Chapter 8 5. Conrad Adenauer -1

iron curtain of the west In 1963, the aging but still formidable Konrad Adenauer was performing his final duties as he presided over a session of the West German Bundestag, the final stages of his political career severely marred by the Berlin Wall crisis, The eighty-six-year-old prime minister was narrowly elected in 1961.He bowed to pressure from younger politicians and agreed to step down after two years in his fourth term.What he left behind was fourteen years of remarkable achievement.Facing four years of uneasy, poignant retirement. A longtime opposition figure in the Bundestag may be lenient when he perhaps senses that the never-forgiving Adenauer will soon be ousted.

So he got up from his chair and told the Chancellor that he was right in trying to get West Germany admitted to NATO in 1954. Adenauer gave the man a cold look, and then gave a succinct answer: "The difference between you and me is that I was right beforehand." Adenauer summed up his own experience in these few words, and at the same time summed up the experience of all great leaders quite skillfully.Like this representative of the opposition, many people have the ability to recognize after the fact, and Adenauer has the gift of foresight.Adenauer ruled in a period of unpredictability following World War II.He has the courage and resourcefulness to take the action that needs to be taken when an alliance of nations that spans generations is secured -- and the political savvy to overcome the opposition of those who are afraid or unwilling to act.Winston Churchill seldom erred in his assessment of world leaders. In 1953, he told the House of Commons that Adenauer was "the most brilliant German statesman since Bismarck."

Adenauer was the main architect of the postwar order in Western Europe.A native of the Rhineland, he had always sought a friendly relationship between Germany and France, and had lived his life with the ideal of a united Europe, refraining from the strife that had plagued previous generations.He realized from the beginning that the Soviet Union represented all the bad things of old Europe and not all the good things of new Europe.Thus he held with rock-solid determination the bastion of free eastern Europe. In a sense, Adenauer is a typical CDU politician.He believed that tyranny of any kind—whether one nation over another, or one government over its people—was ultimately a sin because it stifled individual liberty.Born out of the ashes of World War I and intensified by the horrors of the Nazi era, his ideals of European unity arose directly from the aversion to autocracy.

After World War II, however, Free Europe was threatened by forces from outside far more than it had previously been threatened from within.At first, few understood the nature or gravity of the threat, but Adenauer saw it. When he came to power in 1949, he stood like a rock on the Elbe River - the eastern outpost of the free world.To be unmoved by the Soviet threat and to disdain their occasional, self-serving peace initiatives.However, he recognized that a disarmed and isolated Germany could not contain this new threat alone.During the 1950s, the United States and Great Britain firmly supported the defense of Europe and the rest of the world.from the threat of the Soviet Union.Three times in seventy-five years France had been angered by German power, and therefore viewed with great suspicion any plans to rearm its eastern neighbor.But it is inconceivable that Europe would have an effective anti-Soviet alliance without France.So, Adenauer once again devoted himself to his ideal of tearing down the barriers that divided Europeans.The idea had previously been impractical, almost poetic abstraction: now it was imminent, and he pursued it with redoubled doggedness.

While striving to bring Europe together as a united front against the Soviet threat, he also sought to create an economic and political system that would hold Europe together and interdependence, thereby ultimately ending threats to peace from within Europe.Great achievements have been made through initiatives such as NATO membership, the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Pool, and the 1963 Franco-German friendship treaty.Conrad Adenauer's reputation was also greatly improved. For more than a decade Adenauer was our own Iron Curtain—a man of iron will but great patience, whose deep conviction in Christian teachings made him a central figure in the Western opposition to an institution he believed to be founded on godlessness and The most effective, vocal and consistent voice of an empire based on spiritual oppression.For all his grim countenance and staunch opposition to communism, he was at the same time a warm, good-natured, urbane man, beloved by his people and his own children, and devoted to a country that had been led astray. Said he was a generous father-like elder.

On the ruins of post-war Germany, Adenauer stands tall like a cathedral.He was an "old man" to his defeated people, a symbol of faith and resilience in times of disgrace and chaos for the nation.He reassures doubts with poise, dignity, and even a certain schoolmaster's superiority.He is a complicit, ruthless political hand-to-hand figure against those who stand in his way.To the rest of the world, he was the faithful voice of the New GDR.He's going to transform it from an international waif into a reliable bastion of freedom within a decade. Friendships between national leaders are rare.They usually meet within the confines of tumultuous events and diplomatic decorum, often steeped in history and surrounded by diplomats, aides and translators.The specter of national self-interest that haunted their meetings always constrained mutual exchanges of friendship.

