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Jeered Ostrich. It took him three years to snatch the defense job away from Theodor Blank, the mild-mannered antimilitarist to whom Adenauer had given it. Strauss knew all about the art of war in military theory and political practice. Thereafter, Strauss was at the center of all fights in the Bundestag, and stenographers complained that he spoke half again as fast as any other debater.
The Socialists jeered at his name, which means "ostrich" in German. Strauss, perhaps the best extempore speaker in the country, gave back in kind. Once he flung out the suggestion that Germany might some day consider "the Austrian solution," i.e., neutrality. In the outcry that followed, Strauss explained that for the foreseeable future Germany must side with NATO. Nonetheless it was a hint, after the Blank era of yes-sirring the West, that under Strauss Germany's defense policies would be tailored to Germany's interests. In Cabinet meetings, he badgered Blank relentlessly, once making Adenauer so angry that he reportedly told Strauss afterward: "You'll never get the defense ministry, Herr Strauss. You'll never get it."
To keep him occupied, Adenauer made him Minister of Atomic Affairs. Typically, Strauss plunged into the job with zeal, read so deeply in scientific texts that after a conference with him a Nobel prizewinner remarked: "There were moments when I wasn't sure who had studied more chemistry, he or I." From his study he acquired a conviction that the new forces must have nuclear weapons, arguing that otherwise the German soldier would fight at a suicidal disadvantage.
In late 1956 Adenauer grudgingly decided that Strauss was ready for the job and made him, at 41, Minister of Defense, moving Blank to Labor.
More Equal. From the instant he took over, Strauss made clear that West Germany should be treated as an equal by its NATO partners, and not as an ex-sinner on probation. The Germans will never agree to be "foot soldiers to the American atomic knights," he proclaimed. He got Germans appointed to top NATO commands; currently, German General Hans Speidel is commander of all allied ground forces in Central Europe. Original NATO doctrine called for establishment of the main line of NATO defense at the Rhine in case of Communist attack, thus abandoning most of West Germany without a fight; Strauss got the doctrine changed in favor of a fighting defense of all West German soil. To the shocked amazement of other NATO ministers, he even used beerhall language at the conference table, arguing with SHAPE Commander Norstad. Finding that the Allies had already preempted the good supply and training spots in Germany, he asked them to give some of their own land for his Bundeswehr. It was hardly the sort of request that French and British politicians leap to fulfill. When answers dragged, Strauss, with typical indifference to political considerations, began dickering for supply and training areas in Franco Spain. A spectacular explosion followed (TIME, March 7), but Strauss got the results he wanted. The French let 2,500 Germans train in Champagne, the Italians opened Sardinian airdromes to the Luftwaffe, and the British themselves are now quietly arranging for the Bundeswehr to store gear somewhere behind the white cliffs of Dover.