Germany - Third Reich: National Socialist People’s Welfare Organisation (NSV) lapel pin, being a small blackened metal disc with an outer raised white metal border, in the centre of which embossed a white metal symbol of a horizontally elongated N through the centre of which a vertically elongated S, where the S crosses the N a letter V. The reverse of the pin is marked GES. GESCH, with the RZM logo and the number 15 for Ferdinand Hoffstater, Bonn am Rhein.
Condition: Good Very Fine.
The National Socialist People's Welfare (German: Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, NSV) was a social welfare organisation during the Third Reich. The NSV was originally established in 1931 as a small Nazi Party-affiliated charity, which was active locally in the city of Berlin. On 3 May 1933, shortly after the Nazi Party took power in Weimar Germany, Adolf Hitler turned it into a party organisation that was to be active throughout the country. The structure of the NSV was based on the Nazi Party model, with local (Ort), county (Kreis) and district (Gau) administrations
After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, the NSV became established as the single Nazi Party welfare organ on 3 May 1933. On 21 September in the same year, Hilgenfeldt was appointed as Reich Commissioner for the Winterhilfwerk (Winter Support Programme). Hitler directed Hilgenfeldt to "see to the disbanding of all private welfare institutions" and to "take charge of the Caritas organisation and the Inner Mission," so as to exclude Jews, non-Germans, opponents of the Nazi regime, and other "racially inferior" persons from receiving aid. Before the Nazi seizure of power, there had been seven main charitable networks in Germany: two socialist welfare organisations (one run by the SPD and the other by the KPD), the Christian workers' welfare association, the national Jewish charitable agency, the Roman Catholic Caritas, the Protestant Inner Mission, and the German Red Cross. The Nazis disbanded the socialist and Christian workers' associations and seized their assets, restricted the activities of the Jewish agency to helping ethnic Jews, and sought to "coordinate" the remaining three agencies under the control of the NSV. The non-Nazi charities were forced to accept the principles of eugenics and refrain from helping those deemed biologically unfit, while the German Red Cross was compelled to appoint Nazis to prominent positions.
The NSV was the second largest Nazi group organisation by 1935, second only to the German Labour Front. It had 4.7 million members and 520,000 volunteer workers. Nazi Party members who were active in communal welfare professionally or as volunteers had to be NSV members.
