Speeding Up

Near Giessen in Hesse, the first West German battalions equipped with Honest John missiles were in training last week, one impressive indication that the slow-starting Bundeswehr is at last getting going. A new urgency in the planning suggests that dynamic Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauss (now on an inspection tour of the U.S.) is well aware that any summit agreement to freeze armaments in central Europe would leave West Germany in the cold.

By 1962 or 1963, West Germany is scheduled to have the West's toughest and most modern fighting force in Europe. The 350,000-man Bundeswehr will include a twelve-division army, a small navy, and a 1,300-plane air force built around the speedy (Mach 2) Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

Slow Start. At the moment, such a Bundeswehr is still a long way off. The twelve divisions exist largely on paper. Even the seven "combat ready'' divisions transferred to NATO during the past two years are training groups through which thousands of raw recruits pass annually, later to be peeled off as cadres for other divisions. Of the total planned strength of 200,000 men, the army today has only 123,000. Of the 2,500 pilots the new Luftwaffe will need, only 650 are trained, and new pilots are qualifying at the rate of only ten per month. (To step up the process, 300 German pilots are being trained in the U.S. and 200 in Canada.) The navy is making do with one destroyer and 130-odd minesweepers, patrol boats and submarines.

But the days are long past when German opinion was hostile to remilitarization: according to a poll, 73% of West Germans favor a German share in Europe's defense. Also disappearing are some of the limitations on German armament manufacturing.

West Germany is still forbidden by treaty to produce ABC weapons (atomic, bacteriological and chemical warfare). But restrictions are being relaxed to permit German-made short-range antitank rockets. Naval training vessels are no longer limited to 3,000 tons. Germans may soon be allowed to manufacture antiaircraft rockets as well.

North & South. Previously, German industry, its order books full, turned up its nose at armament orders. Fritz Berg, president of the Federation of German Industry, said "Never again." But in a speech a month ago, he changed his tune: "We see no reason why military contracts should be handed to foreign firms when German industry can handle them just as well." The big Henschel locomotive and truck-building firm has just contracted to make tanks, already manufactures Hispano-Suiza armored troop carriers under license. In fact, close to half of Bundeswehr procurement now benefits German firms. Germany's once huge aircraft industry has been pulled together into two big "North" and "South" industrial units, composed of such famous firms as Heinkel, Messerschmitt and Dornier. The government has already awarded them contracts to make 200 F-104s and other foreign planes under license. A Krupp subsidiary, "Weser" Flugzeugbau, has been commissioned to design a medium-range transport. In March, Strauss's Defense Ministry parceled out $520 million in military spending, five times the average of any preceding month.

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