In my political career, although I have had friendly meetings with many foreign leaders, only a few of them can be called personal friends.Conrad Adenauer is one of them.Our friendship has lasted for fourteen years, and it has always been maintained whether we were both in government or in opposition. In the fall of 1947, I was one of nineteen members of a House committee chaired by Christian Herter.We visited Europe to make some presentations on the implementation of the Marshall Plan announced in June.Our stay in Germany left one of the most refreshing impressions of my life.The entire city has been completely leveled by Allied bombs, and we found thousands of families huddled among the rubble of collapsed buildings and bunkers.Food was scarce, and yellow, hungry, ragged children approached us, not begging, but selling us their fathers' war medals or bartering them for something to eat.

Another member of the committee, a usually reserved, self-possessed Southerner, was also so moved by the children he met during a visit that he took all his soap, candy and a sweater he was wearing gave them all.He later told us: "I gave the last bar of chocolate to a little girl who was about ten years old with a child about a year and a half in her arms. Do you know what she did with that bar of chocolate? She didn't eat it herself ...she carefully put the chocolate in the kid's mouth, told him what it was, and told him to eat it. I couldn't help myself when I saw her do that. I went back to the train and took all my things Come to the children."

In Washington, Congress has been studying whether to give war subsidies to our veterans of World War II; in Eisen, I met a miner who lived with his wife and twenty-two-year-old son In a cellar.Although his son had lost a leg in the war, he received neither a pension nor a dole, because his disability was not considered to be that serious. While visiting a coal mine, we watched workers save the thin, meatless soup they had for lunch so they could take it home to share with families.German coal mines produced far less than they had before the war with the same number of workers, as miners were weakened by hunger and malnutrition.

The children who refused to beg and the men who shared their meager food all suggested to me that the German people, as Adenauer declared in late 1945, were "deeply bowed, but . . . not depressed." This sentence is true. The American occupying authorities, headed by General Lucius Clay, assured us that the Germans did have the mental strength they needed to recover. What has been lacking so far, Clay said, is leadership.Germany lost an entire generation of potential leaders during the war, and thousands were disqualified from leadership positions because of their Nazi ties.He told us that Germany must discover and develop a whole new set of leaders for the public and private sectors, not those of the war and pre-war periods.What is especially needed is a strong national leader dedicated to democratic principles who can lead his people back into the family of free nations while protecting them from new threats from the East.

Clay was right about what kind of leader Germany needed.But it would be wrong to assume that such a leader could not have come from the pre-war ranks. Konrad Adenauer was born in 1876, the son of a court clerk in Cologne, and little was known about his mother.All that was known was that Conrad's father had given up a promising post in the Prussian army in order to marry his mother.Parents are hardworking and religious.Conrad was raised in the Catholic Church and remained a devout Christian all his life. His childhood was austere and austere, but also carefree and lovable.The family's income has been kept at a minimum for a year, and his family's finances are very tight. The children can only choose whether to eat meat for the whole family's dinner on a few Sundays, so as to save money to buy Christmas trees and candles.Conrad and the other children picked out the Christmas tree. Although he did well in school, his father began telling him that the family could not afford him to go to college.Although Conrad was disappointed in his heart, he apparently accepted the ruling calmly and became a bank clerk.After working for two weeks, his father saw him very pitiful.So he squeezed the