Ghosts of Weimar

Angry pacifists rampage through the streets of Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich in protest against West German membership in NATO. The CIA reports that they will burn down barracks of foreign troops next day. Though West German police cannot cope, Chancellor Erhard's Cabinet decides not to call out the army. The U.S., French and British ambassadors meet, proclaim a state of emergency, dissolve the Bundestag and jail the Cabinet.

Fantastic? The situation, perhaps--but, due to a curious anachronism, the solution would be perfectly legal. Under the 1955 Bonn Convention, in which the Allies recognized West Germany's sovereignty, the three powers retained the right not only to occupy Berlin but also to declare a state of emergency in West Germany and rule by decree, if necessary, to ensure the security of their forces. The Allies agreed to relinquish this right only when the Bonn government enacted its own "emergency legislation."* The trouble is, Bonn still has not done it.

The reason for the delay is rooted in still more ancient history. The Christian Democrats have proposed emergency legislation three times in the past eleven years, but since it would amount to a constitutional revision, they need a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to enact it. Willy Brandt's Social Democrats have always opposed the bills, partly because they disagreed with various clauses, but mainly because of the implacable opposition of the trade unions to the whole idea. Union leaders are still haunted by memories of 1933, when Adolf Hitler, upon the famous pretext of the Reichstag fire, used Article 48, the emergency provision of the Weimar Republic's constitution, to suspend constitutional guarantees and turn the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich.

This year the Social Democrats decided to ignore the unions and work out a compromise emergency bill with the Christian Democrats. Within weeks, the bipartisan effort was near success. Prospects looked so good, in fact, that the German Trade Union Federation came out sternly against the bill, and the 1,900,000-member Metal Workers Union called for protest demonstrations. Reluctant to risk the loss of those precious votes in next September's national election, the Socialists lamely backed down and announced they would not vote for the bill after all.

* Also retained by the Allies, under the same arrangement: the exclusive right to tap telephone and telegraph wires and sample mail--privileges that have proved invaluable in keeping tab on the free world's largest (16,000 to 20,000) network of Communist agents.

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