Nazi Terminology - V

V

• V-1 and V-2 – Vergeltungswaffen "weapons of retaliation". Used to attack Britain and other countries controlled by the Allies. The V-1 was the world's first operational cruise missile; the V-2 the first ballistic missile. Other "V-Waffe" were planned but did not become operational.
• Verbotzeit - the time in which the NSDAP was officially banned in Bavaria, between the Beer Hall Putsch (9 November 1923) and the effective date of the lifting of the ban (16 February 1925).
• SS-Verfügungstruppe "Dispositional Troops" - the military branch of the SS, formed in 1934 under Paul Hausser. In August 1940 became the nucleus of the Waffen-SS.
• Vernichtungslager – death camps. This word was never used by the Nazis themselves.
• Verwaltung (administration).
• Volk – People, folk-community, nation, or ethnic group. It is extremely difficult to convey the full meaning of this word in English. It implies a "volk community" rooted in the soil of the heimat (homeland) with many centuries of ancestral tradition and linked together by a spiritual zeitgeist.
  • Volk ohne Raum - "A people without space". A political slogan used to justify the conquest of the east.
  • Volksgenosse – "Folk comrade"
  • Völkisch movement
• Völkischer Beobachter – the official Nazi Party newspaper.
  • Deutsche Arbeiterpolitik – special labor section included in the above party paper
  • Der Angriff – Nazi Party labor newspaper started by Joseph Goebbels
  • Der Erwerbslose – Nazi Party labor newspaper
  • Arbeitertum – Nazi Party labor newspaper.
• Volksgenossen-"National Comrades". Those who belonged to the Volksgemeinschaft.
• Volksgerichtshof – literally "People's Court", a tribunal which condemned people accused of crimes against the state; verdicts were sometimes directed by Hitler himself.
• Volkshalle—a gigantic domed building proposed to be constructed in Berlin as part of Albert Speer's Welthauptstadt Germania, from which Hitler planned to issue his Imperial decrees to Occupied Europe before crowds of up to 180,000 people.
• Volkswagen – "people's car". Conceived during the mid-1930s but did not go into production until after 1945. Perhaps the most durable and popular legacy of the Third Reich.
• Volksgemeinschaft – "People's Community"—a concept that means national solidarity; popular ethnic community; classless volk community.
• Vorbunker - (the upper bunker) or "forward bunker" was located behind the large reception hall of the old Reich Chancellery, in Berlin. It was meant to be a temporary air-raid shelter for Adolf Hitler and was officially called the "Reich Chancellery Air-Raid Shelter" until 1943, with the construction to expand the complex with the addition of the Führerbunker.
• Vorsicht Hochspannung Lebensgefahr - Typical warning message on signs affixed to electrified fences around concentration camps, labor camps, and death camps. Essentially: "watch out high voltage life-danger."