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To Schumacher's Socialists, the peace contract is only half a peace: a compromise between occupation and partnership. It leaves the precious Saar in French hands for now; it "petrifies the division of Germany." The German yearning for the reunion of East and West Germany is common to all Germans, from those who long for Adolf Hitler's resurrection to those who worship the ikons of Stalinism. But Kurt Schumacher has made it his chief political issue.
To get East Germany back, he is quite willing to bargain with the Communists he hates. Had he not learned that compromise with the Communists is impossible? a reporter asked him. "I have also learned in my life that compromise with the property-owning class is also impossible," was Schumacher's unanswering answer. He believes that the Russians, knowing they would lose East Germany in any free election, might be willing to lose it in return for a united, neutral Germany whose Ruhr industries sell impartially to the East & West. Germany would probably then have to give up its participation in the European Army; Schumacher is quite willing to. America's atomic bomb is deterrent enough to hold off the Russians, he says. This line of argument is highly persuasive—to Germans: all gain and no sacrifice.
Iron Hand. Few doubt that Schumacher's desire for German unity is sincere. It is an incidental (even his critics admit) but nonetheless important fact that with German unification the heavily Socialist and Protestant areas of East Germany would give the Social Democrats the votes they need to beat Adenauer and win power.
As it is, Schumacher's Social Democrats (the SPD) control nearly a third of the Bundestag, have the support of 28 newspapers, command the voting allegiance of most of West Germany's 6,000,000 trade unionists, and boast 650,000 dues-paying regulars. Schumacher has built up a vast Socialist intelligence service. Through the big Socialist following in East Germany, he commands the best intelligence available of what the Russians and German Reds are up to. The U.S. and British occupation officials have found it invaluable.
Schumacher's iron hand brooks no opposition in his own party. He is the SPD —boss, organizer, judge, theoretician, tactician and strategist. For questioning some of Schumacher's violent stands, three of the strongest and, to the West, most friendly Socialists in Germany have been consigned to Schumacher's limbo. They are called "the three mayors"—Ernst Reuter of West Berlin, Wilhelm Kaisen of Bremen and Max Brauer of Hamburg, a onetime U.S. citizen.