The Germans & the Russians

In the ornamented music room of Spiridonovka Palace in Moscow, the great gaunt Chancellor of West Germany clasped hands with the masters of Russia. It was the signal that Europe's bitterest enemies had grudgingly come to terms.

There was no agreement to be friends, nor could there be any trust between Communist Russia, which holds half of Germany captive, and the Bonn Republic, committed tightly to alliance with the West. The agreement merely said, in stiff, impersonal terms, that both sides, for the first time since the mutual treachery of 1939-41, will establish diplomatic relations and work towards "mutual understanding and cooperation ... in the interests of peace."

One Last Appeal. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had arrived in Moscow determined to press for the release of German prisoners of war still held by the Russians, and to get the Russians moving in the direction of German reunification. He got flat refusal of one, an oral promise on the other. From the outset it was clear that the Kremlin, for all the talk of a "Geneva spirit," was in no yielding mood, and the historic meeting almost broke up with no agreements at all. Midway through the talks, both sides conceded that they were getting nowhere. One morning, in his special train in Moscow's Leningrad station, Der Alte slammed his fist down onto a table and snapped to his assembled lieutenants: "Order the planes from Hamburg. Let's get out of this place!"

Yet politically this was impossible, and Adenauer's advisers knew it. With West Germans eagerly awaiting news of their imprisoned sons and brothers, Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano reminded the Chancellor: "We cannot go down in history as the delegation that left too soon." Adenauer agreed to try one last appeal to the Russians.

The man chosen to make the appeal was barrel-shaped Carlo Schmid, the only Socialist in the German delegation, and at times an eloquent man. Said Carlo Schmid directly to the impassive pair, Khrushchev and Bulganin: "Every man, woman and child in Germany is behind Dr. Adenauer's attempt to obtain the release of these missing Germans." Nikita Khrushchev was impressed. Perhaps, after all, there is a basis on which to do business, he told the German delegates.

Breaking the Deadlock. That evening the diplomats assembled at a massive banquet in the Kremlin's St. George's Hall. Adenauer sat in the center, flanked by Bulganin and Khrushchev. The three men talked heatedly, emphasizing their points with gestures. At one point, Party Boss Khrushchev leaned across the German Chancellor and gabbed furiously at Bulganin. Then, in two quiet sentences, the Soviet Premier broke the log jam.

"I think you can have your prisoners," said Bulganin to Adenauer. "It will not be difficult to arrange if we also agree on diplomatic relations."

Konrad Adenauer was smiling thinly when Bulganin commanded silence for the toasts and, with Khrushchev constantly interrupting him, raised his glass and said: "Matters are moving ahead. I suppose all will end well."

Adenauer, toying with his glass of champagne, replied tartly. He could not resist a dig at the party boss, still butting in from the side. "Herr Khrushchev," said the German, "has never put a leaf in front of his mouth ... It is not his manner." "But I don't carry rocks in my pocket," retorted Khrushchev. "We are going home," the Chancellor concluded, "convinced that our visit to Moscow was of benefit." He raised his glass: "To good, friendly, and not only diplomatic relations, because diplomats are not always the best of friends."

Raid on a Chicken Yard. That night Adenauer called his delegation together and explained his change of mood. "Gentlemen," he said, "they offered me the prisoners . . . People at home would never understand letting legal questions stand in the way of the release of their husbands, brothers and sons. We must accept this."

The next day the delegations met to certify the agreement. "The Russians looked like a pack of foxes after a successful raid on a chicken yard," wrote TIME Correspondent James Bell. "Chancellor Adenauer, pale and unsmiling shook hands with Bulganin without even looking at him, and stalked out without a word."

Adenauer had been forced to make in writing the one commitment the Russians had insisted on from the opening moment --diplomatic relations--and he had not budged the Russians toward reunification on his terms. "It is certainly not in the Soviet Union's interest to have a reunified Germany in NATO," Khrushchev said bluntly. Even the language of the communique emphasized the existence of two Germanys, and the Soviet line that reunification of the two is principally "a national problem of the German people," not something for the Western powers to meddle in. In return, Adenauer had got an oral promise from Bulganin that "before you reach Bonn, action to release the German prisoners will be set in motion."

To protect his position, Adenauer offered two reservations to emphasize what the agreement did not encompass. The deal implied, said Adenauer

P: No recognition of the "present territorial situation by either side . . . pending ... a peace treaty."

