These were the solitary idylls of a deeply disillusioned man. Fifteen years later, when he took power in West Germany, Adenauer’s practical political instincts again became dominant. But when practical considerations dictated that the only way to ensure a united defense of Europe was for France and Germany to overcome their differences, Adenauer was philosophically ready. He had always wanted to bring these two nations together; now it could be a means to a great end—the defense of the West against the new Soviet empire—rather than just an end in itself.
• • •
When the Americans took Cologne in 1945, they rushed to reinstall Adenauer as mayor. But then Occupation control passed to the British. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, they soon fired him and prohibited him from engaging in political activity. He believed that the British Labor government wanted the Social Democrats to take power in Germany and therefore did not want to allow a conservative to remain in as influential a position as mayor of Cologne. The dismissal was a heavy blow to Adenauer, for whom reviving Cologne was a true labor of love.
In any case, Cologne’s loss was Germany’s gain. Again Adenauer was thrust into the wilderness, this time by the Allies instead of the Nazis, but now theory and opportunity coincided. He spent these two months of forced retirement turning his view of Germany’s destiny into a concrete plan for political action. As soon as the British allowed him to participate in politics again, he began to concentrate his energies on the Christian Democratic Union, the new conservative party. It would be the foundation of his power until 1963.
With his persuasive powers, hard work, and sheer force of will, Adenauer won control of the party and swiftly built it into a formidable national force. He also helped himself along by some carefully timed power plays. He took over the chairmanship of one important party meeting by striding in, sitting down, and announcing that he was in charge because he was the oldest man present. The other participants were too stunned to protest.
One might expect a leader who entered parliamentary politics relatively late in life to find the grind of election campaigning irritating and even demeaning. Shigeru Yoshida, a career diplomat before becoming Japan’s Prime Minister after World War II, certainly did. But not Adenauer. In the spring of 1960 he gave me some shrewd strategic advice with regard to the coming American election and then asked me whether I enjoyed campaigning. I told him that I found it an ordeal. I said that after a campaign I felt the way I did after my service in the Pacific in World War II: I wouldn’t have missed it, but I wouldn’t want to go through it again for a while. He then surprised me by disagreeing. “I like to campaign,” he said. “I like to be able to fight for what I believe, to debate the critics, to strike back at them.”
In this sense he was unlike his great friend de Gaulle. Adenauer enjoyed the cut and thrust of personal political combat; he liked to get in the ring with his political opponents. De Gaulle almost imperially refused to do so. Contrary to what one might expect, the Frenchman, de Gaulle, was the introvert. The German, Adenauer, was the extrovert. Each succeeded politically, but with completely different approaches.
In the weeks before the first postwar German elections in 1949, the seventy-three-year-old Adenauer proved phenomenally effective and energetic on the stump. He had the staying power of a man half his age and an unexpected knack for communicating with voters about what mattered to them. His frustrated opponents, the Social Democrats, who immediately after the war had expected to be the dominant party in West Germany, resorted to bitter personal attacks, but he rarely responded in kind. In the election the CDU received 7.36 million votes, 400,000 more than the Social Democrats. By one vote the newly formed Bundestag elected Adenauer as the first Chancellor of the German Federal Republic.
As leader of an occupied nation, Adenauer’s actual powers were severely limited. In dealing both with the Allies and with opponents in the government, he had to rely heavily on his common sense and his tenacious, steely patience. In negotiations and debates his customary approach was not to try to dominate them from the beginning, but rather to listen first to what everyone else had to say. When he finally spoke, his gambler’s instincts helped him avoid points on which his position was weak and concentrate on points he knew he could win.
Essentially the secrets of his formidability were simply being right, being reasonable, and being prepared. He thoroughly studied each topic on the agenda. He was seldom caught offguard; he made sure he could respond quickly and effectively to opponents’ arguments. Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, the British High Commissioner, said that Adenauer “was always quick to detect any weakness in the opponent’s armor and to drive his weapon through the chink.”
He had other weapons besides the cold steel of logic, however. When a cabinet meeting grew difficult, he would sometimes suspend debate for a while and pass around a bottle of wine. After a few glassfuls and some friendly small talk, he would resume the meeting. The opposition would then be substantially less resolute.
Adenauer was a connoisseur of fine wines. He loved not only his native Rhineland but the rich wines from its vineyards. Sometimes at luncheons he would serve both a Rhine wine or a Moselle and a Bordeaux, but he would leave the French wine entirely to his guests. John McCloy told me of an occasion at a small dinner party when he had served what he considered to be a good German table wine that he had obtained from a PX. He noticed that Adenauer drank only half a glass. The next day he received from the Chancellor a case of Bernkasteler Doktor, a Moselle and one of the world’s finest wines. Incidentally it is also one of my favorites; I sometimes served it at White House state dinners.
One of Adenauer’s greatest assets was that even in his seventies he seemed tireless. The best politician, he once told me, is the one who “can outsit the rest.” Willing to let meetings run far into the night if necessary, he would sit patiently as one sleepy opponent after another came around to his point of view.
