A little-known fact. The pilot scheme to encourage those living illegally in the UK to leave voluntarily was called Operation Vaken. The pilot lasted one month, and took place between 22 July and 22 August 2013 in six London boroughs. The operation was to test the hypothesis that people without leave to remain would depart voluntarily if they were made aware there was “a near and present” danger of being arrested. Operation Vaken is best remembered for the controversial vans carrying the message “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest”, also known as the “Go home” vans.

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Operation Vaken took many people by surprise, not least in its crude populist approach. But perhaps the most surprising thing about it was its name. Why, of all words, Vaken? After all, we’ve had many operations over the years by the Home Office, police and military, but they’ve usually been given simple names, often taken from nature. So Operation Yewtree investigated the sexual abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile and others, Operation Bumblebee was an anti-burglary campaign in the 1990s, Operation Antler was an investigation into alleged malfeasance at Porton Down. We don’t understand the significance of the names attached to the operations for a good reason. There shouldn’t be any. Operation names are intended to be neutral and unrelated to a particular case.

Which is where Operation Vaken becomes a little odd. Vaken isn’t an easily recognisable word. Nor is it an English word. Operation names should not stand out. This one does.

Operation Vaken was part of the government’s “hostile environment” strategy (first introduced as a phrase by Labour home secretary Alan Johnson, then heartily championed by Theresa May in her six years at the Home Office). The evaluation report on the pilot, published in October 2013, stated: “There have been 60 voluntary departures which we believe can be directly attributed to Operation Vaken.” The report also identified a further 65 cases that were “currently being progressed to departure”.

Like much Home Office policy, it appeared to be a response to the then growing popularity of Ukip. If the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition was to keep Ukip at bay, it believed it would have to convince voters it was not a soft touch: that it was equally determined to reduce the number of immigrants (the home secretary, Theresa May, was almost obsessively determined to get the figure down to tens of thousands) and had a zero tolerance policy to those who had no right to be in the country.

Last week Bob Kerslake, who headed the civil service between 2012 and 2014, said May’s policy at the Home Office was seen by some ministers as “almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany”.

Profile How do you get asylum in the UK? Show Hide How many people apply for asylum? In 2016, there were 30,747 applications for asylum in the UK. Of the applications decided in 2016, 34% were initially granted asylum or another protection visa. What is the process? Firstly, a short, screening interview is conducted with the applicant, to obtain basic details about the person and their claim. Next, the person will have their main interview with the Home Office, which tries to deal with straightforward cases within six months, although some people wait for more than a year. Finally, a caseworker will decide on the person's need for protection based on their interview, supporting documents, and the Home Office's country guidance about the applicant's country of origin. What is the main interview like? The asylum seeker will usually be interviewed at one of 12 regional casework units by a Home Office representative, with an interpreter present if needed. During the interview, the applicant will be asked why they are seeking asylum and about their journey to the UK. How important is the interview? Incredibly so. The transcript, which is written by the Home Office representative during the interview, becomes the main record of the claim. People are often refused asylum on the basis that there were inconsistencies in their interview, or between their main and screening interviews, which the Home Office will say undermines the person's credibility. The transcript is also used heavily if the claim is refused and goes to appeal. Miranda Butler, a barrister at 3 Hare Court Chambers in London, calls the interview a "totemic piece of evidence. It’s their chance to tell their story. You’ve got to give your claim in a watertight fashion … It’s very difficult to change your account afterwards and if you do people will assume you’re lying.” What happens after that? If someone is granted refugee status or another protection visa, they have the right to live and work in the UK and may be able to bring their spouse and dependent children over to live with them. If refused, they may have the right to appeal against the decision. In 2016, 41% of appeals that were determined resulted in people being granted asylum. If they do not apply to appeal within 14 days of refusal they may be deported and their asylum support payments will be stopped.

Which takes us back to the puzzling name. In 2013, sociologists Les Back and Shamser Sinha wrote an article for the political website Open Democracy, revealing that the government has abandoned plans to send the “Go home” vans around the country. Open Democracy asked the Home Office to explain its origin. A spokesman said Home Office operations were named alphabetically, and that Vaken means “awake” in Swedish, but insisted that was not why it was chosen.

So are we to believe it is a codename randomly allocated for security purposes? Or is it an esoteric biblical reference in Swedish (“Vaken fördenskull; ty I veten icke dagen, ej heller stunden”, or “Wake therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour”, from Matthew 25:13, makes a scary kind of sense)

Or is it something even more insidious? Northern European languages often share many old Norse and proto-Germanic roots; the word vaken in Swedish (from the old Norse) equates to awake or awaken in English and erwache or erwachen in modern German. It also has symbolic resonance in many languages – not least German. Dietrich Eckart,who has been labelled “the spiritual father of national socialism”, wrote a famous poem in 1922 called Deutschland Erwache (Germany Awake).

It is a call to action against infidels. The poem starts “Storm! Storm! Storm! Storm! Storm! Storm! / Ring the bells from tower to tower! / Ring until sparks begin to fly, / Judas appears to win the Reich! / Ring until the ropes turn red from blood, / With only burning, torture and murder around, / Ring the storm until the Earth rises / Under the thunder of liberating vengeance!” The poem concludes “Germany, awake! Awake!”

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That poem Deutschland Erwache was adopted, for many years in the 1920s and 1930s, as the Sturmlied (Storm Song) which became the de facto anthem of the Sturmabteilung, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party until supplanted by the Horst-Wessel-Lied. The phrase “Deutschland Erwache” was emblazoned on banners that flew at the Nuremberg rallies. Hitler dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to Eckart.

Another popular marching song, also called Germany Awake, included the lyrics “All these hypocrites, we throw them out, Judea leave our German house!”.

In 2016, in the London Review of Books, the political economist William Davies wrote that he had taken part in a project prompted by Operation Vaken to try to understand how the billboard had come about. He spoke to Home Office civil servants off the record, and revealed that “one former official compared the ethos of the Home Office to that of Millwall football fans: ‘No one likes us, we don’t care.’”

Perhaps it was a Home Office official with a similar view who dreamed up the name Operation Vaken. Perhaps it was a Home Office official bitterly opposed to the project who hoped to alert us to the historical precedent. Or perhaps, as the Home Office would doubtless assert, the resemblance between Operation Vaken and Deutchsland Erwache is pure coincidence. But if it is, it’s certainly an unfortunate one.

• Simon Hattenstone is a features writer for the Guardian