<P> Buoyed by this success, the BBC started the "V for Victory" campaign, for which they put in charge the assistant news editor Douglas Ritchie posing as "Colonel Britton". Ritchie suggested an audible V using its Morse code rhythm (three dots and a dash). As the rousing opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony had the same rhythm, the BBC used this as its call - sign in its foreign language programmes to occupied Europe for the rest of the war . The more musically educated also understood that it was the Fate motif "knocking on the door" of the Third Reich . (Listen to this call - sign . (help info)). The BBC also encouraged the use of the V gesture introduced by de Laveleye . </P> <P> By July 1941, the emblematic use of the letter V had spread through occupied Europe . On 19 July, Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred approvingly to the V for Victory campaign in a speech, from which point he started using the V hand sign . Early on he sometimes gestured palm in (sometimes with a cigar between the fingers). Later in the war, he used palm out . After aides explained to the aristocratic Churchill what the palm in gesture meant to other classes, he made sure to use the appropriate sign . Yet the double - entendre of the gesture might have contributed to its popularity, "for a simple twist of hand would have presented the dorsal side in a mocking snub to the common enemy". Other allied leaders used the sign as well . </P> <P> The Germans could not remove all the signs, so adopted the V Sign as a German symbol, sometimes adding laurel leaves under it, painting their own V's on walls, vehicles and adding a massive V on the Eiffel Tower . </P> <P> In 1942, Aleister Crowley, a British occultist, claimed to have invented the usage of a V - sign in February 1941 as a magical foil to the Nazis' use of the Swastika . He maintained that he passed this to friends at the BBC, and to the British Naval Intelligence Division through his connections in MI5, eventually gaining the approval of Winston Churchill . Crowley noted that his 1913 publication Magick featured a V - sign and a swastika on the same plate . </P>

When did the two finger peace sign originate