family budget even further so that the kid could go to college, where he studied law.Conrad knew that his education had cost his family dearly.Therefore, he studied hard.In order to increase the study time, he sometimes put his feet in a bucket of cold water at night to keep his head clear. Young Conrad's stubbornness was matched by his adventurous spirit.Two years after graduating, he joined a law firm belonging to a leader of the Center Party in Cologne.It was a conservative Catholic party and a precursor to Adenauer's own Christian Democratic Union. One day in 1906, the twenty-nine-year-old Adenauer learned that his employer named Kosen planned to send a young judge to the Cologne City Council.He went straight to Corsen's office and demanded, "Why don't you delegate me? I believe I'm as good as anyone else." It took courage and self-confidence to do so, two traits that Adenauer continued throughout his life. be reflected.In fact, Adenauer was such a competent lawyer and hard worker that he was absolutely right in claiming to be as good as anyone else.Corsen appointed him, and Adenauer began a political career that lasted fifty-seven years. A photograph of a young Adenauer playing in the countryside with four friends shows the children with their chins buried in haystacks, grinning impishly.Only Adenauer's face bears a serious, brooding expression, accentuated by the deep shadows under his cheekbones and mouth.But in the shot, he waved his left hand, raising it just above the top of the haystack.This is typical of Adenauer, although he is deliberately reserved and detached, he still enjoys himself. I first met Adenauer on his state visit to Washington in 1953. He was seventy-six years old, his expressionless face was lined with fine, shapely wrinkles that seemed to be filtered through a layer of sand Clear ditch water.Although the face still retains the detached tranquility of the past, it is not the face photographed on the haystack.At the age of forty-one, his driver accidentally collided with a tram.Adenauer, with characteristic asceticism, climbed out of the broken car and walked calmly to the hospital, his face covered with blood.The driver, who suffered only minor injuries, was carried away on a stretcher. . Adenauer suffered a shattered cheekbone and other injuries to his face, and the accident made him look even more serious.Later, many writers described his face as that of an official of the Qing Dynasty in China.This is a very apt metaphor, and nothing could be more apt to describe Adenauer in the old vulgar oriental mysteries.After World War II, John J. McCloy, the first high commissioner of the United States to Germany, had another description.He told me: "He had a determined, unequivocal Native American face, and he looked like a Gronimo." Because of Adenauer's no-nonsense appearance, many of his critics, and even supporters who didn't know much about him, considered Adenauer to be humorless, even callous.But while he wasn't one to make puns or pat people on the back for intimacy, Adenauer was a man of compassion at heart, and a man with a sharp, refined sense of humor . Adenauer rarely wastes energy on unimportant issues or hopeless causes. Likewise, he is in the habit of serving some practical purpose to his humor. In 1959, President Eisenhower hosted a reception at the White House for foreign dignitaries in Washington for the funeral of John Foster Dulles.Adenauer saw me at the reception standing with Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister, who had just flown into Washington from the deadlocked Geneva conference on Germany and Berlin.Adenauer came towards us, and I told him lightly that many people said that Gromyko and I looked alike. The Prime Minister smiled and said: "That's right, for this I have a proposal to break the impasse in Geneva. You go back to Geneva on Gromyko's plane and let Gromyko stay as vice president. Then, I Believe me, we can break this deadlock." This made the Russians, who were always depressed, laugh. Although Adenauer said something in jest, it was a vivid portrait of Soviet intransigence in Geneva.Many years later, when he had stepped down, he used humorous language to express his disappointment at the political sensitivity of his successor, Ludwig Erhard."Are we discussing serious political