A West German Army ?
By MARK ARNOLD-FORSTER Berlin, November 12th
THE only conclusion that can yet be drawn from the , unfinished controversy about German rearmament is that the Russians and the Western Powers have again misjudged the German people and each other. The projected inclusion of West German units in a West European army and of the People's Police in the East European defence-system directly concern the Russians, the Western Allies and the Germans themselves. Indirectly they concern the Czechs and the Poles. It is now clear that the Western Allies and the Russians have been misinformed about both these projects, and that much of their policy has been based upon supposition, fear and wishful thinking.
Between them the four allies cherish three important illusions. The Russians believe in the existence of a West German army ; the Western Allies believe in the existence of an Ea,st German army ; the United States Government believe that the Germans are eager to serve, once again, in an army controlled by men whose policies they cannot alter. None of these assumptions is true. Their acceptance by the Occupying Powers has helped to create the present confused and threatening situation. Once again the Allies' capacity for self-deception has created dangerous but unnecessary feelings of bitterness and fear.
Much the most important of these three illusions is Mr. Molotov's belief in a West German army, a belief which induced him to summon his subordinate Foreign Ministers to Prague and to try to interest Britain, France and the United States in a Four Power conference on Germany. Mr. Molotov's illusion is probably due, in part, to the peculiar relationship between his Government and its agents in Western Germany and West Berlin—agents whose first concern is to safeguard their own careers in the German Com- munist Party by telling their employers what they think their employers want to hear. The agents' own illusions have undoubtedly been strengthened by the publication in the West German Press of a few apparently revealing documents. The other day, for example, General Mahlmann, a former divisional com- mander in the 80th German Corps, told his old corps commander, General Beyer, that " you will be interested to know that, on October 1st, I took command of a staff for organising the raising of German units for the European army." General Mahlmann is employed at Wurzburg by the United States Army. It has now been explained that he enlists recruits for the new " Industrial Police."
Reports like this have certainly convinced Mr. Molotov and all his friends of the existence of a West German army, and, inci- dentally, bf the fact that Russia's post-war foreign policy has failed. There is no West German army yet, but in the circumstances, Mr. Molotov can be excused for believing in it. The Western Allies can also be excused for believing in the military value of the People's Police Alert Detachments. These Detachments are housed in barracks, their training is supervised by Russian officers and by a German General who served in the Spanish Civil War, and they have often been seen to engage in warlike manoeuvres. Nevertheless, they are not equipped with the tanks or other heavy weapons they haire learned to use. Nor would they be ready, without extensive reorganisation and re-equipment, to take part, alongside the Russians, in hostilities against the Western Powers.
The Allies' third illusion, the belief that the German_people are still addicted as a nation to the military profession, is, at the moment, peculiar to the Government of the United States. Accord- ing to an official statement of United States policy on " the German contribution to European Security " (published in the American paper Neue Zeitung on November 4th) " the American people can hardly believe that Germany wants to remain neutral, or could' remain neutral, in the fight between the free and enslaved sections of the world." Actually at the moment the German people do nor believe that " the fight between the free and enslaved sections of the world " is imminent, or that, if it were, they themselves could do anything to affect its outcome. Most of them think that
their country is, for the time being, indefensible against an attack from the East. Moreover, they hate the whole idea of military service with a hatred incomprehensible to those who have never served under German officers and German N.C.O.s in German military units. They now realise that the last two wars were not only unpleasant but, from the German point of view, unwise. They are determined to retain political control of their own military destiny. That is why Dr. Adenauer as well as Dr. Schumacher have been demanding full sovereignty for the Federal Republic before they will consider the raising of German military units.
The debates last week in the 'Federal Parliament at Bonn clearly reflected this genuine reluctance to take up arms again—a reluctance which has nothing to do with the Communists' " Peace Campaign." They also revealed some serious imperfections in the West German parliamentary system, imperfections which have contributed to the present confusion. The Social Democrats have been extremely critical of the Government's apparently secretive handling of a question of such obvious interest to the public as the possible rearmament of Western Germany. Dr. Adenauer's apparent unwillingness to consult Parliament (or even his Cabinet) on matters of importance has certainly aroused a great deal of unneces- sary suspicion. Even his friendliest critics have been saying that this suspicion could have been predicted and should have been recognised for what it is—the symptom of a legitimate but thwarted public interest in Government policy. They admit that he often confides his plans to the Press, but complain that he does so in exclusive interviews with foreign journalists, who cannot be expected to fulfil the same functions as the Pres.dential Press Conference in Washington or an inquisitive House of Commons at Question Time in Westminster.
In fact it was not until ten days ago that Dr. Adenauer confided his plans about rearmament to the Federal Parliament. Ever since the spring the question has been discussed as an academic issue in the West German Press. On August 18th this leisurely debate was transformed into fierce public controversy when Dr. Adenauer told the New York Times that he wanted a West German defence force strong enough to repel a possible attack by the People's Police. On August 23rd, at his Press conference in Bonn, it became evident that the force he had in mind would not consist of soldiers but would resemble the French " Gardes Mobiles." On August 29th he submitted a memorandum on security to the U.S. High Com- missioner which he has since refused to publish (although its contents have induced his Minister of the Interior, Dr. Gustav Heinemann, to resign). It was not until October 11th that he denied, in response to numerous protests, that he had committed the Federal Government to supplying German contingents for the defence of Western Europe. On October 20th Dr. Adenauer, as chairman of the Christian Democrat Party, told the Party Congress at Goslar that he had informed the Foreign Ministers' Conference in New York that all such questions would have to be decided by the Federal Parliament itself. Although he now seems to have accepted them, he rejected, on October 28th, M. Pleven's proposals for a West European army in a forthright address to his fellow. guests at a birthday party igiven by the Associated Press. The following week he told the Bonn correspondent of the Turin paper Stampa that Germany and Italy could be friends for ever. From 'all these disjointed statements it is possible, as time goes on, to trace the c utlines of a coherent foreign policy. On the other hand it could never have been assumed, and cannot yet be assumed, that it was a policy the Federal Parliament would care to endorse. Now that Parliament has at last been allowed to examine the Government's plans, it is clear that they will suit the Opposition rather better than could previously have been supposed. Dr. Schumacher and Dr. Adenauer agree that Germany must be a sovereign State before there is a German army. They also agree that the Western Powers must, as Dr. Schumacher says, " link their military future with Germany's." Moreover they must reinforce their continental armies until they are strong enough " to reply to any Soviet attack with an immediate counter-offensive which would transfer the battlefield eastwards out of German territory." The Western Powers, said Dr. Schumacher, must abandon, once and for all, the idea of waging a war of liberation after retreating to bridge-
heads along the Atlantic coast, for " the Germans-will not cover the Allies' glorious retreat to the Pyrenees."
Between them Dr. Schumacher and Dr. Adenauer have thus given a fair and more or less coherent account of the conditions under which the West German Parliament might agree to the raising of German military contingents. The Western Allies will now have to decide whether these terms are acceptable. According to Dr. Adenauer's first adviser on defence, General Count von Schwerin, the Western Allies hope to raise ten German divisions. It looks as if Western Germany's minimum price for ten divisions is her own sovereignty—which would include the right to decide what to do with them.
Previous page
