Herr Mac

As the three-car private diesel train pulled out of suburban Mehlem, five miles south of Bonn, a mixed crowd of Germans and Americans cheered the ruddy-faced American waving from a coach window. John J. McCloy, 57, retiring U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, was on his way home after three long years as proconsul, diplomat and military adviser to the most battered, most divided and most important land in Europe.

In the nature of things, no occupier is beloved by the occupied, but John Jay McCloy, Wall Street lawyer and wartime Assistant Secretary of War, had earned the respect of the Germans. Last week the University of Bonn made him an honorary senator. A group of German trade unionists trooped into his Schloss bringing a porcelain figurine for "an understanding friend of the German workers." McCloy went to Berlin to collect an honorary engineering doctorate. Back in Bonn, he attended the 92nd meeting of the Allied High Commission (his British and French colleagues gave him a gold cigarette case). All the time he kept one eye on the Bundestag committee which was debating ratification of the German Peace Contract ending the occupation.

Rags to Riches. To most Germans, McCloy's departure, more than the unfinished debate in the Bundestag, symbolized occupation's end.*As he prepared to leave, allied troops, who used to ride free on German trains and buses, began paying their way. McCloy himself, the Germans recognized, had done more than any other man to transform the Bonn Republic from the status of a defeated enemy to the role of a needed friend. As the civilian successor to U.S. Military Governor Lucius D. Clay, McCloy injected $1.15 billion of U.S. economic aid into the emaciated German economy, helped spark the industrial boom which has restored West Germany from rags to comparative riches.

Against considerable opposition, he siphoned off $13 million in counterpart funds to reconstruct "the minds and hearts of the Germans," rebuilt universities, pumped another $3.5 million into a capital pool which new democratic newspapers could use for buying themselves out from under ex-Nazi owners.

McCloy's toughest assignment was to persuade Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to accept the German Peace Contract and EDC, without which Western Europe would not trust the Germans with arms. When war broke out in Korea, the Pentagon called him home and announced that it wanted a German army within six months. McCloy said no; the development must be slower, else European unity would be imperiled. For weeks of table-thumping debate, McCloy and his sly, dry wit seemed to be everywhere at once: chivvying nervous Frenchmen who feared German rearmament, rebuking truculent Germans who seemed always to want more.

Yet, eager as he was for Bundestag ratification of both treaties, McCloy refused to truckle to German nationalism. To a delegation of nationalist deputies who demanded the release of all Nazi war criminals, he snapped: "If you think I would buy ratification with war criminals, you're very wrong . . ." Last week, replying to Konrad Adenauer's farewell toast, McCloy remarked: "After what we went through [in negotiating the Peace Contract], how can I ever forget either the charm or the perversity of you Germans?" He leaves Germany with the job of ratification still undone, and by no means convinced that Germany is surefootedly on the road to healthy democracy.

Enemy to Friend. German Socialists found the dour lawyer a hard man to con. McCloy regarded their fiery leader, demagogic Kurt Schumacher, as a wrecker of European unity (though he also assured the U.S. Senate that Schumacher is a genuine democrat). Yet last week the Socialists, too, sent a delegation to wish him godspeed, and one of them, speaking of EDC, whispered in his ear: "You don't have to worry about us, Herr Mac."

The man who would have to worry was Herr Mac's successor: 56-year-old Walter J. Donnelly, the son of a Connecticut policeman, and a career diplomat who worked his way up through six Latin American embassies. Donnelly was switched to Bonn last week from his post as U.S. Ambassador (and High Commissioner) to Austria. His good manners and good sense, and his forceful handling of Communist intrigues in Vienna, have prompted the State Department to label Donnelly "just about the best foreign service officer in the business." Donnelly will need all his tact and firmness to cope with the Germans as they shed the fetters of occupation. Only last week in Bonn's daily General Anzeiger, a hardware dealer advertised for a truck driver, but added bluntly: "Former employees of occupation forces need not apply."

*Legally, occupation will continue until the European Defense Community (EDC) and the German Peace Contract have been ratified by all signatory powers. The U.S. Senate ratified the Peace Contract three weeks ago.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.