Like every successful leader I have known, Adenauer was an intensely competitive man in virtually every activity in which he engaged. Just as Eisenhower, despite his disarmingly genial and easygoing manner, was a fierce competitor on the golf course and at the bridge table, Adenauer gave no quarter in his favorite game of boccie—Italian lawn bowling. McCloy, a fine athlete who in his youth had been a world-class tennis player, found him to be a tough competitor. He told me that Adenauer played boccie with great skill and total concentration and was determined to win even when he was playing with a close friend. He would not have agreed with the old saying “It isn’t whether you win or lose that counts but how you play the game.” Adenauer played fair, but he always played to win.
The same was true of his political style. Like Churchill, Adenauer was a brilliant parliamentarian. During the 1949 session of the Bundestag in which he spelled out his program, Adenauer showed that he had another key political skill: the ability to keep his wits and his good humor under stress.
Since it was essentially the inaugural address by the winner of the first legitimate German election in sixteen years, the moment ought to have been solemn and dignified. Adenauer knew the whole world was watching to see whether the Germans had learned how to be democrats. But in the middle of the speech his Communist and Social Democratic opponents began to heckle him. A man who was really as pompous as Adenauer was supposed to be might have shown outrage that the occasion had been sullied; a man as humorless as he was thought to be might have icily ignored the hecklers. Instead he bested them. When a Communist Bundestag deputy named Heinz Renner called out sarcastically that the section of Adenauer’s speech about the Soviet Union had been “drafted by an expert” on the subject, Adenauer paused for a moment and said, “Herr Renner, you are an envious man!” The remark brought down the house.
Adenauer’s use of high-handed tactics and his skill as a political infighter earned him a reputation for ruthlessness that he did not seem to resent. Once, accused of running roughshod over opponents, he countered modestly, “That is not al
together true.” Adenauer and the postwar leader of another former Axis power, Japan’s Yoshida, developed a strong mutual admiration. This may have been enhanced by the fact that both were firmly committed to democracy, yet each had a certain penchant, in practice, for one-man rule.
Unlike some, Adenauer was generally patient with the press, but he did not suffer fools gladly and refused to bear the perennial politician’s burden of dignifying a bad question with a good answer. To one correspondent he barked, “I’d flunk you from the diplomatic service for that question.”
• • •
The Allied Occupation lasted for six of Adenauer’s fourteen years as Chancellor. He often told me that he could never have achieved what he did had it not been for our Marshall Plan assistance and for the wise counsel and support he received from four remarkable Americans: Dean Acheson, Lucius Clay, John McCloy, and John Foster Dulles. Another reason he succeeded was his willingness to compromise with the Allies if compromise allowed him to inch a step closer to his objectives of securing Germany’s independence, economic recovery, and integration with the rest of Western Europe.
Like Yoshida, Adenauer knew that being cooperative with the Allies was a far cry from being submissive, although sometimes, when he became exasperated by the stridence of some particularly impatient Germans, he would say, “Who do they think lost the war, anyway?” In 1949, before becoming Chancellor, he delivered a major address to an international group in Berne, Switzerland, in which he made a stinging attack on a number of Occupation policies. He also said that Germans would need a new sense of national pride—he was careful not to say nationalism—if they were to rebuild and defend their country.
After the speech many critics, including newspapers in Allied capitals, huffed that the Allies were confronting an unrepentant German nationalist. But Adenauer’s relationship with the military governors themselves, who knew him well, was not changed. Meanwhile his reputation among his countrymen was enhanced. By his bold independence he projected a personal dignity that was a tremendous boost to the Germans, who desperately wanted to have their national dignity restored.
I first met Adenauer at National Airport in Washington in April 1953 on a dark, rainy morning as he arrived for talks with President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. Dulles and I were at the airport as Eisenhower’s representatives.
The Chancellor’s visit had great significance for two reasons. First, no German Chancellor had ever come to the United States. In fact Adenauer was the first official visitor from Germany since before World War I. But the occasion was also important because it came only eight years after the end of World War II. The manner in which Adenauer was received in the United States, both by political leaders and by the people themselves, would show whether the bitterness unleashed by Hitler and the Nazis had eased.
U.S. support for Adenauer’s foreign policies was by no means certain. Many influential Americans were suggesting that the U.S. should refuse to involve itself in the defense of Europe, and this isolationism would be encouraged if our talks with Adenauer were unproductive or unfriendly. Our small, soggy ceremony at Andrews would be the source of millions of first impressions, both among the American people and in Europe.
When I first saw Adenauer emerge from his airplane, I was struck by his massive six-foot-two-inch frame, his stiff, straight posture, and most of all his sharply angled, sphinxlike face. Some men’s faces automatically betray their feelings. Other men, like Adenauer, bear completely controlled expressions that reveal nothing. In politics and international relations one participant has an advantage if he can guess correctly what another is thinking or feeling by studying his expression. Adenauer’s was one of quiet, almost stoic self-control. It concealed his thoughts completely.
