Siege of the Pentabonn

The earth shook to the roar of can non and the bite of heavy treads as German-built Leopard tanks and tank destroyers, more than 100 strong, staged a mock panzer battle at the Bundeswehr proving grounds at Munsterlager.

The real hostilities, however, were in the reviewing stand. There stood a bristling Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and his angry Defense Minister, Gerhard Schroder. In a split that has ended eight months of harmony in the coalition Cabinet, Kiesinger and Schroeder, both Christian Democrats, were embattled over projected cuts in West Germany's defense budget.

Not Amused. The Bundeswehr's 456,000 men constitute the strongest and best-equipped NATO force on the Continent, are deployed in the first layer of defense along the Iron Curtain from Schleswig-Holstein to Bavaria. Bonn's plans called for an expansion of the Bundeswehr over the next few years, but Kiesinger's Cabinet, worried about the economic slowdown in West Germany, two weeks ago decided to cut military expansion plans by about 25%. When a jet passed low over the Palais Schaumburg, in which the Cabinet was meeting, Interior Minister Paul Luecke cracked: "Schroder is calling out his Starfighters against us." Schroder was not amused. "No," he replied icily, "that must be the Americans pulling out."

When he was overruled, Schroeder carried his fight from the Defense Ministry, newly housed in a gleaming complex above the Rhine that has inevitably been nicknamed the Pentabonn, into the public arena. He leaked to the press that the cuts would mean a reduction of 60,000 men in the German army. The calculation was his own and not necessarily accurate, since the reductions could be taken in equipment as well as men. Still, the ensuing headlines brought the desired result. Washington, irritated that Kiesinger had not informed it in advance of the budget reduction, let it be known that it firmly opposed any cut in German military strength, especially since it hopes to recall some U.S. troops from Germany.* Defense Secretary Robert McNamara canceled a trip to West Germany; it was for him that the Munsterlager display had been planned.

Holding a Grudge. Kiesinger was furious. He went on TV to disavow Schroder, saying that "the Cabinet has by no means decided to cut the troop strength of the Bundeswehr to a considerable de gree, let alone by 60,000 men." While overall cutbacks will be made in projected defense budgets through 1971, he said, the defense budget for the next four years will actually be larger than at present. Kiesinger was joined by Finance Minister Franz Josef Strauss, who holds a grudge against

Schroder for fingering him, when Schroder was Foreign Minister, as the man who ordered the arrest of an edi tor in the 1962 Der Spiegel scandal. The ambitious Strauss, who aims at the chancellorship for himself one day and sees Schroder as a rival, accused Schroder of misleading the German public with "lies and deliberate propaganda."

After two or three meetings with Kiesinger, Schroder continued to insist that the cutback would mean a drop in army strength. His goading finally led Kiesinger to announce that he would make no decision on any changes in German armed strength before consulting President Johnson, whom he will visit in Washington beginning Aug. 15. Schroder so far has not been asked to go along. In fact, the two are not at all compatible. The austere North German Defense Minister and the relaxed Swabian could hardly be more unlike in taste, temperament and several areas of policy. Schroder, the only unremitting Atlanticist in the coalition Cabinet, is resented by both Kiesinger and Strauss for emphasizing ties with Washington over those with Charles de Gaulle. But Kiesinger can hardly fire Schroder. He is the leader of the Protestant wing of the Christian Democratic Party, whose support the Catholic Chancellor needs, and was his party's choice for Chancellor after Kiesinger.

* Washington thus got a taste of its own medicine. Kiesinger complained bitterly that he had had to learn of Washington's proposed cutback of U.S. troops in West Germany by reading the newspapers.

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