Adidas has banned fans from personalizing the German national team jersey with the number “44” after outrage over the resulting resemblance to Nazi symbolism.
Historian Michael König appears to have been one of the first people to notice the resemblance between the “44” and the symbol for the “Schutzstaffel,” also known as the SS, which was responsible for planning and carrying out the Holocaust under Adolf Hitler. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, last Friday, König included screenshots of Germany’s national team jersey, which is sold by the company, with the number “44” and said it was “questionable” to allow the shirts.
König’s post quickly gained steam. As of Tuesday morning, it had been viewed more than 7.4 million times on X and prompted many media articles on Adidas’s blunder.
“It was a shock for me to see the numbers like that. It reminded me directly of the SS runes,” König, who is German himself, told Gizmodo via direct messages. “And I don’t understand why nobody at Adidas saw it.”
Fans were able to choose the number “44” because Adidas allows them to personalize some of their apparel with specific names or numbers. In light of the criticism, Adidas quickly disabled the personalization option for the jerseys in its online store.
In a statement to Gizmodo on Tuesday, Adidas tried to shake off the criticism and pointed out that the German Football Association, or DFB, and its partner, soccer apparel merchant 11teamsports, were responsible for the design of the names and numbers on the jerseys.
“Our company stands for the promotion of diversity and inclusion, and as a company we actively oppose xenophobia, anti-Semitism, violence, and hatred in any form,” Adidas said. “Any attempts to promote divisive or exclusionary views are not part of our values as a brand, and we firmly reject any suggestion that this was our intention. Our company stands for the promotion of diversity and inclusion.”
The German Football Association responded to the backlash over the jersey on Monday in a post on X. The association explained that it checks the numbers 1-9 and then sends numbers 1-26 to UEFA, the governing body for soccer in Europe, for review, according to a Google translation of the text.
“None of the parties involved saw any proximity to Nazi symbolism in the development process of the jersey design,” the German Football Association said. “Nevertheless, we take the information very seriously and do not want to provide a platform for discussions.”
The association added that it was working with 11teamsports on an alternative design for the number 4.
König, the historian, said he applauded the swift response to the situation from Adidas. He said that certain groups of people shouldn’t be able to express their right-wing views to the outside world. That would have been possible, König pointed out, with the “44” on Germany’s team jersey. He added that the issue is of even higher importance because Germany was hosting the UEFA European Championship this summer.
“Germany’s worst period should not be printed on a jersey,” König said.