14 DAY TRIAL // 140 trees growing in the German state of Brandenburg form a giant swastika that is only observable from an aerial perspective.
The so-called forest swastika, whose picture is made available next to this article, is made up of larch trees.
It is surrounded by pine trees, hence the fact that it is mostly visible in autumn, when the larches turn yellow/orange and lose their leaves, and the pines surrounding them stay green.
This forest swastika discovered in Brandenburg is not the first of its kind to pop up in Germany. NY Daily News explains that, back in 1992, a young man surveying various regions in order to document irrigation lines found one other such tree formation in eastern Germany.
The forest swastika discovered by Ökoland Dederow in 1992 was destroyed in 2000, when German officials ordered that some of the larches be cut down.
The order was given after Neo-Nazis had started gathering in the area.
Since 2000 until present day, forest swastikas have kept showing up in many other regions. One was discovered in 2006 not far from a remote village in Kyrgystan, Design Trend reports.
Historians are presently unable to thoroughly explain the phenomenon. However, a forester in Brandenburg maintains that, according to his observations, the forest swastika found in Brandenburg was planted in the late 1930s.
Since this time frame coincides with the height of Adolf Hitler's dictatorship, it is likely that the larches were planted by the Nazi forestry service.
Others suspect that they were planted by locals who wanted to show their loyalty to Adolf Hitler and his regime for fear that they might be persecuted after a man living in the area had been arrested for listening to BBC news broadcasts.
It is also possible that both the forest swastika in Brandenburg and others of its kind were created by a Nazi leader in celebration of Hitler's birthday.