He had at first intended to designate it merely as the Secret Police Office (Geheimes Polizei Amt) but the German initials GPA sounded too much like the Russian GPU. An obscure post office employee who had been asked to furnish a franking stamp for the new bureau suggested that it be called the Geheime Staatspolizei, simply the “Secret State Police”—GESTAPO for short—and thus unwittingly created a name the very mention of which was to inspire terror first within Germany and then without.
