adopted the principle of" social mar-ket economy" from Professor Erhardof the Bizonal Economic Council. Twoof the main points of this principle arefree private enterprise, and the sharingof profits by employees.
Adenauer has made his coalitionswith the right rather than the anti Communist left; he fears the Social Democrats both for their Socialism andtheir insistence on a strong central gov-ernment. Convinced that most Ger mans would rather run part of theircountry themselves than have the Rus sians participate in running all of it, hehas been cool toward Berlin and theeastern zone, though some members ofhis party have been talking publiclyabout the revival of trade with theeast. His majority over the Social Democrats in Parliament is small-139 to 131- and he was elected Chan-cellor by a margin of one vote, butAdenauer is likely to remain at the topfor some time as the result of theC.D.U.'s coalition with the super-nationalist, militarist, and regionalistsplinter parties of the right.
Among Adenauer 's bitterest critics isthe fanatical, one- armed and one- leg-ged Social Democrat Kurt Schuma cher . A Socialist leader of long stand-ing, Schumacher was bitterly anti- Nazifrom the start. As a result, he spent tenuninterrupted years in a concentrationcamp. He emerged a gaunt and awe-some zealot. His oratory is unequaledin postwar Germany , and his hatredsare almost as scorching as Hitler 's. Buthis health is extremely shaky. He lostone arm as a soldier in the First World war . Now a series of internal disordersrack him, keeping his disciples wor-ried and for weeks at a time restrictinghis diet to coffee, cigarettes, and pills.
Careful feeding andconstant medical
treatment, includingthe amputation of hisleft leg last year, havebrought him back tosome kind of health,and even helped himgain about twentypounds.
Schumacher is tre-mendously courage-ous, and completelyopposed to the Soviet Union andand every-thing it has done inrecent years. In hisopinion, the Russian leaders have notonly violated law, reason, and human-ity in their internal and foreign policies,but, even worse, they have slanderedMarxism and discredited Socialism.Schumacher lights into the Russians under their very noses in Berlin. Atthe same time he has been consistentlycritical of certain" imperialist tend-encies" on the part of the United States and Great Britain . He alsoattacks the Church.
If Berlin came into the Western Ger man Federation , the S.P.D. wouldprobably outvote the C.D.U. and Schu macher might replace Adenauer as theleader of the plurality party. If thisdoes not occur within a year or two,however, Schumacher may no longerbe leader of his own party. He has con-tinuously antagonized many of his ownsubordinates by his dictatorial meth-ods, and his health cannot be countedon to hold up for long.
Were Schumacher to die or with-draw from leadership, his place mightbe taken by Carlo Schmid , a burly,unkempt man who was once professor of law in Tübingen University . Schmid ,who was born in Perpignan , France ,of a French mother and a German father, is a bilingual, cosmopolitancross between Heywood Broun andTrygve Lie . During the Nazi occupa-tion of France he was given a post inthe military government of the prov-inces of Nord and Pas de Calais , buthe managed to maintain good relationswith the French without losing his job.Like many of his Social Democratic colleagues, Schmid is convinced thatthe future of Europe depends on itsworkers. The C.D.U. will always be onthe side of the West. But the West canlose the workers. And if they do, they
can lose Europe . Believing this, hebases his policies on the Socialist pro-grams popular among the continent'sworkers for a century.
Lacking the unity and the disciplineof the Social Democrats , the ChristianDemocrats have more leaders, andmore diverse opinions by far, than theirrivals. Balancing its extremists of theright, the C.D.U. has a raw- boned leftwing, concentrated in the industrialdistricts of the Ruhr . Here miners andsteel workers, Catholic and Protestant,have flocked to the C.D.U., hoping forsupport in their old struggle to make aliving in one of the most highly central-ized industrial areas in the world. Theleader of this strongly unionized, semi-Marxist group is Karl Arnold , thehandsome and earnest Minister- Presi-dent of North Rhine- Westphalia , themost populous province in Germany ,and articulate defender of a limitedChristian Socialism.
Arnold was trained as a leatherworker, and fought his way to the topof his trade union. At the age of twen-ty- four, he was secretary of the Chris-tian Trade Unions in Düsseldorf . Dur-ing the Nazi years he lived in politicaloblivion, from which he emerged toparticipate in the July 20, 1944, plot.In 1945 the British installed Arnold asMayor of Düsseldorf , a position heheld until he was unanimously electedMinister- President of North Rhine Westphalia in 1947.
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
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