I was going through archives of the Eugene Register Guard because I was bored, looking up important dates in history and found that on November 11th, 1918 under the heading that the war was over, was a line of swaskitas. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=4pF9x-cDGsoC&dat=19181111&printsec=frontpage&hl=en there's a link to the page. Why would they be there?
The swastika is an ancient sun symbol which was used by many cultures all over Europe and Asia and can still be seen today in Korea, China etc. Here's the Dalai Lama with some.
The Nazis got it from the Freikorps, right-wing paramilitary groups who participated in the quasi civil war in Germany after the end of WW1, who in turn got it from racist 19th-century writers who saw it as a symbol of an Aryan race. Some explanations of the history are here and here. The Wikipedia article lists many useful secondary and primary sources.
So, as /u/revengeofthesonofthe said, on a US newspaper from 1918 it's just for decoration without any political significance.
Here's an imgur link. https://i.imgur.com/Tb1YnU0.jpg?1
My sense is, in this instance, the swastika is being used because the newspaper in question is from Oregon - a state in the American West. The swastika around the turn of the twentieth century starts to get picked up by the American Arts and Crafts Movement as a kind of symbol of the natural beauty/natural culture of America because of its profound association with Native groups (especially the Dineh/Navajo people) in the Southwest. In this case, it'd be more properly called [whirling logs] (http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/07/melissa-codys-whirling-logs-dont-you-dare-call-them-swastikas-150782).
Within the history of American art history, it's interesting to watch the US as this up-and-coming world power that lacks a "classical" art to drawn upon for graphic strength, unlike the European and Asian powers. [Rene d'Harnoncourt] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_d'Harnoncourt), art curator, former director of MoMA, and former head of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, attempted to recify this once and for all with his 1941 MoMA exhibit Indian Art of the United States where, for better or worse, he tried to get America to realize it did have a deep well of "classical" art to draw on - Native American art.
Interestingly enough, when the whirling logs became the swastika in the American mind due to the symbol's denigration by the Nazis, many Dineh artists responded by [pledging not to use their own ancient symbol] (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wS7qhfsw7LU/TKU2QwS4YaI/AAAAAAAAAkU/966xn1qxP-Y/s1600/Navajos_renounce_Swastika_design.jpg) in protest. I don't know how this was instigated nor how sincere it was on the part of the signers, however.
I guess I should ask you, OP - do other dates for the same paper also use the whirling logs as a design element? That would probably support my argument. If this is the only edition that does use it, then - I don't know why.
On the first page it also mentioned that Kaiser Wilhelm is going to be sent to St. Helena. This is the first I have heard of this, so I am wondering if this was a actual plan for the allies, or if it had been up for discussion?
It's foreshadowing. The war is over...or is it?
No, but in seriousness, as someone said earlier the swastika was frequently used in design. This is simply a highly coincidental, upon later knowledge, incident.
An interesting article recently on the BBC talks about how common and in fact popular it was before the Nazis tarnished its reputation. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29644591
