Crisis of Confidence

By George Russell

The powerhouse of Europe suddenly faces doubts and challenges In the prosperous seaport of Hamburg, some 60,000 young demonstrators, many with their faces painted a ghostly white, marched through the broad streets ten to 15 abreast. They carried signs reading ROCKETS OUT and PEACE WITHOUT WEAPONS. In the same city, just 24 hours earlier, West German Defense Minister Hans Apel was jeered into silence by a congress of devout Lutheran evangelicals, as he tried to explain his government's nuclear defense stand.

In Bonn, during one of the most high-strung sessions of the Bundestag since the 1950s, a young Social Democratic deputy stood before his vociferous parliamentary colleagues with tears streaming down his face. Why, he asked, was his party approving a $16.2 billion defense budget when millions of children around the world were starving to death every year? His emotive question was answered with shaken fists and shouted injunctions to sit down.

That painful legislative scene was more than matched by the violence that erupted last week in front of the civic parliamentary building in West Berlin. Thousands of youths, some armed with rocks and Molotov cocktails, clashed fiercely with police in a ten-hour riot that one West German television reporter luridly described as "resembling civil war." At least 76 policemen were injured. The ugly confrontation resulted from the eviction of housing squatters from several abandoned West Berlin buildings.

Perhaps the most startling scene of all occurred in Bonn, where some 200 members of the country's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, paraded through the streets to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the organization. Fully 6,000 police were on hand to protect the soldiers from civilian abuse. Similar public military displays are now being largely abandoned.

Little more than a year ago, West Germany was the confident powerhouse of Europe. Powerful it still is, and undoubtedly it will remain so, but the populous (61.3 million), rich (1980 per capita income: $12,400) and gifted nation that has so often been a victim of its own excesses is now gripped by a uniquely Teutonic mood of Angst, an attitude that in some respects is not "far removed from a crisis of confidence," in the words of Karl Otto Pohl, president of West Germany's central bank. And nowhere are the effects of that mood more evident than in the concerned features of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

Only nine months after his triumphant reelection, West Germany's usually ebullient leader has watched his authority begin to be openly challenged. His German Social Democratic Party (S.P.D.) was ousted from city hall in West Berlin in May. An amorphous left-wing coalition, including important members of his own party, is impugning some of Schmidt's most firmly held policies. Chief among them: Bonn's commitment to the 1979 NATO decision to deploy U.S. missiles to strengthen Europe's military security while at the same time seeking arms limitation through negotiations with Moscow.

In mid-May, Schmidt had to threaten to resign if his followers decided to thwart the NATO commitment. State and local chapters of the Social Democrats have already tried to do so in Baden-Wuerttemberg and in South Hesse. But while Schmidt is feeling the strain, he is still fighting. Says he: "Do not be deceived by the activities of the young socialists, and do not overestimate them. Angst has become chic. There is no doubt that the majority of [West] Germans and a large majority of the S.P.D. support our foreign and security policies."

That may be so, but some extremely heavy challenges remain for Schmidt. No later than the fall, he must confront the Bundestag with West Germany's 1982 budget. To restore balance to a faltering economy, he needs to make deep cuts in West Germany's cherished social programs. But that could unite in opposition antimilitary leftists in Schmidt's party with those who strongly favor continuing and expanding welfare programs. Schmidt's failure to overcome all of those foes could spell the end of his ruling coalition arrangement with the liberal Free Democratic Party (F.D.P.), which insists on the need for austerity.

The difficulties plaguing West Germany and threatening Schmidt are less a disease than a collection of symptoms. Chief among them is a growing fear of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets and a conviction among the disaffected (which Moscow skillfully exploits) that the country is merely a pawn in the bellicose designs of the Reagan Administration. Says one senior Western diplomat based in Bonn: "It comes as a surprise at first, but a generation of West Germans who remember neither the war nor the cold war are perfectly capable of accepting Soviet statements at face value."

But there is more than just naivete involved in West Germany's dilemma about its policy toward the Soviet Union. The country is at a watershed. Says Christoph Bertram, director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies: "The Federal Republic is simply much more affected than most other European countries by the state of East-West relations. As it has profited from detente between East and West more than most other Western countries, so it will suffer from a decline or breakdown of detente more than most others."

Faced with the erosion of detente Schmidt is trying to strengthen his country's already formidable defenses--its 340,000-man army is considered by far the best in Western Europe--at a time when many of his countrymen think that it is hopeless even to think of opposing the Soviet juggernaut. NATO forces are outnumbered by the Warsaw Pact nations more than 2 to 1 in divisions, better than 3 to 1 in tanks and a frightening 8 to 1 in medium-range nuclear missiles. Logistics experts fear that NATO forces would start running short of ammunition, fuel, weapons and spare parts within scant days of any Soviet attack. The main route of any attack, of course, runs right through West Germany. This vulnerability, plus a suspicion of U.S. motives, is one reason for the growing antimilitary movement.

