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Originally Posted by trikebubble
As far as it relates to "motorcycles" and bikers. I would say it comes from back in the day when the Outlaw Biker gangs were just getting going. They would adopt various taboo signs and emblams (such as the swastika, German WWII helmets, etc.) to show their seperation from society and rebelious attitude.
In my opinion the Maltese Cross is just a holdover from those days.
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I read up on this a little bit, too, a while back. Nothing ever really said specifically why it made it into biker lore, but I think trikebubble hit it on the head. After reading lots of googled articles I reached the same conclusion. I think originally the biker symbol was the Iron Cross, not the Maltese Cross. I think over time the lines between the two have become very blurred as far as the biking community goes, but they are two distinctly different symbols, and I believe originally the Iron Cross was what was displayed by bikers... but it looks practically identical to many variations of the maltese cross. Just run the following google search and you'll find so many instances of iron cross and bike as opposed to the maltese cross.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...the+iron+cross
As i said, it's gotten blurred and you can find where biking info calls it the maltese cross, but the two are distinctly different emblem though they look alike, with distinctly different histories. The maltese cross is most commonly associated with Firemen today, and is often referred to as the "Fireman's Cross", too.
I agree with trike the bikers adopted this emblem simply because it was taboo. This is precisely how I believe the cross got into biker society. Many emerging bike "gangs" took on Nazi paraphernalia and at the time the Iron Cross was largely associated with Nazism. In truth, it was an honorable award given to military. Over 5 million of them were handed out to military forces in WWI alone. Hitler renewed the use of the Iron Cross 25 yrs later in WWII but he superimposed the swastika on top of it, which lead to people associating it with Nazism for years afterward.
After WWII wearing anything with a swastika was outlawed so no one who had won the medal could wear it. Then, in 1957, the reissued a politically correct Iron Cross without a swastika to all those people who had won it so that they could proudly wear their medals of honor.
The award was originally conceived to be given out for acts of bravery, but over time it was adopted as the national symbol. In 1956 it was adopted as the symbol of the german military and its administration (the Bundeswehr).
So, in a nutshell... I think it made it into bikerdom because of the Nazi ties at the time. As was said, lots of early bike gangs took on Nazi symbols probably for no other reason that to stick in the face of "the man" who frowned down upon it, and because it was "billy bad ***" to have the swastika or iron cross and german helms. Historically lots of different groups have used the Nazi-era Iron Corss for shock effect. Even today, many neo-nazi groups display it as a hate symbol. This is why bikers often get a bad rap and some mistrustful looks because of the historical connotations of the symbol and how some people even today still pervert it.
This is a really good site for the history of the Iron Cross:
http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-...iron_cross.htm