P: No surrender of Bonn's right to speak for all the German people, including inhabitants of "those German regions which presently lie outside the area of its effective control."

The Germans asked the Russians to incorporate both reservations in the communique. The Russians, as the Germans had anticipated, refused. So Adenauer put them out unilaterally for the record. The Russians briskly dismissed both. "The [Bonn] Republic is part of Germany," said an official statement distributed by Tass. "Another part of Germany is the [East] German Democratic Republic." Germany's borders were settled at Potsdam, the statement added. There the wartime Allies handed the territories east of the Oder-Neisse line to Poland, pending a final peace treaty.

A Bit of Plumbing. The signatures were scarcely dry before the West's capitals resounded with the confused sound of pundits trying to assess loss or gain. But the Moscow meeting was not the kind that produces the means of any immediate measurement. An exchange of diplomatic relations represents in itself just a bit of plumbing, its value to be determined by what flows through it. The effect of the prisoners' release will depend first on whether they get home, and perhaps to a great extent on the stories they tell of others who died or remain behind. The conference's meaning to battle over reunification can perhaps begin to be measured next month at the Geneva conference of foreign ministers of the four Big Powers, who partitioned Germany in the first place and in the end are the only ones who can put it back together again.

Back in Bonn, when Adenauer returned, any misgivings for the future were drowned for the moment in the chorus of rejoicing over the returning prisoners. At the airport, a tiny, black-clad lady pushed through the crowd and kissed his leathery hand. "My heart thanks you!" she said (her only son had been a Russian prisoner for twelve years).

But Adenauer was grim and weary. "I think it was the longest trip I ever made," he told a confidant, and he did not sound much like the Chancellor who had left six days before with an air of confident self-sufficiency and diplomatic strength. To reporters he talked almost like a man with something to apologize for. "Take into consideration that the Soviet Union covers one-sixth of the earth's surface . . ." he said. "The conference was overshadowed by the memories of the last war.* It was not like other conferences. Passions, not rule of logic, played the predominant role . . . The hospitality at official functions bore no relation to the atmosphere at negotiations. The hospitality was hearty. The negotiations were mordant . . . We, I believe, did right . ."

There were no such glum reflections in the Kremlin. Scarcely had Adenauer disappeared than a swarm of East Germans, headed by Premier Otto Grotewohl, flew in as if on cue In the next few days, the Kremlin resounded with revelry as masters and puppets staged a weird, diplomatic Walpurgisnacht dance of triumph, like so many witches cackling over some treacherous bargain. "We laugh at Adenauer," crowed Grotewohl, and Deputy Premier Otto Nuschke, with the Russians' beaming approval, deliberately mocked at every Adenauer claim of achievement. "What Premier Bulganin promised Adenauer about the release of ... prisoners was only the result of our work," said Nuschke. Adenauer had sworn that he would never negotiate with East Germany. Said Nuschke cockily: "There will either be unification of Germany by negotiation with the East German government, or there will be no reunification."

At a party given for the East Germans, Khrushchev rolled happily from table to table, kissed Grotewohl, punctuated his drinks with extemporaneous speeches. In his overflowing mood, he even spared a thought for Adenauer's worries. "The word we gave him will be kept," he said expansively. "Our word, spoken or written, is law." In a probable first step, the Russians this week announced amnesty terms for their own citizens imprisoned for collaborating with the Germans.

Then Communist Khrushchev went exuberantly on to correct any false impressions that may have been created around the world by the recent Soviet manifestations of sweetness. "To whom is the fu ture?" he asked grandly. Not to those who journey toward "the tomb of capitalism . . . The East German Communist government has chosen the road to the future ..." He looked at the assembled Communists from East Germany. "The time will come when they will knock at your door to recognize you."

Others had been speculating about Russia, Khrushchev noted. "It is said that the Soviet leaders smile," said Khrushchev. "This is a real smile. It is not false. We want to live in peace, in tranquillity. But if anyone thinks that our smiles mean the abandonment of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, he is deceiving himself cruelly. Those who expect this to happen might just as well wait for a shrimp to learn how to whistle."

*One striking example, as revealed by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov over the Moscow radio: "The Federal Chancellor told me yesterday that he had never seen Hitler, but that had he seen him, he would have strangled him with his own hands. Of course, we understand these feelings . . ."

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