The Sincere Chancellor

At home Chancellor Ludwig Erhard was under heavy attack from the Socialist opposition as a bungler who had failed his first serious foreign political test. Abroad, Erhard was being vilified by Israel and Egypt as a spineless weakling and a conniving betrayer. Erhard could well have answered, "Meinen Sie mich [Who, me]?"

Grieved Posture. The root cause of the uproar was basically none of Erhard's doing. When he took office in 1963, Erhard inherited a secret arms deal negotiated three years earlier between Israel's Premier David Ben-Gurion and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

The deal was Washington's idea, but Adenauer liked it because he wanted Germany to atone further for the Nazi atrocities against the Jews (TIME, Feb. 19). Erhard, or his Foreign Minister, Gerhard Schroder, should have known that the Arabs were bound to find out about it sooner or later.

When Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser learned of the deal, he retaliated by inviting East Germany's Red Boss Walter Ulbricht to Cairo for a six-day visit. In West German eyes, such a visit comes perilously close to full recognition of the East German resime by Egypt--and under the Hallstein Doctrine, Bonn will have nothing to do with any nation extending such recognition.

Erhard first tried to persuade Nasser through a Spanish intermediary to call off the visit, offering in return to suspend further arms aid to Israel. While Israel denounced Bonn for giving in to Egyptian blackmail, Nasser refused to uninvite Ulbricht, and won the enthusiastic backing of most other Arab states for his stand.

Last week Erhard stopped trying to buy off Nasser and started to threaten him, suggesting that Bonn would halt all economic assistance to Egypt. This attempt was equally futile. Nasser ungratefully sneered that all West Germany had given Egypt had come in the form of commercial loans at 6% inter est, thereby benefiting Bonn more than Egypt (actually, West German loans to Cairo have been as low as 3%).

In an interview with a German TV crew, Nasser appeared in the posture of a man grievously betrayed. Melodramatically he proclaimed that the arms given Israel were helping a government that had already killed more Arabs than the Nazis had killed Jews-which of course was arrant nonsense.

Nasser himself in his involvement in the Yemen civil war has probably killed as many Arabs as anyone else in this century. He added, "We do not intend to recognize East Germany--not yet."

Wrung Statement. The Israelis, as Bonn saw it, were being equally ungrateful. Instead of trying to understand West Germany's difficult position and accepting the remainder of the arms aid in cash rather than hardware, as Erhard proposed, Premier Levi Eshkol spoke of Germany's "primary duty" to Israel and of her account with Jewry, which is "written in blood." In an at tempt to interfere in other nations' foreign policy, Jewish business interests in the U.S. threatened a boycott of West German goods.

Bonn was further hurt that the U.S. had been, in its opinion, slow to acknowledge that the arms deal was born in Washington. Said a Bonn spokesman: "A statement on its part in this whole affair was only gradually wrung out of the American Government." Feeling ill-treated on all sides, and with some reason, Erhard told the Bundestag of his heartbreak at world reaction when "we thought we had grounds for hope that one would recognize our sincere attitude in our actions." Mused an asso ciate: "I have never heard the Chancel lor use the word 'sincere' so often as in the past few weeks."

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