Victor de Laveleye could not have known what it caused.
Just hope it worked.
After Nazi Germany occupied Belgium, the former Minister of Justice fled into exile with the government.
In London, on January 14, 1941, he hosted a memorable program on Radio Belgique, the BBC's French-language broadcaster.
Laveleye, 46, suggested a common code to his compatriots - the letter V, “because V is the first letter of the words 'Victoire' (victory) in French and 'Vrijheid' in Flemish: two things that belong together, as Walloons and Flemings in Marching hand in hand for a moment, two things that result one from the other, the victory that gives us back our freedom, the victory of our good friends, the English. Your word for victory also begins with a V, ”declared the liberal politician. "As you can see, everything fits all around."
Laveleye urged the people in the occupied territories to “multiply the sign”, to write it everywhere so that “the occupier, when he sees this same, infinitely repeated sign, understands that he is surrounded by a mass of citizens who waiting impatiently for his first moment of weakness, his first mistake «.
And so it happened.
Within a few weeks, V's painted in chalk appeared on walls in Belgium, northern France and the Netherlands.
People used it to scribble sidewalks, posters and German cars.
The V expanded.
The call of fate: "Ta-ta-ta-taaaa ..."
Impressed by the campaign, the BBC designed programs that aimed to encourage action against the Germans. As the mysterious "Colonel V. Britton", news editor Douglas Ritchie became the voice of the "V-Army". He urged his audience to make the V visible in order to "fight for the independence and honor of their country and that of the other nations enslaved by the Nazi regime." To do this, they should also make it audible, using the Morse code for the letter V: short-short-short-long.
Or also: "Ta-ta-ta-taaaa ..." from the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's fifth symphony, known as the symphony of fate.
Musically educated people immediately concluded that the »fate motif« was a »knock on the door« in relation to the German Reich, an ironic affront - in the middle of the war, the BBC made the most striking sequence of notes from the most famous work of one of the greatest German composers to the theme tune of their programs for the occupied countries.
"Colonel Britton" explained to his listeners how one could generate the acoustic V oneself, for example as a blacksmith with rhythmic blows on the anvil or when teachers called their students to order by clapping their hands.
The ringing of church bells, the whistling of locomotives, the knock on a door: a lot could be recognized as this Morse code.
On July 19, 1941, the "V for Victory" campaign received official recognition from the British government.
"Colonel Britton" read a message from Prime Minister Winston Churchill: "The V-sign is the symbol of the invincible will of the occupied territories and a omen of the fate that awaits Nazi tyranny.
As long as the peoples refuse to cooperate with the intruder, it is certain that his cause will perish and Europe will be liberated. "
The hostile takeover failed
German propaganda saw and heard the signals - and reacted.
The symbol could no longer be removed from the world, so the Nazis tried to appropriate it.
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels now claimed that the campaign supported the German victory - V for "Viktoria".
The Nazi V appeared on banners and front pages of newspapers, on the walls of houses and vehicles.
A huge V was soon emblazoned on the Palais Bourbon in occupied Paris and on the Oslo parliament building in occupied Norway, with the banner "Germany is victorious on all fronts".
But the hostile takeover of the V failed.
Britain's great communicator Churchill didn't just sympathize with the tone sequence.
Wherever he met photographers, the fingers of his right hand formed a shape. V. Churchill had always liked to gesticulate a lot, often with a thick cigar between his fingers.
Now the gesture became his trademark: He stretched out his index and middle fingers, while his ring and little fingers remained retracted, covered by the thumb.
The prime minister was seen as a symbol of resistance - with him his hand position became world-famous.
The victory gesture began its final triumphant advance at the end of the war in 1945: wherever Churchill appeared, people spread their index and middle fingers, as he had shown.
Occasionally, however, his finger pointing caused irritation.
Because it had its pitfalls, especially in Great Britain.
The victory sign with the back of the hand outward was considered there - nobody knows since when and why - as an obscene insult, similar to the stinky finger.
Churchill often posed with the back of his hand outward.
What now, victory sign or gross insult?
Did he know what he was doing?
Perhaps, as a member of the upper class, he was not even aware of the inappropriate variant, which was particularly widespread in the lower classes - or he deliberately directed it to the common enemy.
The internationally variable meaning of the hand position was sometimes tricky even after the war.
The V-sign challenged soldiers on a Churchill visit to Greece in 1949: there, the victory gesture with the palm of the hand facing outwards is considered an insult.
The soldiers should actually have turned them around, but this variant was considered an insult in England.
As a photo shows, they chose an innocuous version with their fingers halfway forward.
In the decades that followed, the victory sign gained additional meaning.
In demonstrations against the Vietnam War, it became a sign of peace;
Hippies greeted each other with "Peace" and briefly let the two fingers flash outward with the palms of their hands.
Hand signal mishaps didn't just happen to Churchill - if they were mishaps at all.
When US President George Bush toured Australia in 1992, he tried to give a "peace sign" to a group of farmers protesting against US agricultural subsidies.
Instead, he insulted her badly because the Australians saw it as an obscene gesture.
The Washington Post wrote, “Down here, holding up your first two fingers in a 'V' with the back of your hand toward a person is the same as holding up your middle finger in the United States.
And that is exactly what Bush did from his limousine with a group of demonstrators as his motorcade drove through Canberra yesterday, seemingly unaware of its significance.
Or maybe he knew her. "
Ackermann's finger pointing in court
Josef Ackermann felt misunderstood.
In 2004, the board spokesman of Deutsche Bank had to go to court on charges of breach of trust.
Before the trial began, a photographer took a picture of him with a victory gesture and a broad grin - which, in combination with his cocky demeanor, many then interpreted as the "arrogance of power": Ackermann was mocking the court.
Enlarge image
The poser from the first bank: Josef Ackermann, winner type also in court
Photo: Oliver Berg / picture-alliance / dpa
He later claimed a completely different connection.
While waiting for the trial, they joked: In Düsseldorf the court was late, in America the defendant.
Ackermann wanted to have imitated pop star Michael Jackson, who had left his first court date with a victory sign five days earlier.
Two weeks later, Ackermann apologized for the "wrong impression" that the photo had left.
In the past few decades, the victory sign has become more of a depoliticized fun gesture, especially in East Asia.
In this country, the hand that is brought to the back of the head in photos is also known as "rabbit ears" with spread fingers.
Japanese security researchers from the National Institute of Computer Science have now recognized a certain risk: in 2017, they warned that high-resolution photos would allow fingerprints to be extracted.
The biometric data could then be used to unlock cell phones and laptops or use door and payment systems.
A distance of up to 1.5 meters allows 100 percent of a fingerprint to be recorded, 50 percent is a maximum of three meters.
Victor de Laveleye still experienced the triumphant advance, but no longer the later complex career of his Victory sign.
After the liberation of Belgium, he became minister of education for a few months and died on December 16, 1945.