The Heart of Europe
WEST GERMANY
(See Cover) It is hard to imagine a figure less martial than West Germany's new Chancellor. Round of shape, soft in manner, sanguine in temperament, he is every one's rich uncle, the man who made West German prosperity grow out of the rubble. He is clearly not at home on the parade ground, nor amid the strategists' complicated maps and grim contingencies. Yet hardly had Ludwig Erhard settled into the Chancellor's chair and lit his inevitable Brazilian Schwarze Weisheit (black wisdom) when he was faced with major military problems involving not only Germany but the whole Western Alliance.
New Phase. Perched as they are beside the Iron Curtain, the West Germans are more sensitive to the subtle shifts in East-West relations than any other people in Europe. The least concession to Russia brings suspicions of a sellout. Hence West Germany's anguish last week at the transatlantic reports that the U.S. might trim down some of the six combat divisions on the Continent. SENSATIONAL U.S. PLAN WITH DRAWAL OF COMBAT TROOPS, shrieked Frankfurt's Abendpost. Asked Hamburg's Bild-Zeitung: THIS QUESTION CONCERNS US ALL: HOW MANY AMERICANS REMAIN IN GERMANY?
Ringing in German ears were the words of a former U.S. President and leader of NATO, Dwight D. Eisenhower. "I believe the time has now come when we should start removing some of those troops," declared Ike in a Saturday Evening Post article. "One American division in Europe can 'show the flag' as definitely as several." Next came a speech by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, who forecast a "new phase" in American troop commitments abroad and "useful reductions in overseas military expenditures."
These words were underlined by the widely heralded "Operation Big Lift," which hauled the entire 2nd Armored Division from Texas to West Germany, in a dramatic demonstration of the U.S.'s capability to keep troops at home but fly them swiftly to theaters of threatening war.
The Focus. Ludwig Erhard himself ignored the "crisis." During a foreign policy debate in the Bundestag last week, he sat with elaborate calm, scribbling his signature on official documents. The subject of U.S. troops was never mentioned. And when he summoned his Cabinet for its regular weekly meeting, there was nothing more exciting on the agenda than domestic budgetary matters.
To reassure Erhard and the rest of West Germany, a rapid series of "clarifications" flowed in from Washington. U.S. Army Secretary Cyrus Vance, in Frankfurt to observe Big Lift, declared flatly: "We have no intention of withdrawing any of our six division equivalents that are here." Secretary of State Dean Rusk, in Germany to dedicate a monument to the late George Marshall, conferred with Erhard and West German Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder, added some pointed sentences to a scheduled speech.
"When we say your defense is our defense, we mean it," said Rusk. "We have proved it in the past. We will continue to demonstrate it in the future."
The U.S. will maintain its six divisions in Germany "as long as there is need for them--and under present circumstances there is no doubt that they will continue to be needed." Did the airlift mean withdrawal of American troops from Germany? "The answer is no--the opposite is the case. Because of the airlift, we have at the moment a seventh division temporarily in Europe."
And yet, despite all these reassurances and disclaimers, the Pentagon's Gilpatric was right when he described Western defense policy as "entering a new phase." This is evident in East-West relations: Washington seems determined to pursue a detente with Moscow, and the Kremlin, beset by economic and Chinese troubles, seems willing to accept at least a cold war pause. The "new phase" is even more sharply evident in the increasingly outdated design of NATO, whose members are deeply split over the philosophy and practice of Western defense. The whole structure of the Western Alliance is being reexamined, and may be revised.
At the very focus of any such reexamination, any such revision, must be Germany, the bustling, prosperous land of Ludwig Erhard, which is also the military heart of Europe.
The Good Life. West Germany today is a young country; a full 45% of its population is under 30. For them, the Nazi past is remote, and the West with all its ways is close.
The bejeweled beauty nibbling cocktail goodies at Duesseldorf's Breiden-bacherhof has the sun of Spain on her shoulders and the patois of Provence on her tongue. As the young executive floats around in the revolving television tower at Stuttgart, with its lofty restaurant-lounge, he gives only occasional thought to die Flucht--the flight before the Russians 18 years ago--and other hideous memories of an early era. On Berlin's Kudamm, which Christopher Isherwood would never recognize, Germans twist--and twist and twist-though they live skin-close to the Communists. In Hamburg, Max Schmeling is proud of his gleaming Coca-Cola bottling plant, where he arrives each morning like any other businessman. On the same street, kids hurry off to school, blissfully ignorant of Schmeling or Hitler or Bismarck. Then from every window appears that national German banner, the feather bed being hung out to air.
