Volume 3, Number 5 · October 22, 1964
Federal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
By Geoffrey Barraclough
The Federal Republic of Germany
by Alfred Grosser
Praeger, 150 pp., $4.50
This Germany
by Rudolf Walter Leonhardt
New York Graphic Society, 275 pp., $7.95
The dreadful thing about the German question is the way it forces people to take sides. Some are afraid for Germany, others are afraid of Germany. It is not easy to decide who makes one more impatient, the fierce detractors or the uncritical admirers of the Federal Republic. In fact, as a practical issue of politics, the German question has gone stone cold. As the focus of international tension swings decisively from Europe to Asia, even those who have played it hardest are coming to realize that they are flogging a tired horse. Contrary to predictions from the Left, the Federal Republic has not proved to be merely a temporary halting place on the road back to Hitler. Contrary to predictions from the Right, the division of Germany has not endangered world peace. No sensible person today pays much heed to what a Swiss writer has called 'the hypocritical wailing' about reunification. It has become a ritual, like prayers for rain in a dry summer. But the bogies raised by Left and Right ten years ago, at the height of the controversy over the Paris treaties, have dissolved into thin air, like smoke from a dying bonfire on a still evening in the fall.
Review, 1510 words
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