The Shield

(See Cover)

Seven years ago, under the urgency of fear, and with the leadership of the U.S., twelve nations of Europe and America made solemn compact, one with another, that an attack upon any one of them was an attack upon all. Under the urgency of fear they pledged to unite their forces and resources on the continent of Europe under a single command. Under the urgency of fear NATO's forces grew to become the most powerful peacetime alliance of free powers in the world's history.

But the fear is gone, or at least the urgent sense of it. "There ain't gonna be no war," cried Britain's Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan in the afterglow of Russian smiles at the first Geneva meeting at the summit. Last week the NATO nations, sweaty in their armor under the fitful post-Geneva sun, were somewhat shamefacedly wondering aloud whether all that weight was really necessary. They sometimes had the air of men trying to remember what all the excitement had been about. Implied but never stated was a bigger question: "Is NATO itself really necessary?"

Cry for Cutbacks. All over Europe NATO's citizens cried for reduced taxes, reduced drafts. Examples:

Belgium in the last two years has deactivated one of its three NATO divisions, and cut its draft period from 21 to 18 months.

The Netherlands has stripped four of its five divisions down to skeletons.

France, fighting for its life in North Africa, has robbed its four NATO divisions of its elite troops and replaced them with conscripts.

Denmark "cannot meet its NATO promises, and we admit the reasons are political," says Denmark's Minister of Defense.

Britain is lopping 100,000 from its defense forces.

West Germany, nine months after receiving its sovereignty, had not yet passed even a conscription law, has only 900 volunteers actually in training. Its pfennig-pinching Finance Minister Schaefer protests that the most prosperous country in Europe can only afford a modest $2 billion a year for the new army.

And to protests against such a performance, most nations answer that the U.S., too, has reduced its defense expenditures and is cutting 400,000 men from its Army.

Gone are the tremulous uncertainties of 1949, when small nations who had seen Czechoslovakia go under were wondering "who's next?"--those days, as one NATO official recalled last week, "when you could feel a tremor go around the council table every time one of the smaller nations received a Soviet note, and NATO, since we had no effective military organization, seemed more like a source of trouble than of strength."

To some extent, NATO is a victim of its own success. Statesmen, who are politicians when they get back home, have found it all too easy to believe that their security is the result, not of their own strength but of a change in Russian hearts. "The threat of war is diminishing." they chant.

Chief target for this chant is U.S. General Alfred Gruenther, Supreme Commander of all NATO forces in Europe. To the chanters, Gruenther retorts that the only change in the Russians is what NATO's strength has forced on them. With a cascade of facts drawn from an incredible memory, an inextinguishable smile and a dry Nebraska lucidity that is the admiration of every statesman in Europe, Al Gruenther fights that tired feeling with a combination of public optimism and private exhortation that is his specialty. To those who speak of Russian smiles, he recites precise figures of Russian forces, of Russian concentration on war industry, of stepped-up Russian production of planes, atomic weapons and guided missiles, notes: "While the Soviets were toasting Chancellor Adenauer in Moscow, the steam shovels were moving the earth for new and bigger jet runways in Eastern Germany. Their smiles suggest peaceful intentions, but we must deal in realities--these forces, these airfields, these economic goals." He adds flatly: "The Soviets' military threat to NATO has never been greater than it is today."

Few men have been so superbly fitted to fill their time and place in history as General Alfred Maximilian Gruenther. As NATO's first Supreme Commander in Europe (SACEUR), Eisenhower and his towering prestige rallied and heartened Europe's terrified nations and gave them confidence that the thing could be done. His successor, General Matthew Ridgway, was a blunt soldier who demanded more troops than the Europeans were willing to supply, stepped on many toes, and left no happy memories. In a time of peace-mongering, Gruenther has inherited the demanding and delicate job.

Europeans expect few soldiers to understand that domestic politics are realities to be dealt with and not exasperations to be bulldozed out of the way, that troops in the field are useless unless supported by a sound economy at home, that the cold war could be lost by subversion in the factories as well as by defeat at the front. Gruenther not only understands, but often startles ministers by reciting production figures of their own countries that they do not know themselves, amazes politicians by quoting election figures down to the tenth of a percentage point. As a result, he has won an admiration among European statesmen that borders on adulation. Admits one French news paper: a commander "less flexible and less informed on European politics-the short period of command by General Ridgway shows this--would have brought great peril not only to the military organization but the Atlantic alliance itself." Said able NATO Secretary-General Lord Ismay, who as personal chief of staff to Churchill in World War II, has seen many: "General Gruenther is the greatest soldier-statesman I have ever known."

