One-Man Band
By SARAH GAINHAM BONN
'HERE is a rush of printers' ink to the head in Germany lately, using immoderate tt hrases such as 'perfidy', 'will the British sell sets?' and 'fears of British treachery'. Most are "spired by deliberate trouble-making, for Dr. denauer plays on legitimate fears and hidden
esentments. His accusations against the p ritish press, alleging that hostile wirepullers ha re at work, was a most revealing expression, v or he supposed that a group of anti-German liclpropagandists in England were doing pre- alscisely what he is doing here—using popular disprejudice to cover a possibly unpopular policy. onThese popular fears are very real, however; in onEngland German history is only about a
hundred years old but the Germans carry blitheir whole past in their heads, back to Arminius ;was we do to Alfred; and Germany has very thoften in history been the object of power Hiparterings. What we call the balance of power d as seen from Central Europe as a centuries-old vayictermination on the part of the older nation- uglitates to keep a power vacuum in Germany— make sure that no German power should lernrise to possess Germany effectively. s t The press is no more, in fact it is rather less, tlsobservient to those in power in Federal rieL'ermany than it is in England. But it is easy pco increase envy and resentment when they are ifttthere already. The point is: Why does DnAdenauer do it? For the recent turns of governmental policy are almost entirely a L.orpne-man job.
roo Much of the political manoeuvrings of the t months appears on the surface to be ro rational. But Adenauer is not irrational. He iiorobably has an irrational dislike of giving up vepower to one more popular than himself, ti}nd he certainly does personally dislike the dritish—a British officer sacked him from the ndnayoral office in Cologne in 1945 after the atunericans had appointed him—but he is not alrnerston, playing by instinct and hunch.
e is a deep, tortuous and solid thinker who
ows what he is doing and means to do it in er e short time left to him. He has in view itioiothing less than the old strategic aim of p l ismarck—to co-ordinate the coal and steel f western Europe in one group. His backers ave tried three times with force, but they ve now learned that lesson. The present olicy of Federal Germany is peaceful and ofold. To keep the Russian flood from reading further west, -for which they need es, first and foremost the Americans. And butt achieve ownership or co-operative rights oitiver the mineral wealth of France, Luxem- g and Belgium. For that they need the ft..rench and thanks to the dreams of gloire still apinning French heads, they have a lever and fFe getting on nicely. Let the French live in ' heir Napoleonic dream of military prowess,
personal elegance and intellectual logic; the Germans will help pay to 'pacify' Algeria, will invest milliards in the Sahara and shore up the French standard of life.
Up to the moment when he agreed to be the Presidential candidate to stop a Socialist having the chance of sitting in on government councils, Adenauer never put a foot wrong. Then he made a curious mistake. He assumed that the Christian Democrats would appoint his own choice to the vacant Chancellery. His choice was the follower of his own policies, a yes-man of his own backers, the steel masters. But the party wanted the one man who would upset all his plans. Herr Etzel's ideas are like Adenauer's. They are still in the stove-pipe trouser, full beard era, the steam age of coal mines and iron ore. Professor Erhard is way out ahead in the world of jets and spun glass fibre. He knows that a decisive turn of history has happened in which the Herrenklub notions of Adenauer have about as much future as dreadnoughts. French thinking is in the Napo- leonic age still. Adenauer and his friends are in the 1870s. Professor Erhard is here and now.
All the twists and turns, the insults and lies, the blackguarding of the British and of Erhard from Adenauer in the last few weeks have a rational purpose: to recover that tactical error and discredit Erhard for good. He covers up this tactic and the strategy behind it by wailing—so loudly that no one notices what his hands are doing—that'the British are going to sell Berlin to the Reds, that the situation has never been so black before, that Erhard will let the British and the Russians fool him if he comes to power.
The Chancellor does not care in the least what people say about him. Called a liar to his face, he smiles grimly. If people want to think him an old fool, let them, it suits his book excellently. It is essential for him to cover his disreputable desire to get rid of the Economics Minister because his reasons for it would be very unpopular inside and outside Germany if they were recognised. Large subsidies to the French, not even debated in the Bundestag, would be unpopular here. The public take the American alliance seriously and, though Great Britain is the object of envy and resentment, she is also seen as more reliable and stable than the French and nearer to the Americans.
Yet Adenauer's policy, though carried out by methods which the higher standards of public behaviour in England condemn, is not necessarily immoral because it works against British interests. The trouble with it is it is out of date. It caused enough trouble in the past when Germans tried to achieve it by the use of that force which had been used against them throughout their history; it continues to cause trouble, but the historical moment for it is gone. Nineteenth-century Adenauer sees Europe as the north-west corner only, but there are large interests in Germany that want to live in the twentieth century, turning from the past both in its hostility from us and to- wards us; and in commerce from those eastern plains whose attraction has often provided an alternative to the complex frustrations of living in western Europe.
The revolt in the Christian Democratic Party is not yet over. Adenauer continues his efforts to impose his pattern on events and he may succeed for a time. It will be a good thing for Germany (and, for us) if he fails. The past needs to be defeated in his lifetime and in his person, and to be replaced for the first time in German history by an effective rule of the majority and not by either an authoritarian or by the weakness which leads to chaos.
Previous page
