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And yet, despite all these reassurances and disclaimers, the Pentagon's Gilpatric was right when he described Western defense policy as "entering a new phase." This is evident in East-West relations: Washington seems determined to pursue a détente with Moscow, and the Kremlin, beset by economic and Chinese troubles, seems willing to accept at least a cold war pause. The "new phase" is even more sharply evident in the increasingly outdated design of NATO, whose members are deeply split over the philosophy and practice of Western defense. The whole structure of the Western Alliance is being reexamined, and may be revised.
At the very focus of any such reexamination, any such revision, must be Germany, the bustling, prosperous land of Ludwig Erhard, which is also the military heart of Europe.
The Good Life. West Germany today is a young country; a full 45% of its population is under 30. For them, the Nazi past is remote, and the West with all its ways is close.
The bejeweled beauty nibbling cocktail goodies at Düsseldorf's Breiden-bacherhof has the sun of Spain on her shoulders and the patois of Provence on her tongue. As the young executive floats around in the revolving television tower at Stuttgart, with its lofty restaurant-lounge, he gives only occasional thought to die Flucht—the flight before the Russians 18 years ago—and other hideous memories of an early era. On Berlin's Kudamm, which Christopher Isherwood would never recognize, Germans twist—and twist and twist-though they live skin-close to the Communists. In Hamburg, Max Schmeling is proud of his gleaming Coca-Cola bottling plant, where he arrives each morning like any other businessman. On the same street, kids hurry off to school, blissfully ignorant of Schmeling or Hitler or Bismarck. Then from every window appears that national German banner, the feather bed being hung out to air.
If the linden and oak symbolized Old Germany, the emblem today is the Gummibaum (rubber plant), whose leaves luxuriate in the central heating of millions of spanking-new apartments. The nation has no motto; Gott mit Uns went the way of the spiked helmet, and the closest thing to a watchword in a devoutly neat country is "Vorsicht! Frisch Gebohnert" (Careful! Freshly Waxed). Well-to-do Germans are drinking more heavily, apparently to fight the frustrations of wealth; sociologists speak of Wohlstandsalkoholismus—prosperity alcoholism.
Along with the pleasures and some of the problems of the good life, West Germany must face a number of other realities. Konrad Adenauer tried to shape reality into what he wanted, and by sheer will and political genius he usually had his way. Under the softer, more flexible and more amiable leader ship of Ludwig Erhard, some long dammed-up changes are bound to burst forth. One of them is the feeling in
Washington that Germany has grown strong enough to stand more and more on its own feet.
High Cost of Defense. Not that Germany has failed to do its share for Western defense. Though the spirit of militarism is at such low ebb that the Bundeswehr is hard put to find recruits, West Germany maintains twelve divisions.