The Right to Rearm

Realistic Germans, east and west, expected nothing from Berlin. But the fact of Berlin hurt just the same: for indefinite years to come, Germany must live a cripple, with the Iron Curtain across its middle and the Soviet army astride its back. "We feel that we are in a long, dark tunnel," said one German. "We had wanted to see some light ahead . . ."

To dispel the gloom and to stiffen his countrymen's resolution to achieve prosperity and independence, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer gathered together six Cabinet ministers and made a flying postconference trip to Berlin. To the 2,200,000 West German citizens of this beleaguered isle in the German Red sea, he promised generous help from Bonn to fight unemployment, expand West Berlin commerce with West Germany and meet the city's big budget deficit of 900 million Deutsche Marks ($214,285,000). To the 17 million East Germans, for whom the Berlin conference was a last forlorn hope for relief from Communist bondage, Adenauer beamed a special message: "Be alert, be hard, be patient. Today we in the Federal Republic are developing our economic and political powers for the future benefit of all Germany, for you . . ."

Squeezing Grapefruit. In their despair, West German newspapers, normally pro-West, blamed the U.S., Britain and France as well as the U.S.S.R. The theme of many complaining editorials was: the partition of Germany suits all four powers' convenience. West Germans, their recovery assured and their self-confidence growing daily, were no longer willing just to acquiesce in Western policy. Now, as their grumbles showed, they want to help make policy.

That mood was strong late last week when Adenauer, flying back to Bonn, summoned the Bundestag for a showdown over rearmament. The 1949 constitution written by Bonn and the Western powers forbids German rearmament. To make rearmament legal, Adenauer laid before the House an amendment -he called it "clarification" -to the constitution. The proposal was drafted and redrafted a dozen times to make it bulletproof if attacked in the courts by the Socialists, and to make it more acceptable to two balky parties inside Adenauer's coalition.

Still, to win the necessary two-thirds majority, Adenauer and his parliamentary whips had to squeeze the Bundestag roster like a grapefruit -one Deputy was called back from a trip to the U.S., another had 32 to be carried in with a broken leg that had just been set at a hospital. In the first real demonstration of the vast strength he assembled in last September's election victory, Adenauer carried his amendment by nine more than two-thirds -334 to 144.

Other Ways. But more significant than the fact that West Germany had changed its constitution to permit rearmament was the language which changed it. Originally, the Adenauer clarification was designed to permit rearmament only within the European Army. The language approved by the Bundestag last week was far broader, authorized a defense force of any sort -if not EDC, perhaps an army within NATO and, theoretically, even a new German national army.

The broad language bothered the French, who dispatched their high commissioner to Adenauer's office to "inform himself as to the German government's intentions." But neither the U.S. nor Britain displayed the slightest official concern over the wording of Konrad Adenauer's constitutional clarification. It was, in fact, a sharp sign that Washington, London and Bonn have really begun to consider other, more direct ways of putting Germans back into uniform if the French persist much longer in delaying the birth of the European Army.

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