WEST GERMANY
(See Cover) It is hard to imagine a figure less martial than West Germany's new Chancellor. Round of shape, soft in manner, sanguine in temperament, he is every one's rich uncle, the man who made West German prosperity grow out of the rubble. He is clearly not at home on the parade ground, nor amid the strategists' complicated maps and grim contingencies. Yet hardly had Ludwig Erhard settled into the Chancellor's chair and lit his inevitable Brazilian Schwarze Weisheit (black wisdom) when he was faced with major military problems involving not only Germany but the whole Western Alliance.
New Phase. Perched as they are beside the Iron Curtain, the West Germans are more sensitive to the subtle shifts in East-West relations than any other people in Europe. The least concession to Russia brings suspicions of a sellout. Hence West Germany's anguish last week at the transatlantic reports that the U.S. might trim down some of the six combat divisions on the Continent. SENSATIONAL U.S. PLAN WITH DRAWAL OF COMBAT TROOPS, shrieked Frankfurt's Abendpost. Asked Hamburg's Bild-Zeitung: THIS QUESTION CONCERNS US ALL: HOW MANY AMERICANS REMAIN IN GERMANY?
Ringing in German ears were the words of a former U.S. President and leader of NATO, Dwight D. Eisenhower. "I believe the time has now come when we should start removing some of those troops," declared Ike in a Saturday Evening Post article. "One American division in Europe can 'show the flag' as definitely as several." Next came a speech by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, who forecast a "new phase" in American troop commitments abroad and "useful reductions in overseas military expenditures."
These words were underlined by the widely heralded "Operation Big Lift," which hauled the entire 2nd Armored Division from Texas to West Germany, in a dramatic demonstration of the U.S.'s capability to keep troops at home but fly them swiftly to theaters of threatening war.
The Focus. Ludwig Erhard himself ignored the "crisis." During a foreign policy debate in the Bundestag last week, he sat with elaborate calm, scribbling his signature on official documents. The subject of U.S. troops was never mentioned. And when he summoned his Cabinet for its regular weekly meeting, there was nothing more exciting on the agenda than domestic budgetary matters.
To reassure Erhard and the rest of West Germany, a rapid series of "clarifications" flowed in from Washington. U.S. Army Secretary Cyrus Vance, in Frankfurt to observe Big Lift, declared flatly: "We have no intention of withdrawing any of our six division equivalents that are here." Secretary of State Dean Rusk, in Germany to dedicate a monument to the late George Marshall, conferred with Erhard and West German Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder, added some pointed sentences to a scheduled speech.
"When we say your defense is our defense, we mean it," said Rusk. "We have proved it in the past. We will continue to demonstrate it in the future."
The U.S. will maintain its six divisions in Germany "as long as there is need for them—and under present circumstances there is no doubt that they will continue to be needed." Did the airlift mean withdrawal of American troops from