issues, or Chancellor Ahmad?" he asked, setting a date to meet a journalist. In 1917, while he was recuperating in a Black Forest sanatorium after a car accident, he was visited by two city officials.At the time, the post of mayor was vacant, and the city council wanted Adenauer to fill it.The delegation's mission was to get Adenauer into a conversation about municipal affairs to see if the accident had affected his brain.However, he quickly understood the intentions of the visitors and told them: "Gentlemen, just from the outside, my head is not very good." The officials laughed and handed over the task to over him.The First World War is drawing to a close.The city of Cologne is in chaos.Adenauer took it immediately. At first, the 41-year-old mayor had a lot on his hands, scrambling to find enough food and shelter for residents and ex-soldiers to keep people on track in the political vacuum created by the defeat of the country and the abdication of the German Kaiser order of life.When life returned to normal, Adenauer embarked on a grand project to restore Cologne's precious ancient culture and architecture."Periods of great political upheaval are especially suitable for new creative ventures!" he excitedly told a friend. His attention has extended beyond the German border.He saw his city as a new link between Germany and Western Europe. Even then, he was sometimes resourceful and cunning in order to allow his colleagues to come together to carry out his plans. In 1926 he wanted to build a drawbridge over the Rhine, but the majority of the city council wanted an arch bridge instead. He approached the members of the Communist Party in the Senate and told them that erecting the drawbridge would reveal her rare and special beauty like the drawbridge in Leningrad.Adenauer knew virtually nothing about Leningrad and its drawbridge, but he did know human instinct and the passion for revolutionary Russia that the German Communists harbored in their hearts.He got the drawbridge, and also gained a reputation as a wily statesman. It was at this time that Adenauer turned down an opportunity to become prime minister.During the Weimar Republic, chancellors served an average of just seven months in office before their legislative coalition collapsed.The leading members of the Center Party thought that Adenauer might be powerful enough to form a lasting government, so they invited him to form a government in 1926. There was a certain allure to him in this matter.But his expressionless face belied the shrewdness of a statesman who steers a cause that can eliminate hopelessness.Not because he was unwilling to take risks, but because he did follow the tradition of carefully weighing the probabilities of success, combining sound analysis with a well-tuned political intuition.When he went to Berlin and tested the political climate, he concluded that breaking the balance of power was not yet possible.So, he rejected the suggestion and returned to Colour's growing economic and social pressure to make an effective government in Germany so difficult it would have crushed Konrad Adenauer.However, his decision is understandable from a personal point of view, and I have often wondered how profoundly history would have changed had this political leader of immense talent become Prime Minister at the time.Hitler would have met a formidable opponent long before he seized power and brought such catastrophe upon Germany and the world. Three and a half years later, Adenauer was re-elected to a 12-year term as mayor.At the time, he was fifty-three years old, and he was looking forward to retirement at the end of his term.However, when Hitler became Chancellor, the Nazis did not want a nationally renowned and independent leader like Adenauer to govern.From the very beginning, he made his dogged independence clear.Within a few weeks, he rejected or boycotted Hitler three times.For the first time, he verbally opposed the Nazi abolition of the Prussian Reichstag, of which Adenauer had been a member since 1917, but was unsuccessful.Later, on a campaign trip ahead of the March 1933 elections, Hitler visited Collin Adenauer and flatly refused to meet him at the airport.Two days later, on the morning of Hitler's Cologne speech, he ordered municipal workers to remove the Nazi flags from the Rhine