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West Germany's 400,000-man army is the most important single factor that gives NATO a remaining degree of reality. Yet much of the West still expects the uniforms of its German allies to be made of sackcloth. Erhard may be an honored guest in the U.S., as he is this week; the British may graciously send their Queen to visit, or the French artfully try to woo Bonn away from the American alliance—but the Germans still feel unloved. "Joyous bonfires burn in the night sky all around Germany as her former enemies celebrate their victory of 20 years ago," noted Theologian Helmut Thielicke during last month's V-E day commemorations. "But we are still pushed away from the light of the bonfires and deep into the disgrace of the past."
As Germany's leaders have often said, the enormities of the Nazi past cannot, in a sense, be expiated; one reason that the Germans are so sensitive to every real or fancied slight is that they themselves are unable to forget. But the Germans never really had a full chance to come to terms with their guilt feelings: less than four years after their defeat, they passed from being pariahs to valuable pawns in the East-West struggle—a bewildering and indecent haste hardly calculated to reinforce any moral lessons. Moreover, West Germany has become a youthful nation: over half its population of 58 million were born or grew up after the Nazi era. These new Germans, who had nothing to do with Hitler, will agree with ex-President Theodore Heuss in accepting a "collective shame" for their nation's past, but they refuse, and understandably, to shoulder forever a "collective guilt" for the sins of their fathers.
"I am sure history will record 1965 as the year when, after 20 years of sleep, the Germans awoke to a sense of nationalism," asserts one French diplomat. This new nationalism shows none of the ugly, fanatical marks of the Nazi era. So far, at least, it consists of an increased self-confidence and a growing concern with national purpose. Unsettling though it may be for a watching world, this awakening was, as Willy Brandt said not long ago, "as inevitable as the sunrise. No people can live without pride."
The thought was echoed this week in a commencement speech at Heidelberg by George McGhee, U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. "For two decades the German goal has been to earn the world's acceptance," said McGhee. "The Germans have worked hard for it. If the world should ever force on the Germans the conviction that nothing they can do can ever gain them full acceptance, then it will not be the Germans only who are the losers. Germany has made its case. It is time for the world to weigh that case."
The New Reality