Letter from Bonn

Willy Brandt is a popular figure with much of the American press, because he is- a leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a “liberal” party as compared to the “conservative” Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that ruled West Germany from its inception in 1949. Postwar Germany, under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer, had become part and parcel of the Western world. In the early postwar years, the SPD had campaigned for a neutral Germany and denounced every step taken to bring Bonn into the Western alliance. But starting with the Kennedy years, the CDU came under attack, Adenauer himself was criticized for the “rigidity” of his stance. Willy Brandt was favored by John F. Kennedy and the Democratic leaders who followed him, as a German leader who would be more “flexible.”

Brandt has been a Socialist all his life. But he has wavered between the left-wing socialism which he espoused early on and right-wing socialism following his return to Germany from exile in Scandinavia during World War II. He hitched his wagon then to Berlin’s great anti-Communist and pro- American mayor, Ernst Reuter, a rightwing Social Democrat who tried but failed to seize the leadership from the anti-American Kurt Schumacher. Brandt became mayor of Berlin after Reuter’s death and epitomized, if briefly, the struggle for freedom against Soviet aggression in the days when the Wall was going up.

NM

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Norbert Muhlen

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Willy Brandt is a popular figure with much of the American press, because he is- a leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a “liberal” party as compared to the “conservative” Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that ruled West Germany from its inception in 1949. Postwar Germany, under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer, had become part and parcel of the Western world. In the early postwar years, the SPD had campaigned for a neutral Germany and denounced every step taken to bring Bonn into the Western alliance. But starting with the Kennedy years, the CDU came under attack, Adenauer himself was criticized for the “rigidity” of his stance. Willy Brandt was favored by John F. Kennedy and the Democratic leaders who followed him, as a German leader who would be more “flexible.”

Brandt has been a Socialist all his life. But he has wavered between the left-wing socialism which he espoused early on and right-wing socialism following his return to Germany from exile in Scandinavia during World War II. He hitched his wagon then to Berlin’s great anti-Communist and pro- American mayor, Ernst Reuter, a rightwing Social Democrat who tried but failed to seize the leadership from the anti-American Kurt Schumacher. Brandt became mayor of Berlin after Reuter’s death and epitomized, if briefly, the struggle for freedom against Soviet aggression in the days when the Wall was going up.