West Germany

MONTHS ago it was obvious that the year 1963, or most of it, would be dominated in West Germany by the issue of the successor to Dr. Konrad Adenauer. Since the Federal Republic came into existence in 1949, Chancellor Adenauer has led his Christian Democratic Party to victory in four successive elections. In addition, he has created his own peculiar type of parliamentary government, the so-called “Chancellor democracy,” in which a father figure has advised, admonished, steered, directed, and, above all, controlled. This paternalistic rule has imprinted itself to such an extent on the contemporary German mind that many Germans have visualized Adenauer’s retirement with a shudder, since they have identified their own hopes and fears with him for so long.

It is one of the tragedies of human history that men who have worked ably and selflessly for their country sometimes try to cling too long to power. The greatest German statesman, Bismarck, was driven from office with the execrations of his Kaiser ringing in his ears. Winston Churchill was unseated, in the final resort, by the gibes of an unfunny comic paper, Punch. Adenauer, even more than Bismarck or Churchill, has found growing old gracefully impossible, at least in office. It is a peculiarly poignant tragedy that such a man should approach the moment of retirement in a mood of frustration and rancor.

Years ago Adenauer decided that Ludwig Erhard, his Minister of Economics and his cocreator of the German renaissance since 1949, would not succeed him. Erhard had buried himself in economic issues; he had, Adenauer thought, no flair for foreign affairs. He was fat — a besetting sin in Adenauer’s eyes, for the Chancellor is basically an ascetic. Erhard talked in a rough Swabian accent and was utterly remote from the elite of the Rhineland Catholic hierarchy, glum kinsmen of the Roman Curia, whose counsels have helped Adenauer to keep his distance from his countrymen, his Christian Democratic colleagues, and his Cabinet ministers. For the last five years Adenauer has been trying to block Erhard’s candidacy for the chancellorship, with an old man’s persistence and an old man’s refusal to respect the views of the Christian Democratic majority.

Despite Adenauer’s opposition, the party nominated Erhard to succeed him. In October, he will be formally elected Chancellor by the Bundestag, and the Federal Republic will move into its next phase of development, in which people, parliament, and Cabinet ministers should be able to play a bigger part than they have so far.

The changing of the guard

The Federal Republic is stable, politically and socially as well as economically. The fears which have been expressed over Adenauer’s departure, springing from a back-to-the-womb reflex of a Germany which in some sense had to be reborn after the Nazi era, are unfounded. The new Federal government which had to be formed, after the coalition crisis in December of last year, has shown a welcome stability. It has already withstood some awkward stresses, in spite of Adenauer, who has been intent on steering his own line with as little reference as possible to his ministers.

Some of the seven new ministers have shown marked ability. The Free Democrats would be happy to remain in coalition with the Christian Democrats under Adenauer’s successor — in fact, a great deal happier than they have been under his leadership. Indeed, there are only two factors working against the inception of a new era of middle-of-the-road Christian Democratic government in West Germany, in which there could be a blossoming of ideas on the future of a country no longer overshadowed by a single masterful old man. The first factor is the maneuvering for control; the second is the public reaction to the internal convulsions of the Christian Democratic Party.

For the last two years Adenauer had hoped that he could insinuate his own candidate into the chancellorship. He was Heinrich Krone, Adenauer’s right-hand man in the party and his Minister for Special Questions. Krone played a most unselfish role in the last two Adenauer governments, always on hand to iron out internal differences in Cabinet or coalition, patient and persuasive, asking nothing for himself. But Krone is a man in his seventies, devoid of ambition. And his good work in recent years has been partly in expiation of the poor figure which he cut in 1933, when he Collaborated in the still-strong Catholic Center Party’s suicide, leaving the Nazis alone in the political field.

From Adenauer’s point of view, Krone would have made an ideal Chancellor, in that he could have been steered from the present Chancellor’s home at Rhoendorf, just across the Rhine, and the ex-Chancellor might have become the power behind the throne and so remain, effectively directing the destiny of the people of West Germany.

The Federal Foreign Minister, Gerhard Schroeder, is both strongminded and wily; he wants to work on as Foreign Minister until his political stature is generally recognized. He is moving steadily toward that goal, and may consider himself as a potential candidate for the chancellorship at the next Federal elections, in 1965.

Will Adenauer bring himself to cooperate with Erhard, his party’s choice? In March, Adenauer cut Erhard in public, openly insulting the man who had served him loyally for fifteen years and who had never conspired to supplant him or thwart his will. There were unforgettable scenes in the Bundestag, when Adenauer refused to address a single word to the minister who sat on his right, less than a foot away from him. These scenes, not provoked by Erhard, leave a question mark against what is in store for Erhard as Chancellor.

The public reaction

During these internecine Christian Democratic Party struggles, the Christian Democrats have been losing ground with the electorate. The West Berlin elections on February 17 were an eye-opener. The Christian Democratic vote dropped from 38 to 29 percent; that of the Social Democrats, in permanent opposition in Bonn, went from 52 to 62 percent. This was by far the worst setback suffered by the Christian Democrats since they began ruling West Germany in 1949.

