World: WEST GERMANY: OUTCASTS AT THE HELM

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origins, his inclination was instinctively socialist. "Social responsibility and a sense of justice are probably rooted more deeply when they are based on personal experience," he once said. He soon attracted the attention of one of Germany's most influential Socialists, Julius Leber, who represented Liibeck in the Reichstag. Leber encouraged the gifted youngster to write articles for the local party newspaper, which he did under the pen name Willy Brandt. As Brandt later wrote: "I had grown up without a father; there was an emptiness in my life. Leber filled it."

In 1933, only a few days after Hitler had seized power, Julius Leber was beaten by Nazi storm troopers and put under arrest. His young protege helped organize a protest rally. Then, in danger of arrest by the newly formed Gestapo (secret police), the 19-year-old youngster hopped aboard a fishing boat in Liibeck and made his way to Norway. When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940, Brandt put on a Norwegian soldier's uniform in an attempt to evade detection by the Gestapo, who would have arrested him for his resistance connections. The ruse worked, and after a four-week internment as a prisoner of war, Brandt was released as harmless. He quickly made his way by auto and foot across Norway to neutral Sweden, where he later was joined by his Norwegian wife, Karlota. While in Stockholm, Brandt learned that Julius Leber had been executed as one of the conspirators in the plot to kill Hitler and end the war.

The Other Germans

After Germany's defeat, Brandt, who by then had become a Norwegian citizen, returned to his shattered former homeland to cover the war-crime trials at Nürnberg for Scandinavian papers. While reporting on the trials, Brandt wrote a thoughtful book entitled Criminals and Other Germans, in which he pointed out that while the guilty Nazis should be punished, there also were decent Germans who could be counted on to build a democratic nation.

In late 1946, Brandt arrived in Berlin as a Norwegian major assigned to liaison work with the Four Power Control Commission that was run by Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the U.S. As a member of the occupying force, Brandt enjoyed privileges and comforts of the victors, but he felt a growing obligation toward Germany.

A major influence on him was Ernst Reuter, a Socialist professor who had returned from exile in Turkey. Reuter was leading the struggle in Berlin against Russian attempts to force the Socialists to join the Communists in a single party. At the end of 1947, Brandt became a German citizen again, explaining to his Scandinavian friends: "It is better to be the only democrat in Germany than one of many in Norway or another country where everyone understands democracy."

As the rivalry between the U.S. and Russia deepened, Berlin, 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain, became the principal tension point. As an aide to Reuter, who had been elected mayor, Brandt was in the front trench of the Cold War. In 1949, after the Allied airlift and the resistance of West Berliners had forced the Soviets to lift their 332-day blockade of the city, Brandt became West Berlin's representative to .Bonn, where a new West German government was being formed. Though the Socialists felt they deserved to lead the new Germany, they won only 29.2% of the vote in the first national election.