Clad in a rumpled suit and a grubby mackintosh, stocky, tousle-haired Theodo: Blank, who is West Germany's defense boss, looks nothing like the traditional great-coated, heel-clicking Prussian militarist. As secretary of the Miners' Union, he once told an Allied general: "I know you generals. You're the biggest trade union in the world, and if I had my way I wouldn't let anybody who served in the old German army back in."
After the embarrassing discovery of some Prussian-style thinking on his own staff, Herr Blank went on the radio to reassure everyone that he is determined to revive German might...