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Changed Man. Surrendering office after the Christian Democratic landslide of 1953, Maier cultivated an icy enmity toward Adenauer, fought a bitter losing battle in the Bundestag at Bonn against NATO, rearmament and Adenauer's Saar policy. Two years ago he paid his first visit to the U.S. He returned to Stuttgart with the excited air of a Columbus. "The Americans really are democrats," he bubbled. He was through sniping at Adenauer. "Der Alte will do all right," he said. "But what will come after? We must call to our U.S. friends: 'Stop seeing in Konrad Adenauer the only reliable democrat in Germany.' " Last week he sang his new song to the Free Democrats at Stuttgart: "A difference of opinion, be it ever so pronounced, must end. NATO is the steel rail that binds Germany to the military might of the U.S." But he also urged Germany to raise only a volunteer army, and called on the party to keep working for talks with the Russians.
Such is the man who may hold the balance of power after next autumn's elections. Will his Free Democrats deal with the Socialists or the Christian Democrats? Presumably the Christian Democrats would have to retire Adenauer before Maier would sign with them. The Socialists would have to subdue their economic radicalism to get his support. Which way he will lean he will not say. Said Reinhold Maier last week: "One says of the hunter that he doesn't always tell the truth after the hunt. Of the politician one says that he doesn't always tell the truth before an election."