Do you know these Nazi terms?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A while back there was a thread on whether you knew what “Blitzkrieg” meant. Lots of people did (“lightning war”, if you didn’t). So let’s ramp up the difficulty a notch. Some terms you may know straight away, some may take a second or two, some may be totally unknown.

It’s a lot easier if you speak the Kaiser’s. Here are the answers to check (don’t cheat!):

Abwehr - Germany’s notoriously shite intelligence service.
Aktion 1005 - One of the worst jobs in the world, exhuming the victims of mass murders.
Aktion Reinhard - The establishment of the extermination camps. The shoah by gas begins.
Aktion T4 - The murder of disabled Germans.
Anschluss - Union with Austria.
Arbeit macht frei - “Work makes you free”, the lie above the gates of Auschwitz.
Bund Deutscher Mädel - League of German Girls, distaff counterpart of the HJ.
Deutschblütig - Of German blood.
Ehrenarier - An honorary Aryan, like the Japanese.
Einsatzgruppen - “Task Forces”, whose task was to shoot civilians.
Endlösung - “Final Solution”
Führerprinzip - “Leadership principle”, Hitler’s word is law.
Gauleiter - Provincial (gau) Nazi leader, answerable only to Hitler.
Generalplan Ost - The Master Plan for the East. Get rid of the Slavs, send in German colonists.
Goldfasanen - “Golden Pheasant”, derisive nickname for the Nazi higher ups.
Herrenvolk - “Lord of folk”, the master race.
Hitlerjugend - Hitler Youth, mandatory organisation for future Popes.
Judenrat - Jewish Council, liaison organisation used in ghettos
Kapo - In a camp, a prisoner who supervised the others, usually brutally.
Kraft durch Freude - “Strength through Joy”, Nazi welfare to provide workers with holidays and the like.
Kommandobefehl - “Commando Order”, any raiders even in uniform would be executed.
Lebensraum - “Living space”, idea that Germany needed more land in the east.
Lebensunwertes Leben - “Life unworthy of life”, the mentally and physically handicapped murdered in T4.
Mischling - Crossbreed, someone with German and Jewish blood.
Nacht und Nebel - “Night and fog”, the order to make political enemies of the Nazis vanish without trace.
Organisation Todt - The Nazi work organisation, built autobahns, the Atlantic Wall, often with slave labour.
Rassenschande - “Racial shame”, German/Jewish sex basically.
Selektion - Selection. To either slavery or “up the chimney”.
Sieg Heil - “Hail victory”, a greeting.
Sitzkrieg - “Sitting war”, Britain and France try and leaflet the Nazis to death.
Stalag - Prisoner of war camp.
Sonderkommando - “Special Unit”, Jews who got the shittiest jobs in concentration camps.
Schutzstaffel - “Protection Group”, the SS, Hitler’s most prolific murderers.
Der Stürmer - “The Attack”, vulgar weekly paper of Julius Streicher executed later on account of massive douchebaggery.
Swingjugend - “Jazz kids”, German youths who had musical tastes beyond Wagner.
Totenkopf - “Death’s head”, a skull symbol of the SS. Are we the baddies, Hans?
Vergeltungswaffen - “Vengeance weapons” to turn the tide of the war, the V1 and V2 rockets. A V3 cannon was planned but never saw action.
Volksgemeinschaft - “People’s community”, the new classless German society under Hitler.
Volkssturm - “Peoples army”, like Dad’s Army but with less hilarious bungling and more throwing 14 year olds at Russian tanks.
Die Weiße Rose - The White Rose. Germany’s moral heart and soul untouched by barbarism.
Wehrkraftzersetzung - Defeatist talk.
Welthauptstadt Germania - the World City, planned rebuilding of Berlin before British and American bombers and Russian guns remodelled it.

2

I got a big fat 0. I am sad to say that I wouldn’t have made a very good Nazi just because of the communication issues alone.

3

I knew about half of 'em. Sigh…including some of the ugliest ones.

4

Only 2, and as of now they have the most votes: sieg heil, and stalag.

You didn’t have fukkengruven, though. I know that one.

5

I know a little German (He’s sitting over there!), but I haven’t studied the Nazis enough, or at least not recently enough, to know the significance of most of those terms, even the ones I could sort of translate.

6

Off the top of my head Schutzstaffel is the only one I knew, but that’s only because a few weeks ago I finally got around to wondering what SS actually stood for and spent a half hour clicking around on wiki getting needlessly confused. Some people can waste an hour on TV Tropes, for me it’s wiki, click on one link and three sentences on, I’m already on to the next article and the next and the next, promising myself I’ll work my way back eventually.

