It was kept hidden for almost 50 years until 1992, when a landscaping intern took aerial photographs of the forests of Brandenburg, near Berlin. You can clearly see a swastika formed by a grove in the middle of the forest. Revealed a few years later, the shot caused a scandal in Germany.
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An enduring mystery
The trees, probably planted sometime in the 1930s, distinctly form the symbol only a few days a year. Indeed, the 140 larches lost in the middle of a pine forest blend into the background most of the seasons. Except in the fall, before they lose their thorns—they then wear a golden mane revealing their swastika shape, visible only from the sky.
Sources disagree on the origin of this plantation tribute to the Nazi regime. Some point to a local Nazi leader who allegedly ordered Hitler youths to plant the trees as a growing experience. A farmer claimed paternity. The ranger at the time is also put forward by the inhabitants of the village.
It's not an isolated case
After the scandal caused by the revelation, the authorities decided to cut down the trees to avoid making it a place of pilgrimage. But other cases exist elsewhere, such as trees drawing out the year 1933, the year of Adolf Hitler's accession to power, discovered in a forest in Hesse in the 1970s.
A giant swastika in Kyrgyzstan
The apparition of a giant swastika was also reported by the New York Times in 2006 in Kyrgyzstan, quite far from the country Adolf Hitler ruled. There, again, the legends are numerous—German forest ranger at the beginning of the 1940s, Nazi prisoners making a mockery of their Soviet jailers, protesting Nazi artist, etc.
It is not impossible that newer symbols hidden in forests will be found later. Just as with Mount Rushmore or the Nazca Lines, shaping nature for political or spiritual ends has always fascinated people.
