"We Want to Liberate Ourselves"

Tensions rise between peace activists and U.S. troops

The knock on the front door was not threatening, nor was the visitor's message. "We are from the peace initiative," the voice said. "We want to talk to you about the missiles." But the U.S. soldier's young wife living in Mutlangen, West Germany, near a major U.S. Army depot, refused even to reply until her unexpected caller had departed. Moments later, when she hesitantly opened the door, she found an anti-Pershing-missile leaflet on her doorstep. "I didn't answer because I was scared," she said. "I don't know what they have against us."

To the dismay of West German and U.S. officials, the young wife's attitude is becoming commonplace. Weeks before the start of an expected "hot autumn" of major demonstrations against NATO's plan to begin deploying Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe by December, tensions are rising between peace activists and the 249,000 U.S. troops based in the country. Only last week West German police dismantled a "peace camp" outside the Mutlangen depot.

So far there have been few serious confrontations, but the fear lingers that at some point emotions could boil over. Two years ago, Red Army Faction terrorists fired an antitank grenade at a car carrying General Frederick Kroesen, then Commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe. "Some of these people will do anything," says a Frankfurt-based soldier. "It takes only one bomb attack for you and your wife to be afraid for months."

West Germans opposed to the projected U.S. missile deployment consider the Reagan Administration to be unnecessarily aggressive in the realm of East-West relations. In the eyes of some resident U.S. citizens, that criticism has undertones of a more generalized anti-Americanism. On the whole, protest has so far been peaceful: demonstrations in front of the American consulate in Frankfurt, or the display in a Lübeck storefront of quotes designed to portray the U.S. as a warmonger. (Example: "We don't want war, but. . ." attributed to former NATO Commander and Secretary of State Alexander Haig.) Occasionally the mood has turned ugly. When U.S. Vice President George Bush visited the city of Krefeld last June, his car was stoned by so-called chaotics, militant rabblerousers who have attached themselves to the peace movement. In Wiesbaden last month, a member of the Green Party poured a jar of his blood over U.S. Lieut. General Paul Williams. Later, a bomb exploded in a U.S. officers' club near Hahn, and on the same day, antimissile activists tried to disrupt the annual air show at the U.S. Air Force Base at Ramstein.