P08 Information

[DavidJayUden]

OK, I'll bite. WW1 DWM artillery upper with Mauser toggle and commercial barrel. Later Mauser frame.
dju

[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.

[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.

[danielsand]

Originally Posted by George Anderson

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.

You are right. Today's police is "Bundes Polizei". I am sure you are familiar with the translation of "Bundes". Since they don't carry Lugers, we don't have to worry about calling their decomissioned handguns "BuPo"s!

The only police force we have on the "national" (read "federal") level, would be the FBI. But they are organized differently than Volkspolizei. In the Communist world, all the police force in the country is directed from the central headquarters under Secretariat of Interior (ministry). Another word Communists have fetish for is "secretary", "secretariat", and other variations of the same.

So if the country is called "People's Republic of.......", the police is also called "People's Police".

My post was not trying to corect or criticize yours. Just trying to explain how, and why the VoPos got their nickname (and BTW, VoPo moniker exists only in the USA, kinda like the "Black Widow", or "Luger").