(2 of 2)
Adenauer was not reassured. Last week, in an article in the official government Bulletin, Adenauer launched an open attack on the Radford plan. "As to the debate on conventional and nuclear weapons started by the Americans," he wrote, "I would like to stress distinctly that for the time being I consider it unsuitable to shift the center of gravity to atomic weapons." His reasoning: what happened in Korea might happen in Germany, and to counter an East German invasion of West Germany with nuclear weapons would almost certainly "trigger an intercontinental rocket war. I am of the opinion that it is of special importance to localize small conflicts, and for this we need divisions with conventional weapons."
Overrun by History. Adenauer, said a Foreign Office aide, is "hurt and bitter" at U.S. treatment. In his new bitterness at Dulles, the Chancellor talks pointedly of the honestly and sincerity of Harry Truman (whom he met for the first time two months ago). And over and over again he laments, "The least they could have done was tell me."
Whether or not Adenauer is entitled to his anger, the fact is that he considers that he had laid his reputation and his political life on the line for Dulles and the U.S. Adenauer's U.S.-inspired foreign policy has failed to bring German reunification any closer. With only a year to go until West Germany's next general election, German voters had been presented with what seemed to them clear evidence that Konrad Adenauer's credit in Washington was decreasing. ("Adenauer," predicted the pro-Socialist Frankfurter Rundschau, "will be overrun by history, just like Syngman Rhee.") Simultaneously, the Socialist argument that it was senseless for West Germany to introduce conscription at a time when other nations were reducing conventional forces took on new plausibility. Last week both of West Germany's leading polls showed substantial Socialist gains amongst the voters, making them for the first time about equally as strong as Adenauer's Christian Democrats.