A hand gesture made by raising the index and middle finger with the palm of the hand facing out is known as the “V-sign,” and is commonly associated with a message of peace. But this wasn’t always the case.
Roughly two decades before members of the counterculture and activists against the Vietnam War adopted the V-sign in the 1960s, it represented victory for the Allied powers during World War II. So, how did this gesture catch on in the first place, and then change meaning? Here’s what to know about the evolution of the V-sign in the mid-20th century.
‘V for Victory’ in World War II
A Belgian veteran, Olympian and politician-turned-radio-broadcaster named Victor de Laveleye is widely credited with initiating the “V for Victory” sign during World War II. After fleeing to London in 1940, he became the director of the Belgian division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and wanted to come up with a united message Belgians could use in opposition to the Nazis that had the same meaning in French, Flemish and English.
“I hit on the letter ‘V’ because it is the key in the French ‘victoire,' the Flemish ‘vrijheid’ and the English ‘victory,’” he told the New York Times. He first mentioned it on a January 14, 1941 broadcast to people in occupied Belgium, France, the Netherlands and North Africa, instructing listeners to chalk the letter “V” in public places, or tap it out in Morse code, with three short beats and one longer one—also the tune of the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Six months later, a BBC radio personality known as “Colonel Britton” announced the “V for Victory” campaign to the rest of Europe in English, French, Dutch, Czech, Norwegian, Polish and Serbian, echoing de Laveleye’s requests to utilize the visual and sonic sign, and suggested that listeners “wave to one another with the first two fingers of the hand spread V-wise,” Time reported in July 1941.
On July 20, 1941, Britton read on air a message from Winston Churchill endorsing the “V for Victory” campaign, cementing its place as a prominent anti-Nazi symbol. At this time, Churchill also began flashing the V-sign with his fingers during most of his public appearances.
“Winston Churchill really redefines the V-sign,” says Andrew Hammond, curator and historian at the International Spy Museum. “Because of Churchill, it's associated with defiance against the odds.” According to Hammond, this is because when the British prime minister first adopted the “V for Victory” hand gesture in July 1941, there was no clear path to victory for the Allied powers. “There’s this kind of do-or-die mentality that Churchill has and becomes associated with the symbol,” he says.
V for Victory Campaign Catches on in US
The “V for Victory” campaign and the accompanying hand gesture also caught on in the United States when the country entered the war in December 1941, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Americans quickly adopted the V-sign, in part as a symbol of Nazi resistance, but primarily as a call to participate in the war effort, especially on the home front, through rationing food, buying war bonds and increasing wartime production—a message seen in wartime propaganda posters. To those who used the “V for Victory” sign during World War II, an Allied victory was synonymous with a peaceful outcome.
Following Churchill’s lead, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower also started using the V-sign to represent victory in the war. Eisenhower continued to use the V-sign after World War II came to an end, as well as throughout his 1952 campaign for the presidency and subsequent eight years in office. At times, as a display of victory, he’d make the V-sign with both hands—a gesture that’s now more closely associated with his vice president, Richard Nixon.
The V-Sign as a Symbol of Peace
So, how did the V-sign go from meaning “victory” to “peace”? “There's no one person that has ownership over symbols like [the V-sign],” Hammond says. “It slowly evolves within a culture, and it's very difficult to trace that.”
Although the V-sign was popularized during World War II as a call for unconditional victory over fascism, it morphed into a celebratory gesture immediately after the wars in Europe and Asia ended, in May and August 1945, respectively, says Pierre Asselin, a history professor at San Diego State University and expert on the Vietnam War. In this case, victory also meant peace.
“People associate people like Eisenhower and Churchill with waging war, but from another perspective, they're waging war to get to peace,” Hammond says.
It’s unclear when, exactly, the V-sign came to mean “peace,” but by the late 1960s, members of the Vietnam generation—specifically, the anti-war and countercultural movement—recycled and adopted it as a call to end the war in Southeast Asia at once, rather than a symbol of victory, Asselin explains.
“American hippies took the ‘V’ for ’Victory’ symbol and converted it into a more general ‘peace’ sign that conveyed the hope that the war in Vietnam would end rather than be ‘won,’” according to Nancy Armstrong and Melissa Wagner, authors of Field Guide to Gestures.
The evolution of the V-sign as a sign is likely part of a larger cultural trend of turning military and patriotic symbolism on its head in protest of the war, and by extension, the status quo of traditional American values, says Julia Fell, curator of exhibits at the Museum at Bethel Woods, which focuses on the 1969 Woodstock festival.
“Buying and wearing Army surplus clothing like fatigue shirts and pants was definitely associated with counterculture, often paired with very un-military styles like long hair on men,” she explains.
According to Fell, the peace sign hand gesture was famously used during Woodstock. For example, Max Yasgur, the dairy farmer who leased his property to the festival, was captured on stage flashing the peace sign after delivering a heartfelt speech to the crowd, commending the young people for keeping the peace, she says.
Nixon Tries to Reclaim the V-Sign
One year prior, during his 1968 run for the presidency, Nixon used the double V-sign in its original context, meaning “victory”: a gesture he picked up from Eisenhower while serving as his vice president from 1953 to 1961.
“He did so quite deliberately, I believe, to reclaim it and its true meaning from the ‘bums’—as he liked to call young antiwarriors and countercultural activists, particularly those on college campuses—who had, in his own eyes, ‘stolen,’ appropriated and made a mockery of it,” Asselin says.
Despite its evolution to being a message of peace, Nixon continued to use his signature double V-sign (meaning “victory”) throughout his presidency, and even as he exited the White House after resigning from office in 1974.
