Reckless Opposition

It was the bitter, contentious week before Der Tag (Feb. 24), the day when the West German Bundestag opens its final debate on German rearmament. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, secure in his huge parliamentary majority, was "100% certain" that the Paris accords would be ratified. Yet he and his Cabinet colleagues were stumping the countryside, pleading with the German people to abide by the Parliament's decision and accept the call to arms when it came. Crisscrossing the Chancellor's path and blackening his policies were the Social Democrats (SPD) in full cry. The Socialists' aim: to postpone German rearmament until they can talk over German reunification with the Russians.

Riots & Petitions. The campaign on both sides provoked passions that boded no good for German democracy. Bruisers stood on guard at Socialist meetings; admission to Adenauer's meetings was by ticket only, to keep out hecklers. In some towns rivals clashed, and the police used batons and hoses. There were near riots in Frankfurt; in West Berlin cops arrested 239 out of a gang of 500 when they tried to break up a Christian Democratic meeting presided over by the Vice Chancellor of West Germany, Franz Blucher.

The rough stuff was often provoked by Communists, many of them brought in specially from the East zone. The Reds also imported French Communist Jacques Duclos to warn German audiences against German militarism and to promise, in the name of France, that the Paris accords would never be ratified. But though the Communists talked furiously, it was the massive Socialist campaign that was doing the most harm. In town after town, the SPD was whipping up German youths to riot against rearmament, circulating petitions and questionnaires whose loaded questions (gist: Do you want unity or do you want war?) led Konrad Adenauer to exclaim that these were the same techniques used by the Nazis and Communists.

The Socialist case against rearmament involves holding out a hope of Soviet generosity and good faith which many Socialists know to be irresponsible. But to the motley coalition of pacifists, patriots, militant trade unionists, left-wing Protestant pastors, wishful thinkers, Marxist intellectuals and East zone refugees who make up the SPD, the oversimplified cry of Einheit Deutschlands (German unity) has a ringing appeal. The Socialists' late leader, Kurt Schumacher, an embittered hulk after the Nazis endlessly roughed him up in concentration camps, left behind a sour political testament: "Never again must the Socialists be caught being less nationalistic than their opponents." That advice is being meticulously followed by the bewildered and small men like Erich Ollenhauer who have taken Schumacher's place.

Ado about Dialectics. On the surface, the SPD seems rich, powerful and united. It has a distinguished history of resistance to oppression (both Bismarck and Hitler outlawed it and jailed its leaders). In the 1953 general election, the SPD won close to 8,000,000 votes (28.8% of the total); it has 600,000 dues-paying members and the powerful support of the Trade Union Federation (membership: 6,000,000). But since Schumacher died, the SPD has been bankrupt of ideas and of the men and the drive to apply them. It opposes out of habit, for the sake of opposition.

Founded in 1869 by a Prussian (August Bebel) and a Hessian pacifist (Wilhelm Liebknecht), the SPD is still doctrinally Marxist, making much ado about dialectics, red flags and the greeting "comrade." The Socialists say they are pro-Western, but they oppose German membership in the West European Union; they are stoutly antiCommunist, yet they line up on Moscow's side in its fight against the Paris accords. At a time when West Germany, and most, though not all, of its workers are enjoying unprecedented prosperity, the SPD still tends to couch its cries for social justice in obsolete Marxist phrases which catch no fire.

Tug of Left & Right. Since Schumacher's death, a band of progressive reformers on the Socialist right wing have sought to change the party's ways. Led by able, French-born Professor Carlo Schmid, a potbellied b&n vivant, the reformers want the SPD to junk 1) its aging bureaucrats, and 2) its Marxist jargon. The party, says Schmid, should move to the right so as to attract the votes of small shopkeepers and professional men.

But Party Leader Ollenhauer, a good-natured ineffectual, has been increasingly mesmerized by the party's extreme left wing. The leading light on the left is pipe-smoking Herbert Wehner, 48, a devious, rambunctious orator and former Communist (1927-43). Wehner prefers to move quietly in the background of the SPD, whispering his neutralist notions into Ollenhauer's hospitable ear, bombarding the party executive with confidential memos.

Wehner sees no hope of the Socialists winning an election until the predominantly Protestant and presumed-to-be Socialist voters of East Germany can vote for the SPD. To get those votes, and with them German unity, Wehner is willing to offer the Soviet Union almost any price, including a totally--militarily, politically and economically--neutralized Germany.

Western diplomats are candid in their distrust of Herbert Wehner, and of the interests he serves. They see him as an evil grey eminence in the SPD. But as the shrill Socialist campaign against the Paris accords spread across Germany last week, there could be little doubt that the counsels of Herbert Wehner are in the ascendant in the party hierarchy.

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