If the linden and oak symbolized Old Germany, the emblem today is the Gummibaum (rubber plant), whose leaves luxuriate in the central heating of millions of spanking-new apartments. The nation has no motto; Gott mit Uns went the way of the spiked helmet, and the closest thing to a watchword in a devoutly neat country is "Vorsicht! Frisch Gebohnert" (Careful! Freshly Waxed). Well-to-do Germans are drinking more heavily, apparently to fight the frustrations of wealth; sociologists speak of Wohlstandsalkoholismus--prosperity alcoholism.
Along with the pleasures and some of the problems of the good life, West Germany must face a number of other realities. Konrad Adenauer tried to shape reality into what he wanted, and by sheer will and political genius he usually had his way. Under the softer, more flexible and more amiable leader ship of Ludwig Erhard, some long dammed-up changes are bound to burst forth. One of them is the feeling in
Washington that Germany has grown strong enough to stand more and more on its own feet.
High Cost of Defense. Not that Germany has failed to do its share for Western defense. Though the spirit of militarism is at such low ebb that the Bundeswehr is hard put to find recruits, West Germany maintains twelve divisions. The air force is a slick, tough outfit with 92,000 men and the latest type of fighter-bombers. Like the army, it is geared tightly to NATO plans. While France's Charles de Gaulle stub bornly impedes cooperation and while the British ponder their own role, West Germany enthusiastically cooperates with U.S. military planning. Symbol of this close relationship is the cluster of five military agreements signed in August, which envisions a German-American tank for the 1970s, joint development of missile cruisers and jet helicopters, plus an ambitious combined research project on new weapons.
But the cost of maintaining the U.S. Seventh Army in Germany, with its five combat divisions plus huge additional air and ground support groups, runs into hundreds of millions of dollars a year. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara has long been convinced that a substantial reduction of this force can produce big savings at no cost to U.S'. power on the Continent.
U.S. Army strength in Europe, which peaked at 270,000 in late 1961, has been reduced by 22,300, and additional troops are being brought home at the rate of about 1,000 a month. Many are "extra" soldiers rushed to Europe after the Communists built the Berlin Wall.
Others are being removed from the supply line to Germany as new computerized inventory systems and more efficient transport techniques are installed. Dozens of depots in France are being closed down or curtailed, and most of the equipment for U.S.
European combat troops will henceforth move direct to Bremerhaven, the big North German seaport. Recently, the Pentagon announced that 5,400 members of the 4th Logistical Command, in France, will be brought home.
Arguments for Fullback. Last August when McNamara reshuffled the Berlin Command, trimming away 600 men from the garrison there, then declared his intention to remove the 3,500 men of the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Germany, the Bonn government reacted frantically. The Pentagon intends to reduce the U.S.'s Germany contingent by still more troops, most of them noncombat types. But to soothe jangled German nerves, the withdrawals were suspended until last week's Big Lift exercise demonstrated just how swiftly the U.S. troops could be returned in case of trouble.
Only the most nervous will object to the U.S.'s trimming the fat off its European forces and withdrawing men who can be replaced by technology. But the argument will continue whether it would be safe also to withdraw many combat troops--perhaps even most, as Ike is suggesting.
Some believe that a U.S. force re duction in Europe would improve the climate of detente with the Soviet Un ion. The Communists themselves have at times suggested various forms of a Western troop "thinout." But this is certainly not what Ike and others have in mind; a pullback offered as a concession to the Russians might be near-suicidal.
A far more attractive argument is the possible improvement in the U.S. balance of payments. Actually, while the Pentagon could trim a lot out of its budget (every division costs some $75 million a year), there would be no great saving to the gold flow, since West Germany is tied by a so-called "offset" agreement to spend some $650 million a year in 1962-64 on materiel purchases in the U.S. The guarantee to offset U.S. dollar spending will be reduced proportionately if combat troops are removed from German soil.
