[George Anderson]

Originally Posted by danielsand

I couldn't help it. Since I am German by ancestry, and speak fluent language of my ancestors, I had to chime in. Someone said that "Volks Polizei" (VoPo) means " National police".

Direct translation is "People's Police". Since DDR (East Germany) was Communist (under the Soviet thumb), ALL official names of governmental departments and such, were called "People's" (kinda like "People's Republic of China"). See,.....Communists tried hard to convince their people, that EVERYTHING belongs to them! Of course it was a farce (still is in China and Cuba, among others), and if you care to research, ALL countries in the world that are rulled by Communists, have a sort of fetish in labeling EVERYTHING "People's"!!

And guess who started it all? No other than Adolf Hitler, and the one thing that remains to this day is "Volkswagen", or "People's Car" in English.

So there you have it.

I wrote "national police" because the Volkspolizei has no American equivalent; the United Sates, as of today, has nothing close to the communist People's Police. Literal translations are sometimes confusing.