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¶ West Germany would be swallowed up as a Red satellite if it tried to remain neutral and play Russia against the West.
¶ West Germany must some day be reunited with the German land east of the Iron Curtain, but that day will come only when the Western world stands strong enough to force—without war—a Soviet withdrawal from Central Europe. He refuses to recognize the Oder-Neisse frontier, but is ready to promise not to cross it with troops.
¶ West Germany must earn the West's trust and confidence by demonstrating that its lesson has been learned in the two disastrous German adventures of the 20th century.
¶ Germany still cannot be trusted to rearm by itself. "It is no secret," said a close associate, "that he considers Prussians savage and dangerous."
¶ Nevertheless, the rearmament of Germany is inevitable; if it is not armed as a part of a supranational army, with controls on its size and use, then it will be armed with a new national Wehrmacht.
¶ Far greater than the need for German troops is Europe's need to unite—politically, militarily and psychologically—those historic antagonists in war, Germany and France.
"I deem it false ... to speak of German rearmament," Adenauer said not long ago. "This is an expression which has no place in those new forms toward which we are striving. We want nothing of the old. We do not want to restore a national army."
By "those new forms," Adenauer means the European Defense Community. The idea came, providentially, from France. Germans could not propose it without risking the impression that it was simply a cunning maneuver to unlock the occupation shackles and revive the Wehrmacht. But when the enemy from across the Rhine proposed it in 1950, Konrad Adenauer could more easily champion it.
The Dream Fades. The U.S. made EDC the core of its European policy. Britain supported it. Italy could hardly wait to approve it. The Benelux countries got behind it.
But by 1953, the clear dream had clouded over. The sharp-beaked vagaries of politics tore at the men who did most to shape and promote the EDC idea. First, down went Good European Robert Schuman, France's longtime Foreign Minister. He was thrown aside because France, tortured by division and illusion, turned in confusion and fear from its own brain child. Next went Good European Alcide de Gasperi, and Italy's ratification became questionable. The death of Stalin, and Churchill's insistence on sounding out the dictator's successor, gave the French more opportunity to haggle and hesitate. The EDC idea was close to dying.