Another argument is that a sizable American cutback would provide the right amount of pressure to force Europe to put up more for its own defense. The U.S. feels that it is the only country that is really expected to fulfill its obligations under NATO and that even the dedicated Germans tend to find excuses for not fielding more troops, citing the country's severe industrial manpower shortage. But whether a U.S. reduction would have the desired effect is doubtful. Charles de Gaulle, for one, has deprived NATO of some French troops on a considerably smaller pretense, and Britain, beset by balance-of-payments problems of its own, would gladly find excuses to pull back its Rhine army; already the London Daily Express advises its readers that if the U.S. can swiftly fly divisions across the Atlantic, it would be all the easier for Britain to perform the same stunt across the Channel.
The Elusive Trip Wires. The most serious argument for a troop pullback is the "trip wire" theory, advanced by Eisenhower, among others. The notion is that if the Russians were to attack Berlin or West Germany, for example, this would lead to a nuclear war anyway; thus even a handful of U.S. soldiers on the scene would be enough to engage America and to invite immediate nuclear retribution.
Most Washington planners feel that this theory had merit while the U.S. enjoyed its nuclear monopoly, but cannot be applied to a period of approximate nuclear parity between East and West. In such a situation, according to dominant Pentagon thinking, the U.S. must have a maximum number of "options" allowing it to hit back on any level appropriate to any attack. If the Russians were to stage various "incidents" at Berlin or even tried to seize some West German territory with conventional force, argue American strategists, the U.S. should not be forced to choose between doing nothing or starting an all-out nuclear war.
Would the U.S. blast Moscow with nuclear weapons because a Soviet ground force nibbles at Hamburg, when the destruction of New York is the certain counterblow? Probably not, reason many Germans. And if the Russians reached the same conclusion, it would serve as a downright invitation to them to try. If the U.S. concedes unchallenged conventional superiority to the Russians, argued former Secretary of State Dean Acheson before a German-Ameri can Club meeting in Bonn last week, the Russians might be able to rack up a series of small but important "profits" in Europe, "without setting off a nuclear response."
That is precisely why the U.S. has been pressing its allies for more conventional forces. A sizable U.S. pullback would undercut that argument--and would greatly strengthen the Gaullist demand for an independent, national nuclear deterrent.
The Nuclear Issue. In Paris last week, French Defense Minister Pierre Messmer was coolly correct about Operation Big Lift. "Tres interessant," he sniffed, courteously refraining from saying I-told-you-so about the widely whispered suggestion that this meant, as Charles de Gaulle had often predicted, the U.S. would retreat from Europe and leave the Continental powers to their own devices. But the Gaullist paper La Nation spelled out a reasonable enough view: "Month after month the facts have increasingly confirmed the correctness of the French position. It is becoming clear that Europe, whether she wishes to or not, must count more and more on herself. And would it not be better for her to be able to defend herself not with human chests but also with nuclear weapons? 'Big Lift' is perhaps a gigantic transport operation. But it is above all a little 'Operation Truth.' "
One truth is simply this: However desirable or inevitable the long-run reduction of U.S. forces in Europe, it can scarcely take place except within the framework of an overall, sensible policy for Europe's nuclear defense.
Washington's present position is that this must remain a U.S. responsibility. While the majority of Europeans might be willing to leave it at that, the Gaullist argument that in the 20th century only the possession of nuclear weapons can make a nation truly sovereign, simply will not die down. And sooner or later the Germans are bound to take it up, for the most powerful country in Europe, with a technical capacity probably greater than France's, cannot indefinitely be kept in the position of a second-class citizen without the nuclear rights its allies and neighbors possess.
The only alternative to these national nuclear aspirations would be a truly international force or a genuine defense partnership between the U.S. and Europe, with shared control of the Bomb. Washington's hesitant and plainly inadequate move in that direction is represented by the multilateral force (MLF), a clumsy concept loved by no soldier, which foresees a boat in some distant sea with a Russia-aimed bomb on board. At the throttle is a German and at the rudder a Briton. Luxembourgeois, Belgians and Dutchmen run the galley, and a Frenchman (if he can be enticed on board at all) is topside yelling "to port" while an Italian beside him shouts "to starboard." Use of the Bomb itself would happen only on U.S. orders. To Gaullists, U.S. insistence on a seaborne MLF, rather than one based on solid ground in Europe (which U.S. NATO commanders have always wanted), means further evidence that essentially the U.S. is thinking about disengagement from the Continent.
