Germany: Unity and Rearmament

...However, this is not to question Adenauer's and Schuman's sincerity in devising a French-German rapprochement, with EDC as the shaky initial basis of a future alliance of West European Catholicism...

...it is bound to become a central issue of domestic agitation...

...The unity issue has frequently been minimized, either as having no "practical" significance for the prosperous West Germans, or as lacking any genuine basis in the sentiments of a "fragmented" people...

...As already indicated, popular forces do exist which oppose rearmament and are willing to struggle for peaceful unification...

...Whatever the merits and perils of such a policy, the alterna tive to it was and is fraught with grave dangers to the Adenauer regime...

...A West German army, free from contractual obligations to EDC, means that a new center of an unambiguous ly internal authority is created, which, with the intensified international ten sions bound to arise therefrom, will inevitably erode and replace the power of this regime...

...In Germany, ash other countries, this stagnation manifests itself not so much in the fact that the official political and labor leaderships have themselves fallen victim to it, but that no serious challenge to this leadership has as yet anywhere arisen...

...and on the other by Stalinism...

...To prevent the formation of independent political blocs is a primary objective of the U.S...

...Its policy, its stale and cautious approach and its top-heavy internal structure render it incapable of assuming the risks of independent action...

...The first mentioned road to unity not only fastens a reactionary regime upon the German people, aggravating internal tensions and facilitating Stalinist in104 roads...

...Secondly, strong Allied contingents will remain at its side, and "absolute" (atomic and bacteriological) weapons will not be available to its command...

...Disregarding realities, it claims that rearmament could have been effected "democratically...

...Whether and to what extent these forces will mold their own leadership and institutions—this is still an open question...

...They will have a chance to sharpen their ideas, to hammer out their own "rearmament" —this is the only good one can hope for in the present circumstances...

...But an objective appraisal of the risks cannot remove the need for taking them...

...Once the new German army is a reality, the forces of restoration in Germany will be secured by their own armed power...

...This particular consequence of U.S...

...this will greatly enhance their prestige and authority, so that unity, if achieved, will have social and political implications fundamentally different from those which a unification brought about by a combination of political agitation and negotiations would have had...

...in this period...

...resent more or less blunt rationalizations of U.S...

...It will exert strong pressures on domestic policies for it constitutes not so much a potential danger as a factor of immense power, hence a competitive challenge impossible to evade...

...useful also in supplementing the manpower of NATO—but it is not to be regarded as more than a junior partner in America's military enterprise...

...In a sense, the internal situation will again become paramount for the Germans—though for how long, no one can tell—presenting issues manageable to some degree at least on the plane of internal politics and hence offering possibilities to the democratic forces...

...The latter has actively and consistently opposed unity— though it has never denied its "abstract" desirability—because a nonmilitarized but unified Germany would swiftly become the focus of "neutral...

...cadres of leaders, groups of men around whom movements initially crystallize—these quasispontaneous formations, which always betoken the organic health of a society, do not appear to exist...

...This would introduce the kind of unwelcome complexities into the calculations of American strategists which, for example, India has such a disagreeable knack of raising...

...Hundreds of anti-rearmament strikes and demonstrations have occurred in West Germany, codetermination as well as simpler economic issues continue to provoke considerable unrest— all these attest to the strength of popular democratic forces...

...The second road to unity, on the other hand, would tend to identify the democratic forces in Germany with the indisputable legitimate national aspirations of the German people (an identification which seems so necessary for the success of democracy in modern times...

...Though the policy of the SDP cannot be analyzed here in detail, it may suffice to note that the SDP has never gone on record as opposing rearmament...

...policy is due entirely to its overwhelmingly military character, which induces its spokesmen to secure the status quo of social and political reaction, and thus gives it an essentially anti-democratic stamp...

...To this no unqualified answer is possible...

...Though on the face of it the ratification of the Paris agreements by Bonn fulfills the conditions by which Germany is to regain full sovereignty, in actuality, Germany will be less, not more free...

...but the presence of a growing army cannot long be tolerated by the Russians nor can this army itself evade the duty with which all modern armies are charged, viz, to guard or recoup the nation's "integrity...

...German labor, and specifically the Social Democratic Party (SDP), finds itself in the unenviable position of being, on one side, threatened by the steady encroachment of the State, with its multifarious regulatory bodies...

...This must clearly limit whatever elements of fluidity, whatever "elbow room" still remains in West European society and politics...

...EDC was a diplomatic attempt at introducing German re armament without endangering the French-American •alliance...

...THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EDC and the Paris agreements was hardly more than a difference in legal techniques, important though these were in veil ing the true loci of actual and poten tial power...

...These two factors strictly limit its bargaining power with either side...

...H. BRAND l06...

...rather, it will be an adjunct to the U.S...

...Its press is full of dreary details of economic and administrative problems, and of breast-beating democratic proclamations...

...and its approach to the question of unity is exhausted by repetitious calls for a Big Four Conference, the preconditions and likely results of which it never analyzes...

...Moreover, while its spokesmen have shown their awareness of the strategic nonsense of a "defense" of West Germany they have never yet been cour105 ageous or consistent enough to use this argument effectively...

...Nor has the SDP leadership tried to think through the political implications of the East Berlin uprising, which it viewed with ill-concealed dismay...

...at the same time it introduces additional elements of rigidity not merely into German society but into the complex of European relationships as well...

...The new army, by its very existence, will sharpen the parochial nationalisms of Western Europe, and thus accentuate its inner rivalries...

...military apparatus...

...and that it has so developed stands as the most severe political indictment of both...

...In addition, the issue of German unity will assume new and sharper proportions...

...Such views mistake transient phenomena for permanent characteristics...

...For its new army will not be the freely disposable instrument of Bonn used on behalf of an independent foreign policy...

...BUT THE QUESTION MAY BE RAISED whether the second road to unity sketched above was or is a practical alternative, whether the forces to carry it out exist—whether an independent German policy was ever conceivable...

...It is unlikely that at this late stage they can effectively oppose rearmament, but it is not improbable that their own development will be accelerated by the growing strength of the Right...

...It will be useful in policing Central and perhaps Western Europe and in denying to the Russians the great industrial resources of the area...

...But while new leaders have appeared, they are quickly absorbed into the existing labor bureaucracy...

...Audacious extra-parliamentary actions, fresh organizational approaches, realistic programmatic lines—all these are exposed not only to the normal dangers of official repression, but to Stalinist in filtration and manipulation as well, and this vastly increases the risks...

...First, the new army will have a base of continental supplies incomparably narrower than that of its predecessors, and for this reason alone must depend upon the Allied navies...

...103 There have been expressions of anxiety over the possibility that this new army will enable the Germans to turn against NATO and pursue a "pro-Russian" policy...

...The simultaneous appearance of remilitarization and the unity as major issues may not have been the deliberate aim of Adenauer or the U.S., but that some such conjunction would develop was not difficult to foresee...

...ism" in Europe, hence of policies aimed at resurrecting Europe's independent world position...

...America's policy of restoration in Western Europe has brought a measure of stability and prosperity which may not have been attainable otherwise—but at the price of social and political stagnation...

...they also rep...

...more than that, the social and political appeal of this kind of struggle might have an effect in the satellites and in Russia itself...

...However, there are a number of safeguards in the covenants which place considerable obstacles in the way of such independent policy changes on the part of the Germans— if indeed the latter would regard them as desirable...