Year of Disappointment

In its first year as a sovereign nation and 15th member of the Atlantic alliance, West Germany has turned in a disappointing performance as great partner of the West. Items:

P: A year ago, as part of the bargain that won its sovereignty, West Germany pledged NATO a 500,000-man army of twelve divisions for the common defense. Today it still has only a handful of men (just under 10,000) in uniform, has passed less than half of the enabling legislation for rearmament. And the conscription bill has been so often delayed that final passage is not expected before fall. P: Though the most prosperous country in Europe, West Germany has refused to contribute more than 5.5% of its swelling gross national product to its own defense. Britain, despite inflationary troubles, contributes 10.1%, the U.S. 11.6%. P: Despite its failure to build its own army, West Germany, in the person of pfennig-pinching Finance Minister Fritz Schaffer, for months refused flatly to continue its cash contributions to the support of Allied troops in Germany. P: West Germany is receiving $1 billion worth of arms from the U.S. as a gift--but the only comments heard are complaints that the arms are obsolete. P:Though Germany has accumulated $2.3 billion in gold and dollar reserves, though it has an unused budgetary surplus of $1.4 billion gathering dust in banks, Schaffer is asking the U.S. for $2 billion in defense aid, half as an outright gift.

From Bonn TIME'S Bureau Chief Jim Bell reported:

Few Germans seem to care about the posture West Germany thus presents to its allies. Most politicians are interested only in next year's elections. Businessmen want to hedge against a possible Western recession by opening up trade with the East. Everyone wants big tax reductions. What does seem essential is that production should continue its phenomenal rise, steel output its steady climb (last year it passed Britain's), exports their swift increase, so that there can be more goods in the stores, more wages in the pay envelopes, more automobiles on the autobahnen (where there are nearly three times as many as in 1938).

Adenauer's Ordeal. The untold story of West Germany's shortcomings might be called the ordeal of that great old man Konrad Adenauer. Der Alte saw his deepest convictions shaken. Even his closest intimates only partly appreciate how severely that ordeal tried his spirit and paralyzed his decision. Germany has scamped its obligations in almost exactly the degree that his hand has faltered.

A year ago Adenauer stood bareheaded in a drizzling rain to watch the flag of the Federal Republic raised for the first time. His nation, a decade before the smoking ruins of Hitler's Reich, was accepted in the world again, largely because of him. This was his moment of triumph.

The disintegration of Adenauer's leadership began with Geneva's conference at the Summit. In Adenauer's eyes the Western policy of building strength in concert, which had enabled West Germany to defy Soviet displeasure and declare its sovereignty, had been abandoned, and the pillar on which he had leaned for six years had given way. The sight of Eisenhower beaming at Bulganin, Macmillan crying "There ain't gonna be no war," the new atmosphere of relaxation, confused and bewildered him. His mission to Moscow, which followed soon after, virtually shattered him. He considered Russian leaders the personification of evil and detested this intimate contact with them. But he and his advisers returned from Moscow bitterly convinced that their policy had been based on a false assumption, and that no nation--including the U.S.--had the mass or energy to move the Soviet leaders against their will. In Moscow he had desperately accepted a bad bargain, swapping diplomatic recognition for the release of a handful of war prisoners. His intimates say he returned to Bonn last September feeling he had been broken by blackmail and hating himself for it. Three weeks later, weary, downhearted and restless, he took a lonely walk one foggy night along the murky Rhine, hands clasped behind his back. Next day he came down with bronchial pneumonia.

Appalling Error. While Adenauer lay in his bed for seven weeks, more seriously ill than most people knew, Molotov at the second Geneva conference convinced thousands of West Germans that reunification was a gift to be bestowed by one power--the Soviet Union--and on its conditions. The failure of positions of strength to win East Germany back led some Germans to ask why they should waste time, money and manpower in rearming. Why rearm if there "ain't gonna be no war"? Almost immediately there began a widespread search for ways to circumvent Germany's pledges to NATO.

When Thomas Dehler, leader of the second-largest party in Adenauer's coalition, demanded "a German foreign policy" and bilateral negotiations with the Russians, Adenauer on his sickbed could not contain himself. He dashed off a letter demanding that Dehler recant and swear allegiance to Adenauer's policy. It was an appalling political error, the first sign that the sick old man was losing his legendary political instinct. Dehler had been slipping, but faced with such a humiliating ultimatum, a majority of his party rallied to him, and deserted the coalition. Adenauer's once-massive 334-vote majority shrank to 281.

Right the Wrong. A fortnight ago Konrad Adenauer returned tanned from a month-long vacation in Switzerland. He seemed once again more like his old self. He summoned all his power--and it took all of it--to get the conscription bill through its first reading (it will take all his power to get it enacted by fall). He roused himself at last to put Fritz Schaffer in his place. Last week, speaking with Adenauer's backing, Foreign Minister Brentano reversed Schaffer's stand, announced that West Germany will continue to share the cost of maintaining Allied troops on its soil "in the spirit of our alliance," until West Germany had built an army of its own. But the new partner still has a long way to go to make up for its first year.

Against this depressing performance needs to be put the most important political fact in Germany today: the country's continuing prosperity. Last week the Federal Labor Office reported only 634,000 unemployed in a labor force of 17 million. Beside the fact of prosperity, all other impulses--even the impulse for reunifying the country--are subsidiary, for which everyone can be grateful.

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