In the present crisis of indifference, Gruenther understands that no alliance is stronger than the will to support it. "We can stand criticism, but we cannot stand indifference," he says. His method is to expound to anyone who will listen--to groups of manufacturers, parliamentarians, schoolgirl choirs--the necessity, importance, and stature of NATO.

Last week Gruenther rushed off to Belgium to talk to the Premier, have an audience with young King Baudouin, lunch with the Defense Minister, and deliver a lecture to the royal military school. He never made the mistake of publicly reproaching the Belgians for failure to contribute more than they do. But in his conversations with King, Premier and top officers, he demanded not the politically impossible but tried to demonstrate with typical well-informed cogency, with figures on coal production and production indexes, what more was possible.

Back in Paris, he took off again for London, in the face of a heavy fog, for the sole purpose of giving his pep talk to a gathering of Britain's public-relations men. "This thing is in danger of evaporating entirely over a period of five years or so," he warns, and for a moment the smile fades.

The Staff Officer. NATO's indispensable man has been described as a human IBM machine, the perfect staff officer, the smartest man in the U.S. Army, the most factual man of his times. His extraordinary talents were so much in demand as a staff officer that until he became NATO's supreme commander, he had never commanded anything bigger than an artillery battalion. Eldest of six children of a small-town newspaper editor, Alfred Maximilian Gruenther was born 57 years ago in Platte Center, Neb., Irish on his mother's side, German Catholic on his father's. "A skinny kid with an extra good head on him," young Al was scolded toward perfection by his exacting father. He took a memory course by correspondence when he was 13, later added a course in public speaking (for years he kept a file of jokes suitable for all occasions). When he discovered that every rising young officer should play bridge, he sent for an instruction book, soon became the Army's best bridge player and eked out his Army pay by refereeing public matches, including the famed Culbert-son-Lenz match of 1931. He graduated fourth in his class, but he was stuck for 17 years in the grade of 2nd lieutenant, teaching at West Point.

Finally his talents caught the eye of two rising young officers, Dwight Eisenhower and Mark Clark. When Eisenhower and Clark went to Britain to organize the North African invasion, Clark took Gruenther along as his chief of staff. Gruenther was a planner without peer. He planned the North African invasion, the Fifth Army landings in Italy, the arduous campaign in Italy's mountains. Says Clark: "On every efficiency report I ever turned in on Gruenther I wrote: 'Highly qualified to be Chief of Staff of the Army at appropriate time.'"

Eisenhower, with an admiration matching Clark's, has been heard to remark: "Al Gruenther would make a good President of the U.S."

When Ike was called from the presidency of Columbia University to become NATO's first Supreme Commander in Europe, his first and only choice as his chief of staff was his old friend and favorite bridge partner, Al Gruenther. Gruenther stayed on under Ridgway. In mid-1953, Ridgway left to become the Army's Chief of Staff, and Eisenhower made Gruenther Supreme Commander.

The nerve center from which Al Gruenther commands NATO's 4,000-mile front is a low, many-winged building, 40 minutes from the Ritz bar, in the President of France's official hunting preserves. Through its halls hustle 800 professional military men of 15 nations, comprising the unique multilingual command staff called SHAPE (Supreme Allied Headquarters Europe).

On a typical day, the commanding general is driven up in his black Buick at exactly 9 a.m.; he glances at the flags fluttering from 15 tall flagpoles at the entrance, and trots briskly up the steps. He flashes a wide, toothy grin of greeting at the military policeman on duty, to the civilian woman who runs the magazine stand, to anyone he encounters in the corridor on his way to his office. His working day had begun almost an hour earlier, when his French aide reported to his breakfast table in his nearby official residence to brief him on the day's news in the French press (Gruenther had already whipped through the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune). At his desk, Gruenther hands a secretary six or seven Dictaphone records filled with instructions and answers to letters that he had dictated at home (once she was startled when the stream of instructions was broken by an impatient feminine voice: "Al, for God's sake, it's 2 o'clock. Come to bed"*).

