Austrian Police Markings

[Schupo]

Ed and Ron,

Many thanks for the kudos. I think the Austrian Police are interesting in that during the war Austrian policemen became German policemen after the Anschluss. They regained their independent status after the war and were restructured into municipal and rural police like they were before the war. The Allied powers treated them a bit differently than they did the nationalized German police since they broke them up from a nationalilzed police force into various state police agencies, like they were prior to 1933.

Interestingly, the Soviets allowed the East Germans to re-arm with German weapons covertly and let them even begin weapons production once again. I guess the Americans, Brits, and French learned the lesson of the German Police re-arming during the time of the Weimar Republic but the Soviets did not because they made a separate peace and were not involved in trying to enforce the Treaty of Versailles. One might argue that the Soviets had a very narrow world view in this regard.

George