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Carriers of this fever of dissatisfaction were of all kinds—pacifists and generals, Lutheran pastors and conscientious objectors, idealists, industrialists fascinated by the historic markets to the East, maimed and forgotten veterans, homeless refugees from Communism, pan-Germans, threateningly resurgent neo-Nazis, Russian agents, tired old men who have abandoned hope and young men who have never known it. In short, the Germans were still Germans, a puzzle to the world—and to themselves.
Forgive or Forget. For all the diversity of the symptoms that beset the new Germany, the illness had a symbol and a spokesman. His name: Kurt Schumacher. Sick, dedicated, a man of relentless will, he lay in his cottage last week atop a wooded hill overlooking Bonn, provisional capital of the truncated nation he longs to govern and swerve from its present course. In the week when West Germany signed its contract with the West, Kurt Schumacher declared: the German who accepts this treaty "ceases to be a German." Six months ago he told an Englishman: "I will fight the signature of the European Defense Community. If it is signed, I will fight its ratification. If it is ratified, I will campaign against it while the soldiers are being mobilized. If I were then elected [Chancellor], I would repudiate the treaty as soon as possible."
These are the words of one of the most important men in Europe today, a man whose passionate contradictions and fierce convictions speak directly for one of every seven West Germans and emotionally for many, many more. If an election were held today, many Germans believe, he would topple Chancellor Konrad Adenauer from office. To the U.S. State Department, Schumacher is the man of the West who most threatens what the Western democracies are trying to build in Europe.
He is the maimed reminder of the few Germans who resisted the Nazis and survived; yet he is the gospel-preacher of revived German nationalism. He is a man who will not let the Germans forget the sins and crimes of Naziism (he constantly reminds them of the wrongs to the Jews), yet acts as if the Western world should consider those sins forgiven if not forgotten. He advocates the rearmament of Germany against the Russian threat, but leads the fight against the rearmament now offered the Germans by the West. He is a democrat, but presides over the Social Democrats, the second most powerful political party in Germany, like a dictator. An implacable enemy of the East, he is also an uncompromising opponent of the West. Kurt Schumacher, a man of 57 whom sheer will power seems to keep alive, is the tiger burning bright in Germany's dark forests.
His comfortable, eight-room house above Bonn serves Kurt Schumacher like a general's command post. Propped up in bed, he directs his followers in a battle that may determine the future not only of Germany, but of the North Atlantic alliance. His stand is as inflexibly direct as a Mauser bullet: no cooperation with the West until all Germany is united, given full sovereignty and allowed to rearm as it pleases. Schumacher's goal: a Socialist government for united Germany, and if possible a Socialist U.S. of Europe.