Gaullists v. Atlanticists. MLF's champions point out that whatever its other shortcomings, at least it gives Germany a hand in nuclear defense without actually giving it nuclear bombs. Bonn, in fact, supports MLF with some enthusiasm, has promised to contribute up to 40% of the cost. But even as far as the Germans are concerned, MLF cannot really settle the problem of European defense, which is having growing repercussions in German politics. With the departure of one Chancellor and the arrival of another, a whole new political scene is being set. Emerging in Bonn is the as yet shapeless pattern of a new political alignment that may strain the unity of the ruling Christian Democratic party. The opposing factions are known as the Gaullists and the Atlanticists.
The Gaullists include Konrad Aden auer, increasingly suspicious of U.S. aims, former Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, former Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano, and Bundestag Deputy Karl Theodor Baron von Guttenberg. They are all more or less sympathetic to De Gaulle's concept of a little Europe, with "Anglo-Saxon" influences diminished, and an independent French--eventually perhaps an independent German--nuclear force. To Adenauer, this means good things: an end to ancient Franco-German rivalries, a stern fist in Moscow's face. To Franz Josef Strauss, it could mean more than that: the revival of nationalist German instincts and policies.
But the overwhelming majority in the C.D.U.--and among the opposition Social Democrats as well--are Atlanticists, and that includes Ludwig Erhard and Gerhard Schroder, the Foreign Minister he inherited from Adenauer. They want a Common Market that includes
Britain, as well as a Europe firmly allied to the U.S. They support the U.S. in the creation of MLF and in its detente probes, as long as they are conducted with due caution.
Ludwig Erhard has said little on foreign policy in recent years, but he insists, it is "stupid chatter" to suggest that he is uninformed on the subject. He was gravely disturbed by Charles de Gaulle's veto of Britain in the Com mon Market and called it "a black hour for Europe." While he supported Adenauer's treaty with France, privately he makes no secret of the fact that De Gaulle leaves him mystified. The two have met on several occasions, and do not really hit it off. In any case, says Ludwig Erhard somewhat nervously, "De Gaulle should not expect me to make advances to him. I will let him make the first move."
Down on the Farm. The man who will have to lead Germany into the "new phase" of Western policy has three outstanding characteristics: he is well aware of Europe's great and tragic past, he is strongly committed to Ger-man-U.S. friendship, and he has unshakable faith in the destiny of free men and a free economy.
Erhard's instincts were molded in the easy atmosphere of Southern Germany's pre-World War I petite bourgeoisie. He was born (1897) in Fiirth, the quiet Franconian town that today is virtually a suburb of spreading Niirnberg. Son of a retail cloth merchant, he assumed from early age that he would follow his father in the family business: "I had no doubt about the adequacy of the firm social order about me." That social order collapsed with World War I. Serving in the artillery, Corporal Erhard was severely wounded during the murderous battle of Ypres. After seven operations, his left arm was still shorter than the right and one leg was badly shattered, an injury that still forces him to wear orthopedic shoes.
His father having sold the family shop, young Erhard decided to go back to school after the war; economics fascinated him. From Nurnberg's Academy for Economics and Sociology, he went on to do graduate work at Frankfurt University, where he became a protege of famed economist Franz Oppenheimer, a leading exponent of free enterprise. A dedicated mountaineer, Oppenheimer once took Erhard on a climb in the Alps. There, atop Mount Piz Corvatsch (11,339 ft.), the professor asked his student one final question about economics and forthwith an nounced that young Erhard had passed his Ph.D. examination. Chuckled Oppenheimer: "You are now the highest doctor on earth."
Herr Doctor Erhard married Luise Letter, a widowed Frankfurt University classmate who had been a childhood friend, moved back to Niirnberg to join a market research institute. Soon he was deputy director in charge of a staff of 80. But the war had begun, and Niirnberg's Gauleiter, the notorious Julius Streicher, insisted that Erhard join a Nazi labor organization; Erhard refused, and was fired.
Message from Prison. Erhard promptly formed his own research group, soon had dozens of sponsors for new projects. But he was constantly under the shadow of Hitler's men. Streicher kept muttering, "That's a nest that we'll have to clean out one of these days."