bridges and sent a detachment of police to protect them. After the election, the Nazis took absolute power and Adenauer became persona non grata.He was taunted in public.Soon after, he was removed as mayor and expelled from the city through fictitious charges against the people of Cologne.Although the Nazis were hostile towards him, he was not included in the list of those who needed to be eliminated as soon as possible. He was arrested during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, but was released unharmed after the massacre.For most of the Nazi years, he lived alone in his own home in Rösdorf, near Cologne, raising roses and tending the family. In 1944, he suffered many bad luck and almost died, but finally survived.He was apparently invited to take part in Karl Gedler's valiant but unfortunate plot to murder Hitler.When he estimated the balance of power and judged that the plan might fail, he refused to cooperate with these conspirators.The assassination did fail, and he was arrested and imprisoned.He feigned illness to evade the transfer to Bukenwald.Then, with the help of a friend who lived in Luftwaf, escaped from the hospital.Finally the Gestapo found him hiding in a mill in a forest forty miles from Cologne, and they arrested him again. After his son Max, a German officer, went to Berlin in November 1944 to plead for his father's release, the Nazis finally let him go.When the Americans took Cologne the following spring, Adenauer was at home in Leendorf. Despite this interlude, Adenauer spent most of his time under the Nazis in a very humdrum life.When he was deported from Cologne in the spring of 1933, he left his family at home and went alone to the Benedictine Abbey, fifteen miles from the Rhine.Inside the monastery he hoped to escape the attention of the Nazis, at least temporarily.The abbot was an old school friend of his.Adenauer lived there for nearly a year, spending a lot of time thinking, walking in the woods and reading.The monastery had a large collection of historical books, and he read greedily one after another. Before Hitler came to power, Adenauer was the successful, powerful "Jade of Cologne," the stern but affectionate patriarch of a growing family.Now his powers were gone, his family was separated from him, and he was living a life of quite literally a monastic ascetic.Only his convictions remained, and when he considered the grave dangers a people would run by submitting to belligerent nationalism and despotism, he began to study with growing passion the creation of a new European society which he had been pursuing all his life. The ideal of a political order in which liberty and Christianity came first and state power and individuality came second. In 1944, he suffered many bad luck and almost died, but finally survived. These ideas were the only idyll of a disillusioned man, and fifteen years later, when he came to power in West Germany, Adenauer's practical political instincts reigned again.But the practical consideration was that the only way to ensure a joint defense of Europe was to overcome the differences between France and Germany, and Adenauer was philosophically prepared.He always wanted to bring the two countries together, and now it could be a means to a great end - the defense of the West against the new Soviet Empire - and not just an end in itself. When the Americans occupied Cologne in 1945, they preemptively restored Adenauer as mayor.But then it was taken over by the British, who promptly removed him from office and banned him from politics, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained.He believed that the British Labor government wanted the Social Democrats to take over power in Germany and therefore did not want to keep a Conservative in such an influential position as mayor of Cologne.This dismissal hit Adenauer hard, because for him, rebuilding Cologne is a career he really loves. In short, Cologne's loss is Germany's gain.Once again Adenauer was thrown out of office to live in opposition, this time not by the Nazis but by the Allies, and now the chances of theory and implementation coincided.During the two months that forced him into retirement, he worked on his plan for turning his views on Germany's destiny into a concrete plan for political action.When the British again allowed