Volksmarch
I don't think Americans should use that term
An acquaintance of mine recently made a social media post about their involvement with a Volksmarch on the Crazy Horse memorial. I was immediately taken aback, I hadn't heard that term before, and I immediately assumed that my friend had become a Nazi.
After doing some precursory research, I came to the conclusion that the Volksmarch was just a hike put on by the Crazy Horse memorial team and the American Volkssport Association (AVA) with no real ties to Nazism.
I don't think the optics are great though. A bunch of Volk are going to March up the Crazy horse memorial, a monument built in mild defiance to Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore itself being built by the Volk, which was fairly disrespectful to the natives who lived and worshiped there to say the least.
Volk is simply the German word for People. However the word is tied to German nationalism, populism and Nazism. More recently the term has been used in the PEGIDA slogan "Wir sind das Volk" ( "We are the people" ) to refer to ethnic Germans. The same phrase was used during the Monday demonstrations against the East German government. Clearly an amount of care is needed when using the word Volk in an English context.
The term March also makes me a bit uneasy. As an American, I associate marches with military or militant action. I wouldn't consider march to be a good synonym with hiking. Somewhat interesting is that the Germans have another word for Hiking as well, "Wandern". Perhaps "VolksWandern" would be a better term, in fact the Volksmarch history pdf mentions "Skiwandern" events.
In the previously linked PDF it mentions Volksmarching came about because of casual exercise enthusiasts being pushed out of races by professionals. It also mentions that Volksmarching was introduced to America by Rev. Kenn Knopp, who was visiting Italy and struggling with the amount of walking when relatives told him to exercise more and about Volksmarching. He brought the event to Fredericksburg, TX and kept the Volksmarching name to try drum up interest with the town's German roots.
I guess in conclusion, this must be how other language speakers feel when some English word or slang sneaks it's way in to their language. Also Volksmarching is a fairly innocent term all things considered.