An Army Is Born

West Germany's 79-year-old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was convalescing from bronchial pneumonia, and still ill, when he got the news of Geneva's failure to reunify Germany. He summoned military aides and ministers to his home and told them to get moving on the formation of Wrest Germany's new armed forces. Adenauer's demand: four combat divisions in the field by the end of 1956.

Last week, one day before the Chancellor got back to his desk after seven weeks' confinement, the Bonn government took a major step toward meeting his wishes. A new five-member Supreme Military Council was formed to assume direct operational command over West German armed forces, subject to policy directives of Civilian Theodor Blank's Defense Ministry. Chairman of the council and, in effect, postwar West Germany's chief of staff will be Lieut. General Adolf Heusinger. 58. a small (5 ft. 6 in.), sandy-haired army veteran who began his career as a cadet in World War 1, rose to be Wehrmacht chief of operations in 1940, was standing at Hitler's side when the bomb exploded in the Fuhrer's East Prussian headquarters on July 20, 1944. Heusinger was a participant in the plot, although he did not know the bomb had been set for that time, and he was put under Nazi house arrest until war's end. Considered by some a colorless, wavering man, he has been called the "Jein [yes-no] general." But he has had Adenauer's confidence and been his top military adviser since 1950.

Next to Heusinger, with the title chief of armed forces, will be Lieut. General Hans Speidel, 58, also an arrested suspect in the Hitler bomb plot. A round-faced man with spare hair and glasses, Speidel served in France, Russia and Italy in World War 11, became Rommel's chief of staff on the Western front. He was teaching history at Tubingen University in 1950 when Adenauer asked him to come to Bonn as an adviser, later sent him to Paris as West German observer to EDC and NATO.

Heusinger, Speidel and their three colleagues plan to have the first training companies of West Germany's projected twelve divisions set up by Jan. 2.

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