The Vopos

As West Germany debated last week whether it should have an army, East Germany was unmasking one.

Five thousand jackbooted, blue-uniformed toughs swarmed into the border districts to put down disturbances by farmers trying to save their homes as the Reds bulldozed a three-mile-deep isolation corridor between East and West Germany. The blue-uniformed men, part of a 100,000-man force, are called the People's Police (Volkspolizei, or Vopos, for short).

Escaped East Germans have given West German interrogators a thorough picture of the Vopos. Aside from the occasional guarding of Red army arsenals, they have no police duties, but live in old Wehrmacht barracks and train in the art of war. Out in the field they rehearse platoon and company maneuvers, learn to operate heavy machine guns and the "Stalin Organ" (a multi-tubed rocket launcher). They have a naval arm of 10,000 and a fledgling air force. The Volkspolizei is a police force that walks like an army.

The "Sovietniks." Former Nazi officers drill them, Red partisan veterans (some with as many as 15 different "cover" names) fire Communism into their minds. For two hours each evening, Vopo graduates of a special Politkultur school in Berlin indoctrinate the men in the history of the Russian Communist Party, the German workers' movement, the current "peace" campaign. Woe to the Vopo who does not learn his lesson--he may draw up to six weeks' confinement to barracks.

Supervising these activities is a Russian "advisory" staff. Each of the 24 regional Vopo units has its six-man contingent of Red army field-grade officers who dress like Vopos, live in the barracks, and keep a cold eye on training. The other Vopos call them "Sovietniks" and try to stay out of their way.

To conceal their true functions, officers and enlisted men have been given police ranks, but each parallels an army rating. The 24 Vopo commands will eventually become 24 full divisions.

The Bosses. Boss of the whole show is Security Minister Wilhelm Zaisser, whose profession is revolution. Communist Zaisser led the Rhineland Red uprisings of 1923, later turned up in Spain as "General Gomez," commander of the 13th International Brigade. Heinz Hoffman, Inspector General of the Vopo, is a graduate of the Red army's war college.

Weak spot of the Vopo is morale. The men are recruited from East Germany's tattered, disillusioned youth, enticed by promises of the best wages, food and clothing. When recruiting lags, state factories discharge young workers and state employment agencies offer these unemployed a choice: join the Vopo or work in the uranium mines. Leaves are hard to get and liberty uniforms are kept under lock. Each month an average of 90 to 100 Vopos get fed up, desert to the west. Probably no more than 30% of the whole force are ideologically certified Reds. In fact, the Russians, like the western allies, show some reluctance to rearm Germans. Their two prize Nazi trophies, captured Generals Friedrich von Paulus and Walther von Seydlitz, are still in Russia, apparently not trusted to run an army of Germans. Veteran Wehrmacht officers originally assigned to the Vopos are being shunted aside as unreliable. The Russians hope to rear a new generation of indoctrinated German officers, but seem to have recurring doubts about them too.

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