English usage and **** connotations

Assuming a specific **** usage of the term "Vaterland" (which in fact never existed), the direct English translation "fatherland" featured in news reports associated with **** Germany and in domestic anti-**** propaganda during World War II. As a result, the English word is now associated with the **** government of Germany[citation needed] (unlike in Germany itself, where the word means simply "homeland"). The word is not used often in post-World War II English unless one wishes to invoke the *****, or one is translating literally from a foreign language where that language's equivalent of "fatherland" does not bear **** connotations. The word Motherland in modern English carries similar associations with the Soviet Union.

Prior to Nazism, however, the term was used throughout Germanic language countries without negative connotations (e.g. in Hermann Broch's novel The Sleepwalkers), or often to refer to their homelands much as the word "motherland" does. For example, "Wien Neêrlands Bloed", national anthem of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1932, makes extensive and conspicuous use of the parallel Dutch word. In most European countries it is still the norm to use the term "fatherland" and many would be offended if it was in any way compared with Nazism.

Felix Wankel received his first patent for a rotary piston engine in 1929, five years after he first hatched the idea and 27 years after his birth in Lahr, Germany. Over the next decade and a half and during WW2, Wankel was involved in the development of a rotary disc type valve for use in aircraft and torpedo engines, thereby shelving the rotary engine project, and he held jobs at BMW, DVL, Daimler-Benz, Lilienthal and Junker Aircraft. Because of his military involvement, following the invasion of Germany in 1945 he was imprisoned until 1946, and his workshops and research were destroyed by French troops, further delaying his rotary research until 1951, when the German company NSU became interested in the project.