Achtung!

Chancellor Adenauer's well-laid plans for German rearmament also began to go awry. Outside the locked iron gates of Augsburg's Rosenau Stadium last week milled an overflow crowd of some 2,000 men—crutch-borne veterans and draftage youngsters. Derisively they barked the familiar German parade ground orders: Achtung. Vorwarts marsch. Rechts urn, links urn, rechts um." Inside the stadium restaurant, another 1,000 jammed crutch-littered tables, guzzling beer from massive mugs and laughing at the youngsters who mock goose-stepped around in paper hats.

They had gathered to heckle a speech by Theodor Blank—the man who is scheduled to be Defense Minister when West Germany gets an army—and they succeeded. Blank finally retreated behind a police guard, his speech undelivered. As he did so, a wineglass flew through the air and shattered on Blank's face.

Adenauer had hand-picked Theodor Blank to organize Germany's new army precisely to avoid the traditional working-class hostility to the army. No heel-clicking, stiff-backed militarist, but an ex-union official who still speaks in the pawky idiom of the Ruhr workman.

Blank says proudly: "I am working class." But last week Germany's Socialist Party and the powerful West German Trade Unions Federation would have none of Blank or his army. Hundreds of Protestant ministers joined in petitions against rearmament.

There were signs that Communists as well as Socialists were stirring up the dissatisfaction. But it was also plain that young Germans are not eager to get into uniform; most are at best indifferent, willing to serve but not anxious to volunteer. Said one German before a Cologne youth forum: "My whole family was at the front in the last war: my father and my brother-in-law. Our family was bombed out. Now I ask you why I should become a soldier. I have no one to defend."

At Bureau Blank (West Germany's provisional defense ministry) an official compared the 200,000 applications from volunteers (mostly former officers) to the half million men needed in the 12-division new army. He shook his head. "In 24 hours we can mobilize enough generals to staff every army in Europe. The only thing we need is soldiers."