Simultaneously, an angry altercation began in Bavaria, the greatest Christian Democratic stronghold, over the local leadership of FranzJosef Strauss, who was sacked in December from the Federal Ministry of Defense over the Spiegel affair. It was significant that Strauss, a young man at forty-nine, had annoyed most of all the members of the party’s youth group, the Junge Union. In other Laender the Christian Democrats were also at odds with one another. The party was losing cohesion. purpose, direction.

Early in March the Christian Democratic Party appointed two “grand electors” to look into the matter of the succession. One of them, Heinrich von Brentano, was chairman of the parliamentaryparty; the other, Josef Dufhues, was party manager. Simpleminded people have supposed that this two-man committee really has no other object in life. In reality, its more important aim is to re-create the party solidarity which alone can offset the failures of the party leader. Adenauer intends to cling to the chairmanship of the party even after he retires from the chancellorship. This is a gloomy prospect, if only because of the increasing waywardness of his policy, thought, and pronouncements.

The Chancellor shows his age

A few examples of this waywardness may be illustrative. Adenauer made a series of incredible statements in the course of a bare fortnight. He said that the British government, following the breakdown of the Brussels talks on Britain’s entry into the Common Market, had twice officially stated that it would make no further attempt to talk with the Six until a British general election had been held. Challenged to name his source for this quite untrue assertion, he said he had read this “in the German newspapers.” He could not name one such newspaper, for none had printed such a thing.

Adenauer asked Erhard pointedly what he was doing about his Secretary of State, Dr. Mueller-Armack, who had offered his resignation after the Brussels breakdown. Adenauer added that it was paradoxical that Mueller-Armack should remain in office when he was in open disagreement with the policy of his government. But Mueller-Armack was not in disagreement with his own government; he was in disagreement with General de Gaulle’s action in barring the road to Britain’s entry. Adenauer had insisted that he himself favored Britain’s entry, but there were many Germans who believed that he had not lifted a finger to make it possible. The doubts of such people were reinforced by the Mueller-Armack episode.

Almost at once Adenauer made another gaffe. Speaking to a gathering of the international press which included Polish newspapermen, he welcomed the new German-Polish trade agreement, called for closer relations between the two countries, and then reminded his listeners, including the Poles, that Poland was “not a free country.” It would be difficult to imagine a less suitable way of improving relations with Warsaw.

Of a more comical nature was the Chancellor’s insistence that his private telephone line was being tapped. He claimed he could recognize the interference noises. The Minister of Posts put his line in order (some of the wiring was merely old), then tapped Adenauer’s conversations for several days. Tape recordings were played for the astonished Chancellor, after he had said that all tapping of his line had ceased.

It is not a matter of surprise that at eighty-seven Adenauer is losingsome of his old level-headedness. His inflexibility of mind has become such that he refused to be deterred for one moment from his favorite project of a Franco-German treaty of cooperation, even when De Gaulle timed its signing to coincide exactly with the Brussels breakdown organized with such ruthless efficiency by Foreign Minister Couve de Murville. The dangers inherent in putting friendship with France above the interests of the Western alliance as a whole were at once recognized by German politicians, the German press, and a large section of the German public.

But the Chancellor was unshaken in his allegiance to De Gaulle, a subservient attitude which may lose his Christian Democratic Party some millions of votes in Land elections by the time he retires. For the concern of the German people over the prospect of worsening relations with the United States and, to a lesser extent, Britain is considerable. And the great mass of Germans have not the slightest interest in the sort of European Third Force which De Gaulle wants to create. They are far too aware of the twenty Red Army divisions in East Germany, of Soviet rocket-launching bases, and of the nonsense of a French independent nuclear deterrent.

Grumbling in Bonn

In other, minor respects the Adenauer government had a difficult spring. The affair of the steel tubes, when three Ruhr firms had to cancel contracts worth $28 million to export 163,000 tons of tubes to the Soviet Union (the NATO Council ruled that they had a potential military value), annoyed both the steel industry and the unions.

The sudden appearance in Bavaria of the former French Prime Minister, Georges Bidault, De Gaulle’s sworn enemy, caused acute embarrassment in Bonn. Only a few days earlier a minor degree of embarrassment was caused by the kidnapping of Colonel Antoine Argoud of the OAS by members of the French secret service in Munich, under the noses of the German police. And Bonn still grumbled about the Spiegel affair.

In Bonn there was only one cheering piece of news — plans for rebuilding this small but shamblingly incomplete capital city are to be pushed ahead. A whole new ministerial quarter is to be built to the south of the town, just off the road to Bad Godesberg. There is to be a new Bundestag building and a new official residence for the Chancellor. There will be two new bridges over the Rhine, and the railway line will be shifted to the west and out of the middle of the city. Bonn, the “Federal village,” will acquire greater stature, but even this news carries an echo of regret. For in 1949, when it was picked as the capital, it was stressed that this was a purely temporary arrangement — for a few brief years, until Berlin was once again the capital of a reunified Germany.