The divergent histories of V. .in real life...

[Richard Ryan]

Fun stuff to know and tell...

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/tag/thomas-pynchon-v/
>
Posts Tagged ‘thomas pynchon V’
V for Victory Campaign Says You Are The Resistance

January 21st, 2011 by DJ Pangburn

[.......]

So where did the current V for Victory Campaign acquire the symbol?

During World War II, Victor Auguste de Laveleye, former Belgian
minister of Justice and director of the Belgian French-speaking
broadcasts on the BBC, suggested that the Allies use the letter ‘V’ as
a symbol in a psychological warfare campaign against the Nazis.
Laveleye said in the broadcast:

    “[T]he occupier, by seeing this sign, always the same, infinitely
repeated, [would] understand that he is surrounded, encircled by an
immense crowd of citizens eagerly awaiting his first moment of
weakness, watching for his first failure.”

The ‘V’ symbol starts popping up all over France, Belgium and the
Netherlands, and was later adapted by Churchill in a campaign that
involved using an audible ‘V’ with Morse Code, by using the first four
notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.  It was used as the call sign by
the BBC in their broadcasts across occupied Europe during the rest of
WWII.  Recall that the first four notes of the 5th symphony were meant
to represent fate knocking at one’s door.  Isn’t psychological warfare
fantastic?

Aleister Crowley claimed to have given the V-sign to Churchill, which
he said he’d been using since at least 1913.  Crowley, who was also a
British spy, said he used the V-sign in order to negate the magical
potential of the Nazi’s use of the Swastika, itself a symbol of the
Eastern religions.