him to participate in politics, he immediately began to focus on the Christian Democratic Union, a new conservative party.This was the basis of his regime before 1963.Using his persuasion, hard work and willpower, Adenauer won control of the party and quickly built it into a formidable national force.His carefully timed power plays also help him.At an important party meeting, he went up, sat down and announced that he was chairing the meeting because he was the oldest person in the room, and just like that, he took over the chairman of the meeting.The other attendees were too shocked to protest. One might think that a leader who entered parliamentary political life late in life would find the tedious campaign annoying, even stooping to power. That was the case for Shigeru Yoshida, who was a career diplomat before becoming Japan's prime minister after World War II.Not so with Adenauer.In the spring of 1960, he gave me some astute strategic advice about the upcoming American elections and asked me if I liked running.I told him I felt it was torture.I said, after one campaign, the way I felt after serving in the Pacific in World War II, I don't linger on it, and I don't want to go through it again.He disagreed with me and surprised me by saying, "I love running, I love being able to fight for causes I believe in, to debate people who criticize, to fight back against them." In this sense he is not like his great friend de Gaulle.Adenauer favored personal combat in political battles; he liked to compete with his political opponents, something de Gaulle almost flatly refused to do.Contrary to what one might expect, the Frenchman de Gaulle was reserved.And this German, Adenauer, is extroverted.They were both politically successful, but followed very different paths. In the weeks leading up to the first elections in postwar Germany in 1949, the seventy-three-year-old Adenauer proved to be extraordinarily competent and energetic as he traveled around giving political speeches.He has the persistence of youth and an astonishing knack for engaging with voters on issues they care about.His frustrated opponents, the Social Democrats, who had expected to become the ruling party in West Germany immediately after the war, could only resort to harsh personal attacks, to which he barely responded.In the election, the Christian Democratic Union received 7.36 million votes, 400,000 more than the Social Democrats.By one vote, the new Bundestag elected Adenauer as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. As the leader of an occupied country, Adenauer's actual powers were strictly limited.He had to rely heavily on his common sense and his dogged, steely endurance in dealing with allies and adversaries in government.In negotiations and debates, his habit is not to overwhelm them in the first place, but to listen first to what others have to say.When he finally spoke, he used his adventurer's instincts to avoid what was going against him and to focus on what he could win. Basically, the recipe for his intractability is just the facts, being reasonable and being prepared.He thoroughly researched every topic on the agenda.He seldom misses; he trusts himself to answer the other side's arguments quickly and forcefully.The British High Commissioner, Sir Yvonne Kirkpatrick, said of Adenauer: "Always quick to detect any weak link in the opponent's defence, and to thrust his spearhead there." However, in addition to the cold weapon of using logic, he has other weapons.When cabinet meetings ran into difficulties, he would sometimes interrupt the debate for a moment to pass a bottle of wine around.After a few drinks and friendly small talk, he reopened the meeting.At that point, the opposition was actually less determined. Adenauer is a connoisseur of fine wines.He not only likes his native Rhine region, but also likes the full-bodied wines of Rhine vineyards.Sometimes at lunch he would serve a bottle of Rhine or Mosel and a bottle of Bordeaux, but he would reserve all the French wine for his guests.John McCloy related to me how, at a small dinner party, he was preparing what he thought was a German table wine he had procured from the U.S. Army Consumer Cooperative when he discovered that Adenauer was only Drank half a glass.The next day he received a box of "Borncastle Doctor" from