The End of Patience

The old man threaded his way with quick gait through the grey stone chateau resort high in the pines of the Black Forest, past his fellow guests and their nurses. On vacation, he looked as chipper as ever, walking in the morning amid the trees, kneeling for as long as an hour in the chapel, while Paul, his son, said Mass. He joshed the hotel servants; when a waiter with a Rhineland accent brought the corkscrew to open some 40-year-old brandy, he insisted that the man drink with him.

But in his 79th year, Konrad Adenauer, Der Alte of West Germany, was not as well as he looked: he had come back from the Brussels Conference plagued with insomnia, able to sleep only under doses of drugs. At Brussels, after the meeting ended, he had seen Mendes-France for an hour. Every word had hurt. EDC was dead. Mendes said. "But my French friends tell me that EDC has a chance in the National Assembly," said Adenauer. "They lied to you " Mendes had replied curtly.

One Wish. Now, suddenly, he was a tired, discouraged old man who had lost precious time chasing a mirage. His Cabinet was howling hate at the French, his Foreign Office was split, his people resentful at being turned away unloved, unwanted once again. His opponents sneered that though he had virtually handed Germany to the West, all he had received in return was a boot in the backside.

Once, long ago, Sir Winston Churchill asked Adenauer: "Mr. Chancellor, if you had one wish, what would it be?" Adenauer replied without hesitation: "A strong France." He believed that working with a strong France would be difficult, but with a weak France, impossible.

Now he was convinced that France had shown itself weak, and his patience was ended. Politically endangered and personally disillusioned, he summoned his Cabinet to the Black Forest and spoke for 45 minutes in a waspish voice that grew especially cutting when he alluded to the French. The meeting, scheduled for an hour, stretched into four. Minister after minister rose to contribute his sense of outrage, and the improvised Cabinet room in the hotel swelled with heady, confident talk of Germany resurrected. Next morning, in a formal communique, the Adenauer government announced that it would seek restoration of sovereignty and rearmament within a security system through negotiations with the U.S.. Britain and those powers that had ratified EDC. France was not mentioned, as though it did not exist. The Allies were also notified that West Germany would no longer accept the limited sovereignty previously agreed to in the Bonn contracts, but wanted "full and unrestricted sovereignty." In other words, gone would be the treaty curbs on rearmament and the reserve emergency powers that would allow the occupation authorities to intervene in West German affairs in case of a serious threat to democratic order.

New Assertiveness. Next day, concerned over an unfavorable European reaction to the truculent tone of the communique, Adenauer's Press Chief Felix von Eckardt summoned 125 correspondents and retreated a bit: "The federal government believes that any effective defense of Europe can only take place with the cooperation of France."

But Germany did not abandon its new assertiveness. At week's end Adenauer displayed his new strategy: to attack and isolate the Mendes-France regime while proclaiming friendship for France. In an interview with the Times of London, Adenauer said bluntly: "Mendes-France wanted to destroy the EDC . . . Only if we Europeans stand together can we hold out against Communist Russia--and that, unfortunately, Mendes-France does not understand ... It is important to note that Mendes-France has no majority behind him." He found a sympathetic echo in Wisconsin Senator Alexander Wiley, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who. after a three-hour chat with Adenauer, blamed Mendes-France for the defeat of EDC and added: "I cannot believe that a free expression of the French will would have given the same result." Adenauer's attitude toward France, broadcast over all West German radio stations, remained correct: "No German politician thinks of isolating or even offending France. I am profoundly convinced that an understanding between France and Germany is the absolutely necessary foundation for any European policy." But he made it clear that "negotiations have begun with Britain and the U.S.," to the exclusion of France. "Further negotiations with France will follow," he promised. But the reality was that Germany, spurned by France, was now in turn acting without consulting its neighbor. Between the two, the historic abyss was reopening; opened wider, it could swallow European unity.

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