No less a Social Democratic figure than Egon Bahr, former secretary of the party, has serious doubts that the Europeans should accept the 572 American-made nuclear missiles now planned for installation by the mid-1980s. Bahr argues that the Soviets can be persuaded, without a parallel NATO arms buildup, to withdraw their formidable SS-20 missiles now trained on Western European targets.

Such optimistic notions are subtly reinforced by the actions of Willy Brandt, the former Social Democratic chancellor who successfully broke down some of the barriers that separated West and East Germany in the '70s and eased his country's relations with the Soviet Union. This week Brandt flies to Moscow to discuss the nuclear missile issue. His critics claim that the Soviets will exploit the opportunity to drive yet another wedge between Social Democratic factions, but Brandt coolly replies, "Old people like me have seen worse Germans than pacifist Germans."

Worries about the Soviets and Armageddon are only part of the problem that so deeply concerns West Germans today. The famed West German economy, the miracle of Europe for so many post-World War II recovery years, is beginning to run into trouble. The country faces the prospect of the gross national product decreasing this year, perhaps by 2%. In a report issued last week, the respected Institute for World Economics in Kiel predicted a "sustained recession." Unemployment is expected to creep up to 5.8% and inflation to 5.6%--modest by the standards of most countries (Britain's comparable figures are 11% and 15.7%) but disturbing to the success-oriented West Germans. In particular, the increase in prices stirs nervous memories of the hyperinflation that tore the Weimar Republic apart after World War I.

But the slowing of an economy that has brought West Germany one of the highest standards of living in the world has far deeper implications for the West Germans than a concern for their pocketbooks. As Historian Karl-Dietrich Bracher puts it, the only coalescing force for the West Germans after the war was their economy. Haunted by the past, divided by the present, they have made economic success a kind of ideology, the rationale for their new democracy. Indeed, the visible proof of the success of the West German economy served to unite the people, and its force made the nation a respected world power.

West Germany's worries are most vividly reflected among the nation's young people, and there are a lot of them. Some 11.5 million West Germans, or nearly 19% of the population, are between the ages of 13 and 25. More than 1 million will turn 17 this year. By no means do all young West Germans feel alienated and afraid, but their activists give muscle to the current protest movement, just as an outspoken minority did in the anti-Viet Nam War days. But compared with that turbulent era, there is no single encompassing issue to rally around. Alienated West German youngsters protest, sometimes violently, against urban housing shortages and the construction of nuclear power plants, which the country, as a major oil importer, badly needs. They can fight as fiercely against nuclear missiles, but otherwise their strategy of protest is often fragmentary, anxious and unspecified.

Says Werner Lutz, 31, president of the Young Democrats, an affiliate of the Free Democratic Party: "You can't ever talk about 'the youth movement.' It is really many movements. It is peace marchers in Hamburg, antinuke protesters in Brokdorf, squatters in West Berlin. But what they share in common is anxiety over what will happen to them in the future. Suddenly we are being told that economic conditions will worsen, that there are no longer enough resources, that it may not be possible for us to live in peace."

Norbert Rissling, 25, is a conscientious objector to West Germany's military draft who opposes nuclear power and rearmament. He sits in a cafe in Bonn and probes the motivations underlying the discontent of young people. "We want what our parents have," he says with feeling, "and we don't see how to get it. Now it seems we will not be able to realize certain expectations, so we rebel against parents and against the state. 'They' say they rebuilt society and ask us how 'we' can dare to destroy what they built. There is a wall between us." Then he breaks into French, as if the next idea cannot be expressed in German. "Youth is fed up. They want to live a little now, to relax and have fun."

Wolfgang, 24, and Sandra, 18, huddle together on the sparsely furnished third floor of an abandoned Bonn house that the couple helped to seize in April. Wolfgang--he refuses to give his last name because that would be "dangerous"--is a bricklayer who talks about his squatting as if it were a political commitment. His attitude reflects a poster statement on the wall: "Better to occupy a house than a foreign country." Sandra is in sympathetic agreement.

Even within the system that they profess to despise, the youngsters have their sympathizers. Says Hans-Jochen Vogel, 55, the former S.P.D. mayor of West Berlin whose lenient approach to local housing squatters did nothing to endear him to already disenchanted voters in last May's local election: "There is definitely a youth protest that has spread all over. The real problem is understanding the motivation behind the movement. I see a lack of credibility among the young toward politicians and all things political, a feeling that too much of their life is administered for them."

As the protests mount, Chancellor Schmidt continues to insist that most West Germans back his policies. He may be right about that, but surely wrong if he feels that the currents can be ignored or that in their way they do not reflect, even if they exaggerate, feelings of doubt and concern that are new to the West German people at large. Schmidt's pragmatic answer to his nation's current dilemma, given recently to a Hamburg newspaper, is "no blood, no tears, but sweat." Since the end of World War II, the West German's have shown the world that they are willing to sweat to build a new society and a new respectability. The great challenge to the West Germans today is to avoid a splintering of their society that would make it harder yet to face the unsettling problems of the' 80s.

--By George Russell.

Reported by D.L Coutu and Roland Flamini/Bonn

With reporting by D.L Coutu and Roland Flamini

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