Hurt, Bothered & Bewildered

All over West Germany on New Year's Eve, candles were lit and placed in windows to burn as symbols of the nation's hopes for reunification. Nonetheless, for Bonn the German New Year began in a mood of gloom. Cried the Bild-Zeitung in banner-headline indignation: SHOWDOWN WITH THE U.S. NO NEGOTIATIONS WITH MOSCOW OVER REUNIFICATION IN 1965!

The Germans' great fear is that the world--particularly the U.S.--will forget about the tragedy of their sundered country. Politicians of every political stripe vie with one another in their clarion calls, and the message comes especially loud and clear in 1965, an election year.

Going It Alone? The current eruption of the chronic horror was touched off at last month's NATO meeting in Paris. Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder, eager to do his bit for Wieder-vereinigung, tried to get the U.S., Britain and France to support an invitation to Russia for a four-power standing committee that would meet periodically to discuss the German problem. Neither Washington nor London was very interested, judging that Russia would turn down the invitation anyway, and France flatly refused. Schroeder could only issue his own unilateral communique.

Even this was unpopular. Fortnight ago, at what was intended to be an off-the-record background meeting with foreign correspondents, Dean Rusk suggested that the Germans might really be the last to want fresh negotiations with the Russians, since this would inevitably involve discussion of West Germany's role in NATO and the future boundaries of a united Germany. Cruelly accurate, Rusk's words touched off a storm. In Bonn, the Free Democrats' Bundestag Vice President Thomas Dehler warned that Germany was being "sacrificed" to Atlantic policy. Christian Democrat Parliamentary Leader Rainer Barzel cried that Germany might "go it alone" if pushed too far by its allies. Erhard himself was reported upset and worried, and amid celebrations last week for former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's 89th birthday, met with his Cabinet to discuss the "new situation."

Hand-Holding. The situation was of course not new at all. But some of the personalities were. Moscow's new team of Brezhnev and Kosygin would hardly be prepared at this early date to make major decisions on so basic an element of Soviet foreign policy as the German question. It was, after all, the fear of some new Khrushchev initiative toward Bonn that spurred his adversaries in the Kremlin to throw him out.

These were the hard facts of life. To make them more palatable, Lyndon Johnson added to his State of the Union message a specific reference to the continued goal of German reunification. It did not say anything specific, but Ambassador George McGhee hurried to reassure Erhard that the U.S. had in deed not forgotten the Germans. It was just like old times. Happily, the West German government's spokesman called in reporters to say smilingly that all the "false ideas" about U.S. policy are regarded as "clearly removed."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.