Police for the West?

At Berlin's big Whitsuntide rally (TIME, June 5), the West got a good look at Germany's Communist storm troopers--the Bereitschaften (emergency units) of the "People's Police" which the Reds have built up in Germany's Eastern zone. Tough, disciplined, and far more menacing than the parading kids themselves, they were darkly reminiscent of Hitler's \int\int . They had the training and the weapons (including machine guns, howitzers, antiaircraft guns and tanks) of a military force. The Bereitschaften, 50,000 strong, are maintained in addition to 220,000 regular "People's Police" in the Eastern zone who are armed with automatic weapons, also receive military training, and could easily be converted into an army.

West Germany, with more than twice the population of East Germany, has only about 100,000 state and local police, who are armed with clubs and non-automatic revolvers, receive no military training.

The Western Allies have formally protested against the military character of the East German police force; so far, Moscow has ignored the Western notes. But last week the West was preparing a more effective protest. Washington announced that Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had asked the West to let his government establish a federal constabulary of 25,000 men. Such a force was necessary to maintain the republic's internal security, argued Adenauer, especially in the face of the continuing streams of refugees from the East. The High Commissioners favored the idea, but would probably scale down the number of men in the proposed Western force to 5,000, to be equipped with "light arms."

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