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Italian Economist Nino Andreatta, a leading planner for the Christian Democrats, blames West Germany for holding back Western European recovery because of its excessive fear of inflation. One Italian foreign ministry official goes further, saying that West German policies have actually slowed down the process of recovery, and complains that "we have told Bonn this many times but to no avail."
The West German answer, in brief, is that inflation for economies is a killer disease. Otmar Emminger, head of West Germany's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Reserve, uses a different image. "Inflation is like a dictator," he says. "It must be fought before it becomes established, or it is too late." A German warning about dictatorship has a certain authority about it.
If Europeans were to "stop a moment" as Schmidt asked on the 30th anniversary, they might see through the clear glass of the present that the postwar achievements of West Germany he listed are already far more than anybody could have expected. Even those Europeans who quibble with Bonn's economic policy know that the country that turned the Ruhr into the peacetime turbine of Europe should be more than capable also of becoming more outward looking and less tightfisted, given time. Many are willing to bet on it, and therefore to welcome the growing West German power. "What disturbs us is to have a power vacuum in Western Europe," says Italian Author Luigi Barzini, one of the Continent's shrewdest pundits. "It's as if this were a circus without a lion tamer. That is dangerous. So, by and large, we would not be terribly disturbed if the tamer were West Germany."