At Last, Clearly in Charge

Many times, when he was Vice Chancellor, Ludwig Erhard had been called into Konrad Adenauer's spacious, baroque office in Bonn's Palais Schaumburg and bawled out by der Alle for real or fancied transgressions. The setting was still much the same: the sunny room overlooking the Rhine, the Persian rugs, the stately furniture. But now the roles were reversed. Sitting in the Chancellor's chair was Ludwig Erhard, and he had peremptorily summoned the venerable Adenauer at 9:15 a.m. to dress him down in the presence of Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroder.

"After some of the things that have been going on," said Erhard, grimly puffing a thick cigar, "I thought it would be useful for us to get together." Several cigars and 90 minutes later, Adenauer more or less meekly picked up the phone and called his principal ally, former Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, advising him to do nothing that would aggravate the disunity of their party.

Francomania. The party's disunity was caused by the fact that Adenauer, Strauss and other West German "Gaullists" had been trying to force the Chancellor's hand in the conduct of foreign policy. Erhard and Foreign Minister Schroder base their policy on alliance with the U.S. and support an Atlantic-oriented, tightly integrated European union. Faithful to this conception, Erhard turned down President de Gaulle's brusque proposal, during recent talks in Bonn, of a loose confederation first of France and Germany, later to be joined by other Continental nations who might want in.

To the Gaullists within West Germany's ruling Christian Democratic Union, this loose federation scheme is mainly a convenient but thin disguise for what they really want--a German-French axis, independent of the U.S., that would enable Germany to carry on a far more nationalistic policy. Mostly Roman Catholic in faith and cultural tradition, they are suspicious of the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant world; above all, they fear that the current relaxation between Washington and Moscow is being achieved at the expense of eventual German reunification.

The clincher for the Gaullist plans was to come last week. The Munich convention of Strauss's Christian Social Union, the Bavarian affiliate of the C.D.U., was to issue a call for a drastic reorientation of West Germany's foreign policy. The shift was to be formally adopted at a meeting in Bonn of the Gaullist-packed C.D.U. directorate, under Adenauer's chairmanship.

Konrad Outfoxed. But all the plans went awry when the usually easygoing Erhard got mad on his return from a recent trip to Denmark (TIME, July 17). Then, after the confrontation in the Chancellor's office, Erhard went to Munich and addressed the C.S.U. convention in the same fighting mood.

"The foreign policy of the federal government is my policy," said Erhard. "I am the one who carries the final responsibility. I can't give it up, and I won't give it up. And let's be quite candid. It is inept of the all too clever people when they say, 'We must go easy on Erhard, we need him for the 1965 elections.' Ladies and gentlemen, I am telling you here and now that this is a gross deception. I make policy for Germany and not for the elections."

Some of Erhard's admirers had worried that he had not fully asserted himself since taking office. Now there could be little doubt that the genial fat man was really Chancellor of West Germany.

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