The Bothersome Opposition

Because the text is both offensive and frightening to many foreigners, West Germans have been asked by the Bonn government not to use the first stanza of the German national anthem. It begins with a rousing Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles, and goes on to lay claim to vast tracts of land that either never were German or have been ceded to other countries after two lost wars.* Instead, Bonn has asked West Germans to sing the far less nationalistic third stanza, which calls simply for "unity, justice and freedom for the German Fatherland." Nowadays that request is being defiantly ignored in West Germany by a new German political party whose meetings and rallies ring with the first stanza. The defier is the National Democratic Party, and it unashamedly calls for a dramatic reassertion of German pride.

Organized three years ago from a collection of ragtag rightist groups, the N.D.P. has in the past 14 months scored impressive gains. In six state-level elections, it has attracted 6% to 9% of the vote, captured a total of 1.5 million ballots and won 49 seats in the various legislatures. If that trend holds until the 1969 elections, the National Democrats not only will replace the fading Free Democrats as Germany's third party but also will place 40 and perhaps more delegates in the Bonn Bundestag.

Many former Nazis and onetime SS men belong to the party, and 19% of its 28,000 members regard Hitler as Germany's most outstanding historical personage v. a mere 2% in West Germany at large. Enough young people are joining up so that the average age of party members has dropped in the past 1 1/2 years from 50 to 41, making the N.D.P., at least in German terms, a party of the young.

Adolf von Thadden, the party's Prussian-born leader, pushes the idea that Germany should get back all the land that it lost after World War II, rejects the notion of German war guilt and wants the U.S. to get out of Europe. He calls for a massive "moral regeneration" to lift Germany to what he considers its rightful place in the world. From a dingy set of offices above a restaurant in Hanover, Von Thadden runs a slickly professional organization that has its own newspaper and 470 chapters throughout West Germany.

Grand Debate. The National Democrats are prospering because they are the only effective nationwide opposition to the country's two dominant parties, which are united in the Grand Coalition. The leaders of the coalition are now engaged in a debate about how to handle the National Democrats, who pose, in the opinion of many Bonn politicians, a threat to West Germany's 18-year-old federal republic. Herbert Wehner, the strong-willed Socialist tactician, wants to outlaw them under the clause in the Bonn constitution that bans anti-democratic parties. But Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger and most of his Christian Democrats would rather get at the National Democrats through a change in the electoral laws. At present, Germans vote for a party, not a person, and seats in the Bundestag are allocated according to the percentage of the national vote won by each of the parties. Kiesinger wants to change to the Anglo-American system, in which a voter in a constituency casts his ballot for one candidate and the candidate who gets the most votes wins and represents that district. After all, the great bulk of the German people, including the trade unions and press, want nothing to do with anything resembling a new Fuehrer. On a straight man-to-man voting system, the National Democrats in all likelihood would not win a plurality in a single constituency.

*The first stanza: Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world; When it comes to defense and defiance, Stand united as brothers, From the Meuse to the Meinel, from the Adige to the Belt, Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world. Today the Meuse River flows in France and Belgium, the Memel in Lithuania, the Adige in Italy, and the Belt in Denmark.

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