the prime minister, a kind of Mosel wine, one of the best famous wines in the world.It also happens to be one of my favorite wines, and I sometimes serve it at state dinners at the White House. One of Adenauer's greatest assets is that, even in his seventies, he seems indefatigable.He once told me that one of the best statesmen is one who "can sit longer than anyone else." He was willing to stretch meetings into the night if necessary, and he sat patiently until one after another Sleepy opponents agree with him so far. Like every accomplished leader I've known, Adenauer was a fierce competitor in nearly every activity he was involved in.Like Eisenhower, despite his unmistakably friendly and easy-going demeanor, he was a fierce opponent on the golf course and at the bridge table, Adenauer loved Italian lawn bowls best, but he never let people.McIlroy was an elite athlete and was an international-level tennis player in his youth.He found Adenauer a formidable competitor.He told me that Adenauer played lawn bowls with great skill and concentration, determined to win even when he was playing with friends.He wouldn't agree with the saying "It's not about winning or losing, it's about style." Adenauer played fair, but he was always trying to win. The same goes for his political style.Like Churchill, Adenauer was an excellent MP.At the 1949 Bundestag session, he articulated his plans and displayed another important political skill of his: his ability to keep his wit and humor seductive. The moment of what is effectively an inaugural address as the winner of Germany's first legal election in sixteen years should be solemn and dignified.Adenauer knew that the world was watching to see whether the Germans had learned how to be democrats.But in the middle of his speech, opponents of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party began to question him in public.One would think that a man as genuinely pompous as Adenauer would be outraged that the atmosphere of the meeting had been spoiled, and that a man as humorless as he might have been quite cold and dismissive of the victims.However, he outmaneuvered them.When a Communist MP named Heinz Renner sarcastically exclaimed that Adenauer's speech on the Soviet Union had been "drafted by an expert".Adenauer paused for a moment and said, "Hell Renner, you're a jealous man." That remark drew applause. Adenauer's knack for high-handed tactics and political hand-to-hand combat has earned him a reputation for ruthlessness, which he doesn't seem to resent.Once, when he was accused of brutalizing the opposition, he countered measuredly: "That's not quite right." Adenauer developed a strong mutual admiration for Yoshida of Japan, another former postwar Axis leader. Affection.This may have been facilitated by the fact that both of them were deeply committed to democracy, while each actually had a penchant for calling the shots. Unlike some, Adenauer had always been tolerant of the press, but he was unwilling to be fooled and refused to accept the responsibility of a professional politician who gave a good answer to a bad question."I'll fail you in diplomacy for this," he yelled at a reporter. The Allied occupation lasted six of Adenauer's fourteen years as prime minister. He often said to me that without the aid of the Marshall Plan and the efforts of four outstanding Americans: Dean Acheson, Lucius Clay, John McCloy and John Foster Dulles With wise advice and support, he will never achieve what he has achieved.Another reason for his success was his willingness to compromise with the Allies if and when such compromise allowed Germany's goals of independence, economic recovery, and integration with the rest of Western Europe to be further assured. Like Yoshida, Adenauer knew that cooperation with the Allies was a far cry from compliance, though when he was sometimes provoked by the harsh words of some particularly impatient Germans, he would say: "Well, they think it's Who lost the war?" In 1949, before becoming prime minister, he delivered a critical speech to an international group in Bern, Switzerland, in which he delivered a scathing attack on a series of occupation policies.He also said that Germans needed a new kind of national pride if they were going to rebuild and defend their own country—he was careful not to use the word nationalism here. After this speech, many critics, including newspapers in the Allied capital, angrily pointed out that the Allies were confronted with an unrepentant German nationalist.But Adenauer's relations with the military regulators who knew him remained unchanged, and his popularity among his countrymen increased.His dignity as a human being stands out with his courageous independence.