A look at the German legacy of war lexicon

Each of the two World Wars – I and II – is often mentioned as Armageddon because of the scale of destruction both in terms of lives and property. Germany, first under Kaiser Wilhelm and then under Adolf Hitler, has been held as the main perpetrator of both. A large number of war words starting with the build-up of World War I, therefore, have German etymology. We look at some of them.

But first a word about arms race, the very groundwork of the wars. The expression refers to a competition between unfriendly nations in the accumulation and development of weapons. A phenomenon which in its modern form dates from the years preceding World War I, was first conceptualized, or at least lexicalized in its present form in the 1930s, when the world was again arming itself ahead of World War II. It persisted into the Cold War in the context of nuclear weapons.

Blitzkrieg is an attack or offensive launched suddenly with great violence with the objective of destroying enemy defences immediately. It stands for a tactic which was supported by dive-bombing and rapid armoured advances successfully by the German forces in invading its neighbours in the early years of World War II. It comes from Blitz meaning lightening and Kreig meaning war.

Its shortened version blitz is an air raid or a series of air raids conducted with great intensity and ferocity, specifically the series of air raids made on London and other British cities by the German Luftwaffe in 1940-41. Used as a verb, it means ‘to bomb intensively’ or to destroy, drive out, etc, by aerial bombing.

An antonym of blitzkrieg but formed on the same pattern, sitzkrieg is a war, or period of a war, marked by a (relative) absence of active hostilities, specifically that phase of World War II lasting from September 1939 to May 1940 (this period is also known as the phoney war). It comes from German sitzen, meaning ‘to sit’, and Krieg.

Strafe, before it entered common use, was picked up by British soldiers in the early days of World War I from German strafen, ‘to punish’ and in particular from the phrase Gott strafe England, ‘God punish England’. It became a common salutation in Germany in 1914 and the following years. It was used in a variety of senses, including ‘to do damage to’ and ‘to attack fiercely’. The specific application to attacking ground targets in a low-flying aircraft is a World War II development.

Flak, whose metaphorical sense ‘adverse criticism’ is first recorded in 1968, originally referred to anti-aircraft fire. This too is a borrowing from German and is a contraction for Fliegerabwehrkanone , denoting an anti-aircraft gun.

Other German war-related words and expressions that make their appearances quite often in media reports in their literal and figurative uses include panzer (short for Panzerkampfwagen), Gestapo, Fuhrer, SS (for Schutzstaffel), etc.

How about checking them out on your own?