Streicher would have taken more drastic measures had he known what Ludwig Erhard was up to at the time: he turned out a lengthy analysis of steps to rebuild the German economy, based on the frank premise of Germany's total defeat. Although Erhard sent copies to friends, the Nazis never got wise. One copy went to Dr. Karl Goerdeler, once mayor of Leipzig and then deeply involved in the plot on Hitler's life and in planning a postwar German government. After Goerdeler was arrested, he smuggled word about Erhard from his prison cell to friends outside: Der Mann muss Minister werden--this man must become a minister. Goerdeler was ex ecuted shortly thereafter. Ludwig Erhard, relieved that the Nazis had not caught him too, spent the rest of the war in virtual isolation with his family.
A Dramatic Announcement. "I am an American invention," says Erhard today, and in a sense he is. By 1948, partly because of his anti-Nazi record, he was chosen by the American Occupation authorities to be economic administrator of the combined U.S. and British zones. The professor sounded visionary, if not slightly mad, to visitors who heard him advocate the end of ra tioning and other controls at a time when Germany was in rubble and people lived on fewer than 2,000 calories a day.
"The star hour of my life," as Erhard puts it, came when the allies were about to revalue the German mark and bring about the drastic shake-out that was to set the stage for West Germany's later economic success. To Occupation officers, currency reform was enough for one step, but Erhard had a further move in mind. On a quiet Sunday afternoon when, as he says, "I knew no bureaucrats would be around to stop me," he went to the local radio station and took the air with a dramatic announcement: the end of rationing. "From now on," he declared, "the only ration stamp will be the Deutsche mark."
Allied officers and control-minded economists were furious, wanted him dismissed at once. Erhard held firm, for he was convinced that after an initial price skyrocket, things would level off. Without freeing the economy, he argued, currency reform would have no real effect. "If I were to distribute poverty justly, we would all surely remain poor," he insisted. "It seemed to be more important to overcome poverty than to distribute it." U.S. General Lucius Clay backed him, and throughout a grim winter of rising prices and shortages, Erhard kept up Seelenmas-sagen (soul massages), in the form of radio speeches and newspaper articles. Over and over he predicted: "Prices will start to drop in the spring." Panic buying trailed off, production rose and prices did fall.
He Knows What He Wants. In the 15 years since, Erhard has watched West Germany's economy become Europe's strongest. The gross national product has moved from $20 billion in 1949 to $90 billion, and increased at the astonishing rate of 81% last year. Unemployment, which reached 1,580,000 in 1950, is virtually nonexistent today; in fact, more than 800,000 foreign workers have been lured from their home lands to fill vacancies in West German steel mills and factories.
West Germany was helped mightily by Marshall Plan aid and by history; the outbreak of the Korean war gave enormous impetus to German factories. But Erhard's own role as Minister of Economics was enormous. There he was year after year, laying down the rules, then applying Seelenmassagen. The pink, chubby optimist with the big cigar, who put them first onto bicycles and motorbikes, then into Volkswagens and Mercedes's, became a hero to West Germans. Despite long and stubborn opposition from Adenauer, who considered him an economist, not a politician, Erhard became der A he's inevitable successor.
Because he patiently took a lot of abuse from Adenauer, many Germans began calling him "Gummilowe" (rubber lion). There is a widespread sense of Autoritatsmudigkeit--weariness of authority--in Germany today, and Erhard fits that mood. Erhard is fasci nated by ideas and by people. Where Adenauer could loftily dismiss a dissenting aide, Erhard cannot resist the temptation to listen to all the arguments. "Ja, tell me more," he will grunt, and almost never flatly contradicts anyone.
But he knows what he wants, and he is a persistent negotiator. Last May, when C.D.U. fortunes were very much in question, Erhard took his political life in his hands by intervening personally in West Germany's biggest postwar strike, in which 400,000 metalworkers were off the job. Forcing a resumption of negotiations, he frightened labor leaders with threats of en actment of a German version of the Taft-Hartley law, then turned on management and extracted a substantial wage boost for the workers, though not nearly so much as labor was demanding. Similarly, he stepped in to break the deadlock between the U.S. and France during the Geneva talks on Common Market tariffs last spring.
Life with Lulu. At the office, Erhard keeps a relay of secretaries busy taking dictation and a host of aides busy shunting visitors in and out of the room. But he never lunches at his desk; when there is no official function, he drives home for a modest meal with Luise.
