Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN., WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS Et Tu, Konrad Adenauer? By William Henry Chamberlin It is with deep regret and some diffidence that one feels obliged to question the wisdom of a decision by Konrad Adenauer....
...By sheer force of personal leadership, he brought the German people, burdened with the hates generated by the Nazi regime, exhausted and apathetic after the war and postwar collapse, to a respected place in the councils of the world...
...the Soviet leaders gave an ostentatiously friendly reception to their East German puppets immediately after Adenauer's departure...
...It is not for American statesmen to reproach Adenauer for following in Moscow the methods which they popularized at Geneva...
...It is hard to see what advantage a West German Embassy in Moscow (which raises the question of what happens when Bonn's Ambassador meets the envoy of the Pieck-Ulbricht-Grotewohl regime) could offer to outweigh the obvious disadvantages of a Soviet Embassy in West Germany...
...But for some reason which is not entirely clear, the Chancellor changed his mind at the last moment and consented to immediate establishment of diplomatic relations with Moscow...
...Only when he went to Moscow and accepted the Soviet demand to establish diplomatic relations without getting the slightest assurance of Soviet willingness to permit free German reunification did Adenauer seem to have abandoned long-range principle for short-range expediency...
...And the fact that Adenauer could open diplomatic relations with a government which is responsible for the partition of Germany and which insists in deepening that partition is an invitation to uncommitted countries throughout the world to recognize the Soviet Zone regime...
...True, Adenauer was under strong pressure to make this decision...
...On the other hand, establishing diplomatic relations with a Soviet regime which, especially since Geneva, had been blatantly rejecting free all-German elections, and maintaining its puppet regime at all costs, was a fateful concession to the indefinite partition of Germany...
...Its bad moral and psychological effects in the satellite countries were pointed out here on August 22...
...Work on the build-up of the new German Army, which derives additional urgency from French preoccupation in North Africa, should also be vigorously pressed...
...Not many statesmen would have recovered so quickly from the shock of French rejection of EDC or cooperated so wholeheartedly in working out an alternative formula for German rearmament within the Western coalition...
...Obviously, this decision was not taken easily...
...For the rugged old West German Chancellor's record as a champion of European unity, American-European solidarity, and Western culture against the Communist totalitarian threat has been magnificent...
...It is difficult to think of one false step which Adenauer took before his mission to Moscow...
...The Soviet Government admitted holding about 10,000...
...Rather, the representatives of America, Britain, France and the Federal Republic must work out a firm strategy, with German reunion in freedom as one of its first demands, for the next bout in Geneva...
...but, in the long run, his prestige at home and abroad would have been strengthened...
...Much emotion had been aroused in Germany over the continued Soviet detention of German prisoners ten years after the end of the war...
...The "spirit of Geneva" is as catching as the measles...
...Had Adenauer adhered to his original stand that there was no point in establishing diplomatic relations until the problem of German unity was solved, he might have incurred temporary criticism in Germany...
...Bonn's delegation went to Moscow aware of the danger of promoting a "two Germanys" situation...
...Although other men were perhaps more directly concerned with Germany's amazing economic comeback, German economic policy was Adenauer's responsibility, and its success is to his credit...
...In his firm stand against neo-Nazism, in his insistence that Germany pay reparations to Israel for Nazi crimes against the Jews, in his clear grasp that Germany's future lies with the West, in these and other attitudes, Adenauer was consistently right and the free world owes him a tremendous debt...
...The original West German strategy had been to propose a commission to study resumption of relations, if no satisfactory unity proposal came from the Soviet side...
...The promise to release these prisoners was a powerful instrument of blackmail...
...the German estimates, based on letters and stories of returned prisoners, run as high as 100,000...
...Such an embassy will soon be a rallying point and finance center for all pro-Communist and anti-Western elements...
...Certainly there was no such proposal...
...Moreover, there was widespread feeling in Germany, based more on sentiment than reason, that it would be advantageous to deal directly with the Soviet Government...
...And there is some wishful thinking in Germany (although not so much as a few years ago) about commercial opportunities in the Soviet bloc...
Vol. 38 • October 1955 • No. 39
