Socialist Switch

Election year in West Germany is producing some strange surprises. Last week, after seven years of stubborn resistance to the Western alliance and all its works and most of its ways, West Germany's opposition Socialists declared themselves ready to accept NATO.

This change of heart emerged from a Bundestag foreign-policy debate widely touted and televised as a keynote for the coming election campaign. The ruling Christian Democrats set out to show how wide the gap was between the government's foreign policy and the "reckless" ideas of the Socialists. Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano led off confidently.

"The federal government is resolved to support the policy of the U.S.," he proclaimed. "We neither want nor intend to risk losing their cooperation and support by carrying out experiments." Kurt Kiesinger, Christian Democrat chairman of the Bundestag foreign-affairs committee, took another hour and a half to recommend sticking close to the U.S., as the policy that gave Adenauer's party its smashing election victory four years ago.

Silent Chancellor. All the while, 81-year-old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer sat stonily in a front row. After all, he himself has recently been pulling away from the Americans. His lieutenants are distressed by Adenauer's recent electioneering demands for a ban on the H-bomb and a closer look at the Soviet promise to pull troops out of Central Europe. But none dared tell der Alte so to his face. Irritated by their timid, roundabout hinting, Adenauer refused to have anything to do with their debate.

At this point, with the Christian Democrats attacking to cover their own confusion, the Socialists pulled their surprise. Blue-suited for the TV cameras but wearing a red tie for old Socialism's sake, Party Chairman Erich Ollenhauer had himself one of the best days of his parliamentary career. Carefully endorsing the U.S. stand on Suez and Hungary as "prudent," he announced that Socialists favor honoring Germany's treaty obligations "including those of a military nature," i.e., in NATO. Abandoning another longtime Socialist position, the party now accepts a standing army.

This was a long retreat for a party that fought EDC, denounced conscription, called for "freedom from alliances," played to German desires for reunification at the expense of Western allegiance, and has long regarded the U.S. with sulky suspicion while displaying a romantic affinity for Nehrunian neutralism. Ollenhauer even hopes, on his forthcoming U.S. trip, to break Adenauer's monopoly on U.S. affections.

Closing a Gap. Ollenhauer ended his Bundestag speech by calling for an all-European collective system that would include a reunified Germany. Amid more cheers his military expert, Fritz Erler, spelled out the details of the proposed system: all European countries would join, contributing their own defense forces, subject to joint armaments control, mutual-assistance pacts and nonaggression treaties, with the U.S. and Soviet Russia guaranteeing the whole setup.

Even before the Socialists had finished their day. Konrad Adenauer walked out of the Bundestag in disgust. But the Socialists, whose airy collective-security plan copied his own proposals to the Russians of last September, had fashioned a middle-of-the-road position close to der Alte's.

The race was on, and the Socialists, already a point or two ahead in the latest opinion polls, were off to a strong start. The genuineness of their conversion to the Western alliance might be questioned, but it was instructive to see where they thought the most votes lie.

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