The key message I wanted to get across in my welcoming statement was that Adenauer’s visit marked the rebirth rather than the birth of the productive relationship between our two countries. Because of the two world wars, the image of the goose-stepping, nationalistic, militaristic Prussian-Nazi had become a part of American folklore; it was commonly asserted that “the Hun is either at your throat or on his knees.” I knew, however, that there was another side to Germany and German-American relations. Mrs. Nixon’s mother had been born in Germany. My own mother had majored in German in college and had always spoken highly of the accomplishments and standards of the great German universities. At Duke Law School I had learned from Professor Lon Fuller of the profound influences German scholars had had on the development of western legal principles.
In welcoming Adenauer, I wanted to invoke the memory of an earlier time and remind Americans that Germans had helped build our country from the very beginning. I told Adenauer that only a few steps from Blair House, where he was to stay in Washington, there stood a statue of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian army officer who had served with George Washington at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-1778 and who had taken over the training of the Continental army with spectacular results. I said that Americans would never forget the contributions Von Steuben and millions of other Germans had made to this nation.
In his response Adenauer turned to me and said, “You just mentioned Baron Steuben. I wish to thank you for the generous manner in which you have paid tribute to the friendship between America and Germany without mentioning the last few decades.” His authorized biographer wrote later that he was visibly moved by the welcome. The next day he laid a wreath at Von Steuben’s statue.
• • •
Adenauer’s domestic and foreign policies were formed by the most basic lessons of his life. Raised in a political and cultural atmosphere in which loyalty to things German was balanced by instinctive affection for things French, he sought a Franco-German rapprochement that would use the ancient rapport between the two nations as a strategic wedge in the modern world of East-West confrontation. Trained as a devout, freedom-loving Catholic, he sought partnerships between nations and interest groups in society—government, business, and labor—that would prevent one nation or group from establishing a tyranny over the others. And above all, since he loved liberty and considered it crucial to the survival of the human spirit, he was prepared to fight to protect his and other free societies from the threat posed by communism and the Soviet Union.
While his thinking was neither complex nor original, it was sound and comprehensive and it gave him the unity of purpose that a great leader needs. Unity of purpose and good sense, of course, do not always go together. I have met some leaders who were effective technicians but who had no discernible idealism. I have met others who were starry-eyed idealists but did not have the foggiest notion of how to achieve their ideals. Adenauer was one of those rare leaders whose practical political intelligence matched his idealism. He was the master of a rare alchemy by which he turned his profound spiritual belief into a basis for effective political action.
Adenauer understood that democracy’s roots are in Judeo-Christian ethics. In fact what he feared most from both communism and Nazism was that people could be forced to sacrifice their spiritual selves on the altar of materialism. But he was not a modern crusader out to convert the non-Christian world. To him the essence of good Christian government was that it left each person alone to make his accounting to God in whatever way he wished.
With the protection of the liberty and dignity of each individual as their highest imperative, Adenauer’s Christian politics were also at the heart of Germany’s economic miracle. In this case his instincts were an adequate substitute for technical know-how. He did not know much about economics and did not participate in the drafting of specific fiscal and monetary policies, leaving the details to his superb Finance Minister, Ludwig Erhard. But Erhard operated according to Adenauer’s “principle of distributed power.” Twelve years of German fascism and his knowledge of the Soviet Union had schooled the Chancellor in the dangers of allowing too much power to gather in either public or private hands. He opposed both nationalized industry and monopolies a
nd both strikes and unfair management practices.
An historic meeting in 1951 between Adenauer and Germany’s leading labor leader produced an agreement that allowed workers to sit side by side, and vote one for one, with management on industrial supervisory committees. This partnership gave West Germany three decades without significant labor unrest.
Because of this agreement and Erhard’s shrewd management of the economy, and because Adenauer in 1949 persuaded the Allies to reduce drastically their plans for dismantling German industry, West Germany enjoyed breathtaking economic growth for almost three decades. Today its per capita GNP is higher than that of the United States, and its industrial output is one and a half times that of the larger, undivided Germany before the war.
Just as Adenauer’s concept of partnership brought prosperity to West Germany, it helped bring peace and economic unity to Western Europe. “In my opinion,” Adenauer once wrote of the postwar scene, “no single European country could guarantee a secure future to its people by its own strength.”
With French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, Adenauer agreed to an international authority that put most European steel and coal production under joint control, an unprecedented arrangement that led, under the guidance of the brilliant French economist Jean Monnet, to the European Common Market. His dream of a European army to which each nation would supply troops died when the French Parliament, because of its lingering distrust of the Germans, refused to consider it. But Adenauer overcame his initial disappointment, and with the help of Churchill and Anthony Eden he arranged West Germany’s entry into NATO in 1954 and its complete independence from Allied control in 1955. He and Charles de Gaulle capped the reconciliation by making triumphant visits to each other’s countries and by signing a friendship treaty in 1963.
Leaders Page 20
