West Germany: Skirmishes over the Nuclear Issue

Schmidt wins a battle, but not the war, against his party's left

The setting seemed strangely antiseptic for an occasion so potentially fraught with drama. For its first national congress in more than two years, West Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party (S.P.D.) had gathered in a cavernous 15,000-seat sports arena built for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. As Chancellor Helmut Schmidt addressed the 440 party delegates and the 1,000 observers present at the event, he faced a sea of unoccupied seats, and his voice echoed through the near empty hall, so distorted by bad acoustics that many in his audience barely understood him.

High on the conference agenda was possibly the most divisive issue the Social Democrats have faced in their 13 years in office: whether or not to continue support for a 1979 NATO decision to install 572 U.S.-built nuclear-armed Pershing II and cruise missiles in five Western European countries, including West Germany, beginning in late 1983. The decision was coupled with a demand that the U.S. and the Soviet Union open negotiations aimed at reducing the number of atomic weapons based in Europe. Last May, just as the Western European antimissile movement began gaming strength, the Chancellor had threatened to resign if left-wing party members succeeded in withdrawing the S.P.D.'s backing for NATO's Doppelbeschluss, or two-track decision.

As his supporters had predicted, Schmidt carried the day. Delegates declared their preference by raising red voting cards, but no count was considered necessary because Schmidt had clearly received a majority of roughly 2 to 1. Yet it was an oddly hollow victory in a congress that failed to lift the party out of its deep-seated doldrums. Although Schmidt's coalition of Social Democrats and the Free Democratic Party was reelected with a handsome majority of 45 seats only 19 months ago, it has been in steady decline since then.

Not only is the Social Democratic Party rived internally over Schmidt's nuclear-defense policy, but it has increasingly been unable to agree with its junior partners, the business-oriented Free Democrats, on how to finance an economic policy that would reduce West Germany's 8% unemployment rate, the highest in 30 years.To strengthen his position, Schmidt last week was preparing to reshuffle several key portfolios in his Cabinet.At the same time, Bonn's relations with Washington have been strained as the result of what the Reagan Administration sees as an insufficiently firm attitude toward Moscow. One oft cited example is Bonn's lack of support for economic sanctions against the Soviet Union in the wake of General Wojciech Jaruzelski's declaration of martial law in Poland.