At his desk Gruenther moves through the prepared pile of papers with the efficiency of a high-powered threshing machine. He grips each paper tightly, as if it were a living thing that might get away from him. Each one gets a flash of concentration that is complete and immediate. He raps out his decision and flips the paper to a waiting aide without looking up. These chores over, Gruenther browses through six British newspapers (flown over early every morning), and several U.S. and other weeklies.

Ranging Demands. Soon a steady stream of Gruenthergrams--paper slips bearing orders, queries or demands-is rocketing from his desk. In the office outside few staffers bother to sit down, on the theory that nobody can get off fast enough from a sitting start when a Gruenthergram comes sizzling out of the commanding general's office. The Gruenthergrams range as far and wide as the general's far-ranging mind. Samples: "Please investigate the scratching and meows on the roof." "It seems to me that about a year ago I sent to G-2 a study dealing with Soviet concepts of strategy. I'd like to use it over the weekend." "I desire to land in Washington at 0830 on Wednesday." "What do you think of Mr. Attlee's book?" "I hear your sergeant-major had a baby yesterday. Boy or girl?" (The general will write a letter of congratulation.) "Please get me by noon some anti-religious quotations from Marx, Lenin and Stalin." "What was I thinking about yesterday when I talked to so-and-so?'' Gruenther's insatiable demands for information keep his staff in a state of palm-sweating nerves all day long. But they accord him a rare loyalty and devotion, tending him like some dangerous but tremendously precious machine which must be kept running at all costs.

A demanding perfectionist, Gruenther seldom is more than gruff to erring allied officers. He saves the rough side of his tongue for his U.S. aides, a painful process known as being "Gruentherized." It consists in a detailed itemization of all the unfortunate officer's weaknesses, punctuated by explosive cuss words. Few escape. One sufferer remembers the time Gruenther wheeled on him for some minor blooper and snapped: "Ordinarily you're a pretty smart cookie, but this is the god-damnedest foul-up I've ever seen." Said the officer later: "I felt like falling on my knees and blurting, 'Gee, general, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.' "

Mindful of his mission, Gruenther lets no group that might influence opinion pass through Paris unnoticed. Whatever the group, he whips off a G-gram demanding information. ("I should like to know more about that Machine Tool Association whom we are briefing on Friday. What are some of their problems?") By the time he has to speak, he knows that the group comprises 29 manufacturers from eight countries, is highly interested in developing and adapting standardized equipment for NATO needs, and that he can warmly commend them on their interest. With such a preface, he swings into his discussion of the structure and importance of NATO, reeling off statistics without recourse to notes as usual, ends by moving out to the front steps for a group picture.

In 1955 Gruenther personally briefed 175 visiting groups totaling 7,000 people. Outside his office is a card file of visitors, noting the time of their last visit, a brief biography, whether it is "Mr. Fairfield" or "Jack." Once, flying to Britain for a meeting with Members of Parliament, he had aides get out photographs of the 120 M.P.s who had visited SHAPE and thumbnail biographies of each. Said an awed Englishman: "When he walked into Parliament, he knew every damn one of them, greeted them by name, adding remarks like 'How's your new daughter?' "

Such talent for detail, priceless in a staff officer, can be disastrous in a commander, and some senior NATO officers were worried that Gruenther would let details distract him from broader thinking. "But we found that he is able to clear his mind and his desk with lightning speed," says one SHAPE officer. "He never abandoned the detail; he simply operates brilliantly on two levels instead of one."

To his captive audiences and in public Al Gruenther sturdily ex-tolls the long, hard distance NATO has come from the days when Ike and Al first set up headquarters in the Astoria Hotel near the Arc de Triomphe, and ex-Prizefighter Georges Carpentier ran the bar downstairs. Then there were fewer than 15 NATO divisions, only one of them combat ready; the rest were largely split up into occupation units. Then there was no plan, and no communications to set it in motion. A phone call to Oslo took twelve hours, and passed through the Soviet zone of Germany. All that stood between the Russians and the English Channel, as one officer put it, "was a group of committees."

