P08 Information

[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").