Adenauer Under Attack

For five years Konrad Adenauer had labored to put West Germany's best face forward. The stern old schoolmaster kept the unruly boys in his Bundestag shiny, neat and well-behaved. But last week, with the prize of German sovereignty assured, his pupils were kicking over the traces, bedeviling the old schoolmaster, and acting all too much like their old selves. Demagogy, irresponsible nationalism, and religious bickering swirled through provincial election campaigns in Hesse and Bavaria. The same kind of resurgent nationalism is now astir in Germany's defeated Axis partner, Japan (see below).

In West Germany, Der Alte responded with furious energy and biting tongue. He whistle-stopped through Bavaria and Hesse, speaking from the back platform of his train. His object: to correct what he called "strange confusions" and "curious unclarity."

The Ungoverned Tongue. The unclear-est and perhaps the most confused of the politicians he aimed at was, curiously enough, his closest coalition ally. Dr. Thomas Dehler, who heads the Free Democrats, the No. 2 party in the Bonn government. Dehler is an old-fashioned liberal who hated the Nazis and admires Adenauer, but he has one disability: an ungoverned tongue. Dehler "can break so much china in one day that a whole government needs a long time to glue it together again," complained the Christian Democratic press service in 1952.

Up and down Hesse and Bavaria, the two men went last week, Dehler smashing china, Adenauer picking up the pieces. Der Alte no longer had much patience for his impulsive ally. Dehler had given an interview to the Yugoslav Communist organ Politika, saying that he would agree to Communist-run "unfree elections" in the East zone if, by so doing, Germany could be unified. Said Adenauer to an applauding Munich crowd: Dehler's "statement is ... a distinct disservice to Germany." Dehler then accused Adenauer of a "giveaway" of Germany's national rights in the Saar; Adenauer countered by accusing Dehler of pandering to Germany's worst "nationalistic instincts."

Religious Abyss. But what riled old Konrad Adenauer most was an implication of religious intolerance. The Catholic Chancellor almost singlehanded jammed reparations for Israel through his Cabinet; he works constantly to preserve a careful Catholic-Protestant balance in the government. Last week, when Hessian and Bavarian Catholic bishops urged their communicants to vote for Christian Democrats, Dehler cried clerical intervention. "Why does not Joseph Cardinal Wendel [of Munich] take over the government?" he demanded. "We would at least then know what we have."

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