Today Gruenther proclaims proudly: "Our resources are from four to five times what they were in those dark days of 1951." There is a plan, and "each unit knows what to do." The call to Oslo takes three minutes and goes direct. NATO has spent $1.9 billion building miles of road, miles of pipelines, supply depots and bases. Greece, Turkey and West Germany have joined NATO's ranks. Gruenther even makes a virtue out of his frustrations, pointing out the democratic problems in allocating costs for such things as airfields. "What should Norway pay for an airfield in Turkey? What should Italy pay for one in France? What should the U.S. pay? Would it be based on national income, the gross national product? The number of redheaded women? For 18 months the countries discussed it. Nobody got angry, but when the collection box was passed, nothing was put in it." The Russians would have had no patience with such democratic bickering, would have settled the problem by autocratic decree. But, points out Gruenther: "We now have 130 airfields in the European area being financed by NATO. They will take jets, and we have the jets to put on them."

NAG. No one knows better than Gruenther that the history of NATO is also a story of NATO nations constantly falling short of constantly reduced goals. The original goal of 90 active divisions was cut by the Three Wise Men*to 50. Soon after he took command in mid-1953, Gruenther recognized that not even this goal was going to be met. In the U.S., Eisenhower shifted U.S. rearmament from a crash basis to "the long haul." In Europe, making a virtue of what was political necessity, Gruenther set up the New Approach Group to devise a new strategy for the defense of Europe, with himself as chief planner.

NAG based its study on one limitation, one advantage and one hope. The limitation was the fact that Europe was unwilling to supply any more troops. The advantage was the U.S. development of new atomic weapons that could be carried in short-range fighters, shot out of cannons, or launched in guided missiles. The hope was the addition of twelve German divisions by the planning date of 1957. After nearly a year of study, NAG came to a simple conclusion: Europe could not be defended with its present forces without the use of atomic weapons. With atomic weapons it could. But NATO powers would have to authorize their use to repel Communist assault whether or not the Communists used them first.

Gruenther confronted the 15-nation NATO council with the choice. If they were unwilling to supply more men to fight, they would have to accept the atom. The stern logic of numbers prevailed over the cold horrors of the new science. In December 1954 the NATO council approved the new strategy.

The old strategy contemplated artillery and planes supporting troops. The new strategy reversed the concept; the troops support an atomic strike. At the moment of Communist attack, the strike would be launched by 600 U.S. fighter planes and light bombers based in 20 attack areas of Western Europe and the United Kingdom. Atomic shells would be fired by the Army's 36 atomic cannons strung along the central European front. Other atomic warheads would be hurled aloft in 75 Matador guided missiles, 28 Honest John and Corporal rockets.*

In the first few hours a barrage of nearly 1,000 atomic warheads would fall on rail and road intersections, hurtle down on enemy troop concentrations.

Assigned to exploit the holes opened by the atomic blasts was the central covering force of some 30 active divisions in Central Europe, of which twelve were to be newly formed German divisions. These divisions would also force the aggressors to concentrate for attack, thus making themselves vulnerable targets for atomic attack. NAG planners called this force le bouclier, the shield.

The shield has a gaping hole. The twelve German divisions, delayed by the long wrangle in the French Assembly over EDC,/- could not now be counted on until 1960. Said one NATO planner glumly: "Without the Germans, we'll have to fight with our bottoms in the Atlantic." Admits Gruenther: "We feel that the Soviets would be defeated if they started a war today, but we are not so sure we could prevent the overrunning of Europe."

In effect, NATO's shield is not in itself sufficient, and must still rely on the overwhelming deterrent of the B-47s and the B-52s of the null Strategic Air Command in the U.S., Greenland, Britain and North Africa, to hold off a war. But if Europe still lacks its shield, it does have what NATO planners call a "plateglass defense." Explained one NATO strategist: "To come in, the Russians have to break something, and break it good. Such an action would necessarily set into motion all of the mechanism of retaliation-NATO's, SAC's, everybody else's."

At best the plate glass leaves Europeans exposed. Gruenther can only explain that at present there is no help for it. "At the present moment, it takes about 24 minutes to strike from the most forward Soviet airfields to Copenhagen," he told an audience of jittery Danes. "If you ask me, can we build direct defense for Copenhagen, I must tell you frankly no. But in reality, the security of Copenhagen is tied directly to the security of Chicago. The Soviets cannot win a war by attacking Copenhagen. Collective security designed to prevent war is the only answer. Our hearts must be strong enough to stand up to it."

While he waits for the Germans to fill the hole in his shield, Gruenther works unflaggingly to keep the rest of the shield in shiny trim. It is not easy. Some NATO partners still fall short of even the new strategy's goals, particularly in reserves. They make just as much trouble with little things as with big ones. NATO officials, reluctant to name names, nevertheless concede that the share of each partner's national product spent on defense is a reasonable index of their performance (see chart).

