Nazi Terminology - W

W

• Waffenamt "Weapons Office" – responsible the procurement of military equipment; WaA with a number was the standard arms inspection stamp or mark.
• Waffen-SS "Armed SS" - the combat branch of the Schutzstaffel, formed in August 1940 from earlier SS military formations; by war's end had grown into a parallel army with (nominally) 38 divisions.
• Waldkommando - "Wood-commando" prisoner-laborers assigned to work in forests, primarily to obtain firewood for heating and for burning corpses.
• Wandervogel - German youth movement of the period 1901 to 1933, co-opted by the Hitler Youth.
• Wannsee Conference – a conference held on January 20, 1942 beside Lake Wannsee in Berlin in which it was decided and made official Nazi policy that the total annihilation of European Jews was the only rational means of a "Final Solution" to the Jewish Question.
• Wehrbauern – soldier-peasant settlements that were to be established in the East to act as a defensive shield against the inroads of Slav barbarianism.
• Wehrkraftzersetzung – a crime invented by the Nazis. It meant "negatively affecting the fighting forces". People who expressed doubts about Germany's chances of winning the war, or about Hitler's leadership were sometimes put to death for Wehrkraftzersetzung.
• Wehrmacht "Defence force" – the name of the armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. Prior to that time, the Reichswehr. Consisted of the Heer (Army), Kriegsmarine (Navy) and Luftwaffe (Air Force), but not the Waffen-SS or the Police even though they both fielded combat units during the war.
• Wehrmachtsadler "Armed forces eagle" - form of the Hoheitsabzeichen worn by the Heer and Kriegsmarine, but not the Luftwaffe.
• Weibliche Kriminalpolizei - Women's branch of the national criminal police department.
• Wewelsburg - a castle near Büren in the Paderborn district of Westphalia, taken over and restored by Heinrich Himmler as an SS officers' training school and cult center.
• Die Weiße Rose – “The White Rose”—a non-violent/intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime.
• Weltanschauungskrieg – war of ideologies.
• Welthauptstadt Germania - architectural plan to rebuild Berlin into a massive imperial metropolis.
• Westland - propaganda name used to denote the incorporation of the Netherlands (and in a wider context, all of the Low Countries) into a Nazi-controlled Europe.
• Wille und Macht "Will and Power" - the monthly magazine of the Hitler Youth.
• Winterhilfswerk Winterhilfe – Winter Relief Program and annual fundraising drive by the Nazi Party to support impoverished German victims of the Great Depression and of World War II. The successor to the similar program in existence during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). Once a week, people would eat an eintopf ("one pot") meal, and donate the money they would have spent for a regular meal to the Winterhilfe.
• Wirtschaftspolitische Abteilung – 1931 WPA; A NSDAP proposed program.
• Wirtschaftliches Sofortprogramm – 1932 Economic Program; A NSDAP proposed program.
• Wirtschaftliches Aufbauprogramm – 1932 Economic Reconstruction Plan; A NSDAP proposed program.
• Wolfsangel "Wolf's hook" – runic emblem adopted by several military units of Nazi Germany.
• Wolfsschanze "Wolf's Lair" – Hitler's first World War II Eastern Front military headquarters, one of several Führer Headquarters or FHQs located in various parts of Europe. The complex, built for Operation Barbarossa (the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union) was located in the Masurian woods, about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from Rastenburg, East Prussia (N/K/A Kętrzyn, Poland). It is the location where he spent much of his time during the war following the launch of Operation Barbarossa.
• Wunderwaffe – "silver bullet" (literally, wonder weapons), referring to weapon systems developed at the end of World War II (such as the V-1 and the V-2) that were supposed to turn around Germany's desperate situation on the battlefields.
• Wu-wa - mocking colloquial shortening of wunderwaffen.