For seven years no one inside his own coalition had dared to challenge so boldly the authority of old Konrad Adenauer. The challenge came from the second-largest party in his coalition, the right-wing Free Democrats. For months the Free Democrats have been muttering that Der Alte's foreign policy is "too rigidly" tied to the West. They saw their chance when Adenauer fell ill, and his iron hold on affairs loosened.
They chose to strike against him not in the federal Bundestag, where they are outnumbered 251 to 48 by Adenauer's Christian Democrats. Instead they organized a...
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