitter.com/5CxETZTSBt
— S (@S4NDY_1903) September 30, 2023
“Horrible nazi c***s. Supposed to be British,” the account that posted the photo of the flag to X wrote.
The skull and crossbones is a symbol known as the “Totenkopf”, a German term for “skull,” or literally “death’s head.”
A history of hate
The SS-Totenkopfverbände, or “death’s head units” oversaw Nazi Germany’s concentration and extermination camps, murdering millions of Jews and other groups deemed inferior to the “Aryan race” by Hitler’s regime.
In apparent relevance to the fact that the Ranger’s were marking Armed Forces Day to highlight the services performed by the British military, the Totenkopf, as the National notes, was a symbol of Germany’s 3rd SS Totenkopf Panzer Division, which massacred 97 British soldiers after they had surrendered.
The slaughter was a war crime committed by the Panzer division’s 14th Company and became known as the Le Paradis Massacre.
After the war, the Nazi officer who was in command of the company, Hauptsturmführer Fritz Knöchlein, was convicted for his part in the massacre by a British military court and subsequently executed.
Speaking to the Scottish Sun, a spokesperson for the Rangers said, “Clearly, this flag is absolutely unacceptable and the club condemns the displaying of it within our stadium in the strongest possible terms.”