[Whiteruthenian]

Beside the mentioned organizations and countries this gesture was used by Croix de Feu (France) and the OUN (Western Ukraine). This list is not complete I believe. The Roman salute was widely used in Europe but after WWII it was tabooed like the swastika or the Sieg-runes. Pity. Great gesture. It shoul be rehabilitated some day.

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The Roman salute is a gesture in which the arm is held out forward straight, with palm down. Sometimes the arm is raised upward at an angle, sometimes it is held out parallel to the ground. Despite the gesture's name, it is unclear whether the Romans used it as a form of military courtesy; the current interpretation of a "salute" would seem to have evolved over time, more substantially in recent periods.

The salute was supposed to have been used in the Roman Republic, but there is no clear evidence of this. Indeed it is not known whether salutes as military courtesy existed at all in Roman culture. However, a number of images showing similar gestures exist from the Imperial era. These depict Roman leaders addressing their troops ("adlocutio" scenes). Usually the leader has his arm raised in a rhetorical gesture. In some images a few troops are also depicted with raised arms, possibly suggesting acclamation of the leader. Several such scenes appear on Trajan's Column. [...]

From oath to salute

[...] In the modern USA, when swearing legal oaths and oaths of government office, the affirmant uses the gesture of an upraised arm, bent at the elbow, palm facing outward, which bears resemblance to the Roman Salute.

It is unclear precisely when the oath gesture became transformed into a quasi-military salute, though it appears in this role in some Davidian paintings, most famously Jean-Léon Gérôme's popular Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant (Hail Caesar! They Who Are About to Die Salute You) of 1859. At the same time research by Augustin Thierry into the rituals of Gallic and Germanic tribes led to the claim that such gestures were associated with ancient "Aryan" peoples for whom monarchy was said to be defined more by charismatic prowess than simple inheritance. Nordic ideology, which was later embraced by the Nazis, claimed that the leading classes of ancient Greek and Roman culture had originated among Germanic peoples, who had migrated south. In consequence it was argued that the gesture was Nordic in origin, expressive of the free acclamation of a leader.

By the end of the 19th century, the gesture was recognised as a symbol of communal acclamation, appropriate as a sign of allegiance to be used in several mass movements. A version was adopted as the Olympic salute, with arms raised to the side of the body, as in The Oath of the Horatii. The gesture was also portrayed as a salute in a number of early films about ancient Rome, such as Ben Hur (1907), Nerone (1908), Spartaco (1914) and Cabiria (1914). [...] It was later taken up by the Italian fascist party to symbolise their claim to have revitalised Italy on the model of ancient Rome. In the Italian version the arm was typically raised quite high above the shoulder with the palm bent outwards, in a rhetorical manner similar to Roman imperial statuary. Other fascist groups also adopted versions of the salute, including the German Nazi Party, in which the arm was raised smartly to the front, at right angles to the chest with the palm turned downwards.

[...] A similar form of an elevated right arm prevailed among certain Catholic youth organisations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and Germany, e.g. the salute of the members of the Grail Movement. Their using the Roman salute was however ended in the mid-1930s, as confusion far too often arose over whether their salute form in public was an act of tacit support for Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, or not. Anti-clerical left-wing publications often used 1920s and early 1930s pictures of bishops and other clergy saluting these Catholic youth movements with the Roman salute, as to imply a "Nazi" or "Fascist" orientation of these bishops and priests, or even the Catholic Church in general.

Wikipedia what else