Volume 13, Number 9 · November 20, 1969
Raw Nerves
By Neal Ascherson
Speak Out!
by Günter Grass, translated by Ralph Manheim
Harcourt, Brace & World, 142 pp., $4.95
Emergency Exit
by Ignazio Silone, translated by Harvey Fergusson II
Harper & Row, 207 pp., $6.95
However Willy Brandt and the new government in Bonn handle power, the fact remains that once again the Social Democrats have been swindled out of their proper majority. Of all those who fought for change, Günter Grass will be among the least astonished by this: this is not the first time that he has seen the Christian Democrats slip on a weighted glove for the last round of an election contest. In 1965, they called Willy Brandt a Red, a bastard, and a renegade, and reversed an unfavorable poll trend to come out on top. In 1969, on the excuse of a modest run on the Deutschmark, the alliance of Kiesinger's Christian Democrats (CDU) and Strauss's Christian Socialists (CSU) shut the currency exchanges three days before the poll and blamed Professor Schiller—the Social Democrat (SPD) Economics Minister in the coalition government—for undermining the currency. It worked, of course. Again the CDU/CSU braked the swing toward the Social Democrats, as an electorate ancestrally terrified of inflation jerked back in shock. Brandt saved enough with which to build a coalition, but the Christian Democrats came out as the largest single party.
Review, 3045 words
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