"Enter, Friend"

For half a century Germany's diplomats and big industrialists, deep in Drang nach Osten (Drive to the East), talked of a Berlin-to-Baghdad railway. Kaiser Wilhelm II rode through the sweltering streets of Damascus one day in 1898 to tell the citizens that Moslems "may rest assured that at all times the German Emperor will be their friend." Hitler took up where Wilhelm II left off: by the time the Nazis invaded Russia, Germany was dominating the markets of Turkey and Iran.

Now the Germans are back again. Last week a delegation of twelve top Bonn bureaucrats, industrialists and bankers gathered in Cairo to arrange some fair-sized business deals. They hoped thereby to soothe General Naguib, who threatened a boycott of Germany because of Chancellor Adenauer's promise to pay $715 million as restitution to Israel for the wrong Hitler's Germany had done the Jewish people.

Welcome Vacuum. The negotiators found a golden opportunity before them. Naguib was determined to industrialize Egypt. He didn't want to deal with the British; moreover, the spectacular decline in Egypt's foreign trade with Britain and the U.S. has stripped him of dollars and pounds sterling. Naguib's men laid it on the line: they wanted Bonn to advance $600 million in long-term credits repayable in Egyptian cotton. This would be spent to 1) build a new, $300,000,000 hydroelectric irrigation dam that would nearly double Egypt's cultivatable area and multiply its electrical output; 2) construct a 275,000-ton merchant marine; 3) modernize transport and communications; 4) improve ports. They wanted German equipment and technicians.

The German negotiators cautiously surveyed the trade vacuum and prepared to move in. They could not give Naguib all that he asked for, but the Egyptians obviously expected to settle for less. Whatever the final bargain, West Germany may well be on the way to becoming the leading foreign power in Egypt's economy.

Quiet Replacements. Actually, the British had been getting out of--and the Germans into--Egypt for some time. German experts have taken over jobs in the Egyptian state railways formerly monopolized by the British. Middle East airlines signed up ex-Luftwaffe pilots, who, under the peace terms, were forbidden to fly in Germany. Last November the Germans founded a chamber of commerce in Egypt; last month they started a German-language weekly in Cairo. Recently a group of German engineering firms won the contract to build the Aswan steelworks, Egypt's largest industrial project.

The growing German influence in Egypt is best shown by the mufti-clad crew of 30 Germans that moved quietly into Cairo two years ago and, in effect, replaced the British mission to advise Egypt's army. Today its chief, Dr. Wilhelm Voss, onetime head of the Wehrmacht's Central Armaments Supply Board, sits in the office of the Minister of War & Marine (the minister: Naguib himself), bossing Egypt's Central Planning Board. Voss's men, recruited from former SS leaders, Panzer commanders and naval captains, permeate Egypt's entire military establishment--training, advising and teaching. Off duty, they keep to themselves, stay out of bars and mischief. One Egyptian newsman who asked too-pointed questions about their functions and identities was clapped into jail.

Cairo newsmen tell the story of a British reporter who arrived at a government press conference only to find his way barred by a bayonet. He explained in English that he was there on invitation. "Oh," said a guard, brightening, "You are one of the Allemani [Germans]." The reporter mumbled something. "Enter, friend," said the soldier.

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