WEST GERMANY: Stalemate on the Rhine

West German workers poured out of their factories onto the streets in sudden wildcat strikes. In several cities, there were spontaneous demonstrations by young people in support of Chancellor Willy Brandt. "Ah, oh, eh,/ Willy is okay," they chanted. At other times, West Germans huddled round their televisions and radios with a rapt attention that customarily is reserved only for championship soccer matches.

What excited West Germans was their country's worst political crisis in more than two decades—one that threatened to bring down the 2½-year-old coalition government of Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt. The crisis also endangered the Chancellor's Ostpolitik, the innovative foreign policy through which Brandt hopes to improve West Germany's relations with its Communist neighbors by renouncing Bonn's claims to onetime German territories, which were seized by Poland and Russia after World War II.

Confidence Vote. The crisis began building after last week's state elections in Baden-Württemberg, where the opposition Christian Democratic Union polled an absolute majority of 53.1% v. 37.5% for Brandt's Social Democratic Party and 8.9% for his coalition partners, the Free Democrats. Emboldened by those results, and heartened by the defection of yet another Free Democratic Deputy from the ruling coalition, the Christian Democrats decided to try to replace Brandt with their own leader, Rainer Barzel, 47, a tough and clever political infighter who affects long sideburns and flashy suits.

As the Bundestag began its debate on Brandt's request for a record $35 billion budget for 1973, the C.D.U. introduced a "constructive vote" of no confidence, a parliamentary procedure that is unique to West Germany. Mindful of the governmental instability during the Weimar Republic, the framers of West Germany's postwar constitution had provided constructively that a Chancellor could only be ousted by a secret vote that installs a new one.

Faced with a showdown, the Social Democratic leaders decided on an unusual tactic. Fearing defections from their own ranks, they ordered their Deputies to refrain from voting. Thus anyone who approached the voting urn from the Social Democratic benches would be presumed to be a traitor to his party. However, Vice Chancellor

Walter Scheel, the leader of the allied Free Democrats, allowed his remaining 25 Deputies to participate in the voting. Eight vote counters, seated at a green baize table in the Bundestag and surrounded by scores of anxious Deputies, tallied the white ballots.