William,
An interesting badge. An example of early Afrikaans spelling too: 'west'
instead of 'wes', and 'poliesie' instead of 'polisie'. The SWA Police
existed from 1920 to 1 June 1939.
Andrew,
I believe you're right about the circumstances in which the SWA Police
were disbanded in 1939. The story has been told in (IIRC) Hans
Strydom's The Fourth Reich, and/or in Visser's
Ossewa Brandwag - Traitors or Patriots?. The SWAP was too
small and under-resourced to deal with the Nazi situation in SWA, and
so the territory had to be assigned to the SAP instead. When WWII
began, SWA was also proclaimed a military command, so that the UDF
could function there too.
__________________
Regards
Arthur
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