Word: bereitschaften
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...year ago, a truck carrying eight men and a load of automatic weapons rumbled from Berlin's Eastern sector over into the West. West Berlin police arrested them on charges of being members of the East zone's Bereitschaften, the heavily armed shock troops the Russians were illegally organizing in the East zone (TIME, June 12). At their trial, two of the men turned state's evidence. One of them, 21-year-old Heinz Nocht, gave Western intelligence a detailed picture of the new East German army, amply equipped by the Russians with Nazi weapons. Since then...
...came back with nagging little ones. They staged nerve-racking blusters, such as last Whitsuntide's giant Red youth rally. They pushed an industrial speed-up and other possible war preparations in East Germany (see cut). Most ominous, they rapidly expanded the 50,000 men in the Bereitschaften, the tank-equipped "alert units" within East Germany's so-called police force that numbered well over...
...back up their own regular forces, the Russians have also organized 50,000 East Germans into Bereitschaften ("ready squads" or "emergency units") of the Red-run "People's Police." Members of the Bereitschaften are not U.S.-style auxiliary policemen equipped with armbands and nightsticks; they are tough, well-disciplined soldiers who have had intensive training with everything from rifles to tanks to artillery...
...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 ∬. 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...
Zaisser removed from the People's Police a hard core of former Nazi officers, carefully screened P.W.s and recruited youths. Then he set them up in Bereitschaften under direct control of the Russians. The ready squads, of 250 men each, are armed with rifles, submachine guns, machine guns and light artillery. In equipment they have a better start than did the bootleg German army of the '20s, which was also founded on a cadre of the best officer material...