NATO's new strategy has itself bred new problems. If the war is to be fought with U.S. atoms, argue some NATO allies, there is no longer such need for their conventional troops. They ask why they should spend big sums for an army to fight a war that they now think will never happen, and to equip themselves with weapons that would not win the war if it did come.

Of all the reluctant partners, France is the most trying. Gruenther is more sympathetic than more caustic critics would like. SHAPE staffers regard the security of SAC bases in North Africa to be as vital to NATO and the U.S. as to the French. "Hell, they're not dragging their feet; they've been cut off at the knees," protests one Gruentherman.

Also subject to constant Gruenther prodding are the Danes and Belgians, whose low contribution in relation to their high standards of living contrasts sharply with the Greeks and the Turks, both economically much poorer. But though Greece and Turkey earn high merits for military preparedness, Greece is politically shaky, and Turkey economically unstable.

On the southern flank, Tito (who does not belong to NATO, but is in a pact with NATO's Greece and Turkey) is no longer trusted as he once was. Snapped a Turk: "Tito was on the other side-a potential enemy. Then he seemed independent-a probable friend. And now it seems he was a probable mistake." The friction between Greece, Britain and Turkey over Cyprus threatened to shatter NATO's southern anchor, but while the politicians quarrel, their military men in NATO behave correctly.

Such frictions command the headlines and prompt the question: How good is NATO? It does not hold the same value to all partners. The Turks, who understand war better than economics, are always offering to do more rather than less. To some Germans, who dismiss the "nonexistent Dutch, the nonexistent Belgians and the Italians," and consider the French military incompetents, NATO means only the assurance that the U.S. will fight for them if they are attacked. A better answer is offered by General Lauris Norstad, commander under Gruenther of all NATO air forces in Europe: "The Russians, in the final analysis, are the ones who make out our effectiveness reports. For several years now, they have given us straight superior ratings. They want to get rid of us."

Another way to answer is to reverse the question. How would the free world stand if there were no NATO? Doubts about NATO's worth are not confined to Eu rope. Next week General Gruenther is flying back to the U.S. to counter growing disenchantment with NATO's capabilities in general and France's in particular. Gruenther's argument is short. NATO's failure would be a staggering blow to the West. How long could small nations like Denmark or Greece stand against Russian threats? Or unstable nations like France against Communist subversion?

In an all-out war, if the time ever came for ultimate choices, the U.S. could get along without Europe more easily than Europe could get along without the U.S. Thus the U.S. does, in fact, have the alternative of "peripheral defense," i.e., defense from bases not on the Continent. This thought naturally crosses the mind of a good many million more Americans whenever some European nation (usually France) shows itself too plagued by Communism or indifferent to its responsibilities. But while going it alone might be possible, it would certainly be harder.

NATO's other justification for being, and by no means a secondary one, is as a peacetime weapon of the cold war. It reduces fear and restores hope to Europe, by providing a shield-a shield that is visible, and, by virtue of five U.S. divisions in Germany, visibly American. In doing so, NATO, in its seven short years, has served well. It has created a community powerful enough to deter its enemy, healthy enough to survive family squabbles so far, binding enough so that no member has wished to withdraw. And for NATO's present solidity and good repute, the free world has reason to be grateful to General Al Gruenther.

* The voice belonged to Grace Elizabeth Crum Gruenther, his wife for 33 1/2 years. They have two sons, Donald, who is a major and Richard, who is a captain in the U.S. Army. * A three-man committee (Averell Harriman, Sir Edwin Plowden, Jean Monnet) appointed to examine each nation's economy, and decide what it should contribute. Their goals, approved by a NATO council meeting in Lisbon in February 1952: 50 divisions, half of them active, by the end of 1952, increasing to 70 the next year, to 97 by the end of 1954. Three years later, Lord Ismay admitted: "The Lisbon goals are as dead as a dodo." * All atomic weapons would not only be U.S. made, but also U.S. triggered. By act of Congress, no other nation is allowed in on U.S. atomic weapons. Gruenther would like to change this out-of-date provision (which irritates allies and complicates procedures) so that Canada and Britain, the other two important air nations in NATO, would be atom-supplied, too.

/- As to which Truman and Eisenhower were both too optimistic.

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