If you asked me what SS stood for, I couldn’t tell you, I just recognized the word.

I do recall learning about Sitzkreig in social studies class at the same time we learned about the blitzkreig. I couldn’t tell you anything about it, I just remember it getting mentioned.

7

Probably for the best. But c’mon, I’m sure you could have worked out Sitzkrieg!

That’s a new one for me!

8

I know all the"Jewish" ones, like Kapo, and arbeit macht frei. You missed "Judenrein,"as in “This city is…” Sometimes also “Judenfrei.”

9

I didn’t see stalag in the list. I’ve never heard that word outside of the movie, but I suppose I’ll count that as knowing it anyways, right (POW camp I assume).

10

Quite so, the one in the movie, Stalag Luft III, was for captured Allied fliers - hence the ‘luft’, German for air.

Cleansed of Jewry. The two terms is why I omitted it, one without the other makes little sense and both are a bit repetitive. There are probably a few other important terms I missed, I tried to go for ones that weren’t too obscure and ones that were important overall to the ideology of the NSDAP and life in Germany at the time.

11

I know almost all of them, but then again I teach European History and WW2 has been an interest of mine since I was but a sprout.

12

I’m sure Swingjugend and die Weiße Rose would love to be told they’re “Nazi terms.” :slight_smile: Or Abwehr, for that matter.

I was pretty conservative. If I had a small inkling of the meaning I didn’t answer, like the few that
I correctly inferred from the translation. Probably should’ve remembered Sitzkrieg. My guess on “Organization Todt” would’ve been way wrong, as I read it as a variation on Tod.

13

I was raised in the US by a German mother. She was a teenager during WWII–19 when it ended. I wish now that I paid more attention to her stories. Needless to say, I knew several of the words.

14

Well, in manner of speaking that they are terms that relate to the National Socialist period of German history. But not Nazi affiliated, as you correctly say. Was getting a bit… gloomy with all the murder and racism so needed a few reminders that good Germans survived even under Hitler’s yoke and their humanity was not lost.

Surprised *Arbeit Macht Frei *isn’t the leader, I thought it was the most infamous of phrases associated with the Third Reich.

15

I understand German, so I likewise understand all the words and phrases. But I only checked the ones I knew to be specifically associated with Nazi policies and government.

16

I got three right. I guessed Sonderkommando was a Special Forces soldier. Nope. kommando doesn’t mean what it looks like.

17

I knew “Hitlerjugend,” “Sieg Heil,” “Stalag,” and “Shutzstaffel.” Most of my knowledge of Nazis comes from “Hogan’s Heroes,” unfortunately, just like I learned everything I know about rabbit hunting from Elmer Fudd.

18

There were SS-Sonderkommado who fit that definition more closely, although they not exactly elite special forces like we’d think. The Jews got saddled with that name due to the “special tasks” they performed, although for my money had just as much balls as any special forces soldier, staging suicidally brave rebellions against impossible odds at Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau - in the last instance killing 15 SS men, even pushing one alive into the ovens.

19

Same here.

I knew 16 of them - I know of the Final Solution, but had never heard the German term, and while I could translate die Weiße Rose, I had no idea what it might have to do with Naziism. Swingjugend I should have been able to figure out, as, again, I was familiar with the English version of the term, and it contains one of the handful of German words I know, but… (The ones I knew were ‘Arbeit…’, Einsatzgruppen, Herrenvolk, Hitlerjugend, Judenrat, Kapo, ‘Kraft…’ (though I had to translate that, only being familiar with the English translation before), Liebensraum, Nacht und Nebel, Seig Heil (and I’d be surprised if anybody who voted didn’t know that one), Stalag, Sonderkommando, Schutzstaffel, and Totenkopf.)

Side comment to the people who seem bothered by the fact that they know the terms…the fact that there’s a reason to know the terms (or, in a few cases, how they apply in this particular case) is horrifying, but given that that’s true, knowing them just means you’re part of keeping the knowledge alive, and thus hopefully helping to prevent another horror like that one.

20

I knew all of them except the 3 Aktionen (I knew the actual history, but not the names), Organisation Todt and Goldfasanen (I can translate it just fine, but the figurative meaning was unknown to me)

OP, if you ever need a longer list, Wikipedia has your back - some of those would have made nice additions here, I think -stuff like *Kinder, Küche, Kirche * or Lebensborn