As Chancellor he will be forced to at tend more evening functions, which he dreads. He prefers a dinner of his favorite Pichelsteiner, a sort of Bavarian stew, after which he likes to sit in his black leather chair, looking at documents or playing cards with Luise. While he is reading, Erhard almost always has a stack of classical LPs on the record player: Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Chopin. A fair pianist himself --he once hoped to become a conductor --he tolerates nothing modern. His watchword: ''Not one step beyond Strauss" (he means Richard, not Franz Josef). As he listens, he sips a long, cool Scotch and soda ("a habit I picked up from the Americans") and inevitably puffs a cigar. "Lulu, you are smoking too much," Luise chides now and then.
The Inheritance. As Erhard moves from behind his semiprivate smoke screen into the Chancellor's office, he faces several distinct disadvantages. Though enormously popular, he has no electoral mandate from the people. His present term is limited to two years. He must live with a Cabinet and a coalition pact with the Free Democrats designed solely by Adenauer. Besides, he inherits some hideous problems that are not of his making.
West Germany's agriculture, for example, still plods along in its 19th century pattern. Virtually all German farmers live on government-protected prices. Exposed to Common Market competition--price levels are still being negotiated--they would soon go under. Experts believe that as many as 1,000,000 German farmers (out of some 3,200,000 in a total population of 55 million) will have to abandon the land. This is bad news to C.D.U. political professionals who have begun to think about the 1965 elections. As a necessary sop to the farmers and as a disappointment to his ideological supporters, Politician Erhard is currently soft-pedaling his free-market ideals as far as agriculture is concerned and promises that grain prices will stay artificially high.
Another economic area that needs Erhard's attention is the nation's social services. Hardly anywhere in the Western world is the worker and the lowerincome white-collar employee so pampered as in West Germany. Erhard would like to reduce the benefits, which dangerously increase the cost of labor. But his party's left wing is so strongly in favor of the elaborate structure built by Konrad Adenauer that Erhard probably has no chance to use his knife in this field.
Reunification of divided Germany is the haunting problem that towers over everything else. Erhard knows that there is no chance of achieving it in the foreseeable future, short of going to war with Russia or surrendering West Germany to Communism, but as a matter of faith and principle he feels, like most of his fellow Germans, that this fact must not be acknowledged as permanent. The hopelessness of changing it is probably largely responsible for the lack of a national purpose that many sense in West Germany today.
Broken Symbols. The country has yet to develop a real pride of nationhood to lift it finally above what Theologian Helmut Thielicke calls the "paralyzing complexes" about the past. With the world's curses at Hitler still ringing in Germany's ears, says Thielicke, "we still do not feel free to use a word like Vaterland uninhibitedly for fear of being misunderstood. And because we have a complex about it, many of us are even embarrassed by our national anthem -- Deutschland uber Alles, though its original meaning was simply a child's declaration of love for his mother: 'You are the most beautiful land of all, with your castles, rivers and forests.'" Germans who have broken their relationships with their symbols, he adds, have also broken the relationship with the cause the symbols stand for--the nation.
Many foreigners, wary of Germany's past nationalism, are satisfied with this state of affairs. Yet there is something vaguely disturbing about a Germany without ideals. Youth is developing a longing for something to be enthusiastic about. When he was rector of Tubingen University, Thielicke recalls, students wanted to hold torchlight parades "as people did in the old days," but did not quite know for what purpose. "They come to their rector and ask: 'Can't you tell us an idea that we can rally round and that we can serve?' "
More Time. Having eschewed right-wing, fascist forms--the neo-Nazis have virtually vanished--yet not quite grown accustomed to the democratic freedom they have so newly learned, the young, like their elders, accept the good life as an acceptable god on earth. A whole new generation of German writers is angry about German materialism. "Money is the lowest common denominator in all the pyramids of the West German social order," says Rudolf Leonhardt in his X Mai Deutsch land. "If anybody leads, it is the businessmen; there is no national purpose beyond the maintenance of prosperity."
That is not the worst purpose a country can have. Some politicians and sociologists point out that democracy in Germany could not have risen or lasted had it not been for material wellbeing. Ludwig Erhard, the patron saint of that wellbeing, himself feels that his country needs a greater sense of national purpose. Perhaps a sense of being at the heart of the West's defenses against Communism may yet prove to be enough purpose for any nation. To crystallize that sense beyond the present uncertainties and to help build the structure that must contain it, is a task that will take far longer than the two years that lie before Erhard fn his present term of office. But he may have more time. Erhard made clear last week that he will lead his party in the elections of 1965. Said he: "I do not feel like a transition Chancellor."
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.