这种尊严对于德国人是巨大的鼓舞，他们亟不可待地要使他们的民族尊严得到恢复。 1953年4月的一个阴暗的、下着雨的早晨，我在华盛顿的国家机场上第一次见到阿登纳。他来华盛顿是和艾森豪威尔总统及约翰·福斯特·杜勒斯进行会谈。杜勒斯和我作为艾森豪威尔的代表在机场迎接。 由于两方面原因使这位总理的访问具有重大意义。首先，从来有过一位德国总理访问过美国。实际上，自第一次世界大战前以来，阿登纳就是第一个德国官方的来访者。这次访问之所以重要还因为那是在第二次世界大战结束后仅仅八年。阿登纳在美国受到无论是政治领导人或广大人民的接待方式，都会表明不管希特勒还是纳粹所造成的仇恨心理已有缓和。 美国支持阿登纳的外交政策并不坚定。许多有影响的美国人建议，美国应该拒绝参加欧洲防务，如果我们与阿登纳的会谈是徒劳的或是不友好的话，那么这种孤立主义就会得到进一步抬头。在安德鲁斯机场的小型而又沉闷的仪式将是数百万美国人民和欧洲人民的最初印象的发源地。 当我最初看到阿登纳从他的坐机里出来时，他的六英尺二英寸（1．88米）的巨大骨架，他的生硬的、笔直的姿态，轮廓鲜明的，猜不透的面容给我留下了难忘的印象。有些男子的面容自然而然地表露出他们的感情。而象阿登纳那样的人有着自制、完全不露声色的表情。在政治活动和国际关系方面，如果一个当事人从研究他人的表情中能够准确地猜到人们正在想什么和有什么感觉的话，则他会大为受益。阿登纳的表情是淡薄的，几乎是禁欲主义的自我控制，丝毫不流露自己的喜怒哀乐。 在我的欢迎词中我想要表明的主要之点是阿登纳的访问，标志着我们两国之间富有成果的关系得到再生而不是诞生。由于这两次世界大战，正步走、民族主义的、军国主义的普鲁土一纳粹已经成为美国民间传说的一部分；人们普遍认为，"德国鬼子要么揍你，要么向你下跪。"然而，我却知道德国和德美关系还有另一侧面。尼克松夫人的母亲生于德国。我自己的母亲在大学专修德语，一向高度赞扬德国大学的造诣和水平。在杜克法律学校里，我从朗·富勒教授那里知道，德国学者们对发展西方法律原则方面具有深刻的影响。 在欢迎阿登纳时，我想引起人们对早期的回忆并提醒美国人，德国人从一开始就曾经帮助过建设我们的家园。我告诉阿登纳，距离他在华盛顿期间下榻的布来尔宾馆只有几步远处，矗立着一尊普鲁士军官弗里德里奇·威廉·冯·施托伊本男爵的塑像。在1777-1778年冬季，他在福杰山谷与乔治·华盛顿一道服役，他接管训练美国独立战争时期的军队，成绩卓著。 我说，美国人民决不会忘记冯·施托伊本和数百万德国人对我们这个国家作出的贡献。 阿登纳在答谢讲话中，转过身来对我说："你刚才提到了巴龙。施托伊本男爵。我想对你的宽宏大量表示感谢，你赞扬了美国和德国之间的友谊而没有提到最近几十年的事。"经他授权的传记作者后来写道，他显然被这次欢迎所感动。第二天他在冯·施托伊本的塑像前献了花圈。 阿登纳通过一生中最根本的教训制定出他的内政和外交政策。他是在对德国的忠诚和对法国的本能的喜爱并存的这种政治、文化的气氛中成长起来的，他谋求法、德恢复友好关系，以便利用两国之间的悠久的和睦亲善作为东西方对抗的当今世界的一个战略楔子。作为一个训练有素的虔诚的热爱自由的天主教徒，他谋求国家之间和社会利益集团——政府，商业和劳工——之间的伙伴关系，这样能够防止一个国家或一个集团对其他国家或集团建立暴政。最重要的是，因为他热爱自由，并把它看成是人类精神生存的必需，所以他准备为保卫他自己的和其他自由社会免受共产主义和苏联的威胁而战斗。 他的思想既不复杂也不原始，他是健全的和全面的，他具有作为一个伟大领袖人物所需要的把目标统一起来的能力。目标的统一和良好的观念当然并不总是一致的。我接触过一些领导人，他们是有真才实学的专家，但是他们没有明确的理想。我遇到过另外一些领导人，他们是不切实际的空想家，就连如何达到他们的理想的最模糊的概念都没有。阿登纳是罕见的领导人之一，他的实际的政治才能和他的理想是一致的。在把他的深切的宗教信仰转变成有效的政治行动的基础方面，他可谓是一名罕见的炼丹大师。 阿登纳懂得民主的基础扎根于犹大——基督的伦理道德学中。事实上，无论共产主义还是纳粹主义，最使他耽心的是，人们可能会被迫把他们的精神本身奉献到唯物主义的祭坛上去。但是他并不是一名现代的十字军参加者，出来改变非基督世界。他认为，一个良好的基督政府最重要的是，让每一个人能学他的、以他自己喜欢的方式向上帝诉说他的愿望。 阿登纳的基督政治把保护每一个人的自由和尊严视为他们的最高准则，同时，把创造西德经济奇迹的任务也置于最重要的地位。在这个意义上讲，他们的直觉足以代替技术诀窍。他对经济懂得不多，并不参加起草特殊的财政货币政策，他把这些琐碎工作都交给了他的精明强干的财政部长路德维希·艾哈德去处理。而艾哈德是根据阿登纳的"分权原则"执行的。十二年的德国的法西斯主义和对苏联情况的了解，已使这位总理清楚地认识到把权力过多地集中于公众或集中于个人手中的危险性。他既反对国有化工业和垄断企业，也反对罢工和不公平的管理制度。 1951年，在阿登纳和德国主要劳工领导人之间的一次历史性会议上达成了一项协议，即允许工人与工业监督委员会的管理人员平起平坐，享有同样的选举权。这种伙伴关系使得西德三十年没有重大的劳工骚动。 由于这个协议和艾哈德的精明的经济管理，再加上1949年阿登纳说服盟国不要大量地拆除德国工业，使西德赢得了近三十年的惊人的经济增长。今天，它的人均国民生产总值高于美国，它的工业产量是战前未分裂时的大德国的一倍半。 正是由于阿登纳的伙伴观念给西德带来了繁荣，也有助于给西欧带来和平和经济联合。阿登纳对战后的景象曾描写道："以我之见，欧洲没有一个国家可以向它的人民保证，仅仅依靠自己的力量就能为他们赢得一个安全可靠的未来。" 阿登纳和法国外长罗伯特·舒曼一致同意建立一个把大部分欧洲的钢铁和煤炭生产置于联合控制下的国际权威组织。在法国的卓越的经济学家琼·莫尼特的指导下，这个史无前例的安排导致了欧洲共同市场的诞生。然而，他的由每个国家各派军队组成一支欧洲军的理想由于法国议会对德国人长期不信任，拒绝考虑，而告破灭。但是阿登纳克服了他的最初的失望，在邱吉尔和安东尼·艾登的帮助下，他设法使西德于1954年加入了北约组织，并于1955年从同盟国的控制下赢得了彻底的独立。阿登纳和夏尔·戴高乐通过成功的互访，并于1963年签订了友好条约，从而两人重修于好。 有时，人们把阿登纳和沙勒曼相比较，沙勒曼这位超群人物，通过个人的力量和信念在八世纪末和九世纪初短暂地把欧洲统一在一个基督帝国之下。这个比较在许多方面是贴切的。 沙勒曼和阿登纳两人都身材魁梧。虽然两人都有深刻的信念，但是都享受优裕的生活。两人都以实干家而不是伟大的思想家著称，每人都被同样的理想所吸引，并且都具有把理想变成现实的手段和能力。 沙勒曼帝国在九世纪由他的三个孙子瓜分了。从那时起，法国和德国，这个分裂后的帝国的最大的两部分，就定期地卷入敌对行动。阿登纳在野的年月里，当他仔细研究和思考后，他愈来愈感到有信心，那就是团结在信奉基督教义的周围并在各国友好的政府的领导下，欧洲人民能够再次联合在一起。战后，他首先考虑的是建立一个反对苏联专制政府的自由欧洲联盟。 具有讽刺意味的是，联合的理想有着阴暗的一面。第二次世界大战后，许多德国人认为，阿登纳对于重新统一已经分裂的日耳曼民族并无真正的兴趣。当阿登纳面向着西欧时，他们则看到他背朝着东德的一千七百万同胞。这种看法在一定程度上是对的。 阿登纳出生在莱茵地区，那里是中世纪法国和德国之间的"中央王国"的一部分。许多莱茵人生来就有一种内含的矛盾心理：他们都是德国人，同时又有点法国血统。他的某些批评家指责说，与其说他亲德国，不如说他亲莱茵，或者甚至更亲法国。他的心的确总是留在莱茵土地上，他也一点没有象普鲁士军队对待法国人的那种反感，然而他的爱国主义从未有过半点值得怀疑。 约翰·麦克洛伊是这位总理的挚友，他仰慕阿登纳。在一次和我的谈话中，他引用了歌德的一句话来描写阿登纳："哎呀，我的胸中有两个灵魂。"这两个灵魂中，一个是德国，另一个是欧洲。一个灵魂热爱祖国，另外一个为它的军国主义和极权主义的插曲所击退。阿登纳要把西德的首都设在莱茵，这是把他的新德国从旧普鲁士中分离出来的一个想法。波恩离法国比离柏林更近。 阿登纳厌恶普鲁士德国可能是导致他最终垮台的原因。 1961年8月东德人开始修建柏林墙时，他九天来去柏林。这一迟缓给他招来了鼓噪一时的和部分是公正的批评。在危机一开始时，如果他就在场的话，可能对该城市的两部分人都是一个极大的安慰。 当他终于抵达并受到了柏林人及威廉·勃兰特市长的冷遇的时候，他坚定地朝着装有倒钩刺铁丝网的波茨坦广场走去，并站在离它四、五码远处，凝视着铁丝网的另一边。 东德的官员们通过扩音器嘲弄他，但是他坚守阵地。这是一个给人以深刻印象的、沉默对抗的瞬间，但是它不足以排除许多西德人民对他没有能早些赶来所感到的痛苦。在下一个月的选举中，阿登纳的基督教民主联盟失去了在联邦议院中的绝对多数。 在整个总理任期内，虽然阿登纳总是说，他致力于两个德国的联合，但是对他自己的话究竟深信到何种程度，始终是值得怀疑的。他曾经说过有三种德国人：喝荷兰杜松子酒的普鲁士人，喝啤酒的巴伐利亚人，和喝葡萄酒的莱茵人。他说，只有莱茵人头脑清醒，足以统治其他人。这位精明的政治家也许一直在考虑着这么一个问题，在联合以后的德国，更为开放的东德选民们可能会使他勉强当选总理的获胜限界受到威胁。