Because, oh I don’t know, one day all this vocabulary work might prove useful. And it’s always good to learn a second language! Shystee’s already brought der dolchstoss to our attention; this meme propagated by German wingers of the 1920s and ’30s used to argue that Germany would have won World War I if only it hadn’t been “stabbed in the back” by Democrats domestic enemies (in particular, the unGodly the Jews.

Today’s word is falsche Markierungsfahne, or “false flag.” Here’s an example of a false flag operation from Wikipedia. The Gleiwitz incident, part of Operation Himmler in the run-up to World War II:

Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the sworn affidavit of Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. According to his testimony, the incident was organised by Naujocks under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.

On the night of August 31, 1939 a small group of German operatives led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a message in Polish that urged the Poles living in Silesia to strike against Germans. The Germans’ goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.

In order to make the attack scene more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.

In addition to Honiok, several other convicts were kept available for this purpose. The Germans referred to them by the code phrase “Konserve” (“canned goods”). For this reason some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as “Operation Canned Goods”.

“Operation Canned Goods”… I love it. Those Nazis are so damn playful, aren’t they? Of course, we would never go so far as to leave an actual corpse at the scene. Not even if keeping Dear Leader in power national security was at stake…