A New Nation

"Today . . . with deep satisfaction, the federal government can state we are a free and independent state," said Chancellor Konrad Adenauer into the microphone, in a little ceremony outside Bonn's Palais Schaumburg. "We are standing, free among the free, allied with former occupation powers in true partnership." No one cheered.

Thus, in apathetic silence, sovereignty was restored to defeated Germany, nearly ten years, to the day, after Colonel General Alfred Jodl stalked into a red-brick schoolhouse in Reims to surrender to the Allies. Ten years ago, in an atmosphere almost forgotten--on a day when millions in arms felt a sudden release from jeopardy, and the Red army choir sang Tip-perary--Germany was dismembered, demoralized and devastated. Last week West Germany was dynamically prosperous and once again the world's third largest trading nation. It had been restored to health by billions in U.S. aid, by a sympathetic occupation and, most of all, by the Germans' own astonishing energy. But its restoration to a place of trust in the Western world was primarily the achievement of one man: stern, formidable old Konrad Adenauer.

Five Minutes Only. Perhaps the West Germans' apathy came from the fact that the reality had so long preceded the ceremony. One German woman wondered why a foreign newsman congratulated her. "You are now a sovereign nation again," he explained. "Oh, that." she said, and walked away. A newspaper asked 40 people what was significant about the date, found that 33 had no idea.

Adenauer was not even allowed to tell the Bundestag the news. He was warned that if he read out the proclamation of sovereignty, the Social Democrats would consider the statement grounds for opening a full-dress foreign policy debate. After an hour's dispute, the Socialists agreed to allow Adenauer to send a message stating the fact that the Federal Republic was sovereign at last, but he must not read it himself. Each party would get five minutes for comment. That was all.

Adenauer listened stonily as the Socialists' Erich Ollenhauer used his five minutes to declare: "The end of the occupation statute is no reason for us to celebrate. One should not speak of German sovereignty until Germany is reunified."

Critics often accuse Konrad Adenauer of being content with a small Germany based on his own Catholic Rhineland, plus Bavaria. Well aware of this sentiment, Adenauer told "the millions of Germans who are forced to live separated from us, without freedom and without justice [that] you can always rely on us, because together with the free world, we will not rest until . . . you live peacefully united with us in one state."

Three Germanys. The words of Adenauer and of his opponents alike were a clear warning that Germany will be thinking for itself, and of itself. Germans have never forgotten that there are three Germanys, and that only one regained its freedom last week. West Germany contains the majority of the population (50,000,000), and about half of the land area of the Germany of 1933. But there are 18 million Germans in Soviet-occupied Germany, which nationalist-minded Germans call "Middle Germany." "East Germany" comprises the territories, as big as Communist Germany, beyond the Oder-Neisse line, which the Potsdam agreement put under Polish administration, pending a final peace treaty.

Every German politician must make his country's reunification his first promise, even though many West Germans are not keen to dilute their current prosperity by absorbing the impoverished lands to the East. Adenauer's program for reunification may be sound, but it does not electrify Germans: he argues that only by combining Germany's strength with the West's ("a free and united Germany in a free and united Europe") can Germany force concessions from the Soviets. But many a German instinctively feels that other Western nations (particularly the French) are not as keen as the Germans to see them get their 1937 borders back.

Last week a formless ferment was stirring in Germany: a restless search for other solutions. Neutrality as such did not seem to have a wide appeal to realistic Germans. The Russians might hint that Germany could be free like Austria, if only it would consent to be neutral like Switzerland. But even the Social Democrats, who used to call their neutralism "freedom from alliances" are now evolving a misty policy called "Stufenweiser Abbau," or a gradual dismantling of the ties Adenauer has forged with the West, in exchange for concessions from the East.

Inside Adenauer's own coalition, the right-wing Free Democrats urges something which it grandly calls a "Third Solution." The party's foreign-policy expert, August Martin Euler, concedes that Germany can never be neutral. Consequently, he would offer the Soviets a bargain in return for reunification: Germany would pledge never to use force to regain "Eastern" Germany beyond the OderNeisse line. "Middle," or Soviet-occupied Germany, would become a demilitarized zone. German and NATO forces would be confined to West Germany.

The possibility of making a deal with Russia for the lost territories has affected even the planning of Germany's new army. Colonel Bogislav von Bonin, a brilliant officer who rose to become, at 36, an influential member of the German general staff before incurring Hitler's displeasure, proposed that Germany's new army should be defensive only. Von Bonin wanted West Germany's frontier guarded by small "blocking groups," armed chiefly with antitank guns and backed by militia. These would be backed, in turn, by six armored divisions based in Germany itself. The NATO divisions would remain on the Rhine. Germans are interested in defending their homes, he said, but not in retreating through their own territory until the NATO forces could mount a counterattack. But the political appeal of his plan --which finally led to his dismissal--was that the Germans would thereby have a "detachable" army which could maneuver, either militarily or politically, independent of NATO. With such an army a strong Germany might, in time, make its own deal with Russia.

The Old Man. So long as Konrad Adenauer remains in control, such ideas will be resisted. Long ago, Adenauer made the massively simple decision that Germany's future lies with the West. Until 1957, Adenauer will have an absolute majority in the Bundestag. But, "Can a 79-year-old man guarantee anything?" asks the magazine Der Spiegel pointedly.

West Germany is now a full partner of the West. It will not for long be content to be a junior or silent partner.

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