Word: bonne
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...past few months, rumors have buzzed through Bonn that a tired and discouraged Willy Brandt would soon resign as Chancellor. Yet West Germany, and indeed all of Western Europe, was caught by surprise last week when the 60-year-old leader abruptly announced that he was leaving office. The ostensible cause of his resignation was the scandal that followed last month's arrest of Günter Guillaume, a close personal aide who confessed to being an East German spy. (TIME...
Although it was past midnight Monday when Brandt's resignation was announced, more than 150 torch-bearing Social Democratic Party members marched up to Brandt's house on the Venusberg overlooking Bonn. Placing candles before its heavy iron gate, they took up a silent vigil, broken only by occasional shouts of "Willy! Stay in office!" The following day, tens of thousands of Brandt supporters marched through cities across Germany-Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hannover, West Berlin, Bonn. Telegrams urging the Chancellor to reconsider flooded S.P.D. headquarters...
...indifferent administrator who much prefers to grapple with big foreign policy issues, Brandt began to feel swamped by his seemingly uncontrollable domestic problems. In January, reports TIME'S Bonn Bureau Chief Bruce Nelan, "Brandt began to talk to intimates about resigning. He had sunk into a deep depression, viewing the world and its future in near-apocalyptical terms. Diplomats in Bonn began reporting the Chancellor's lethargy and lack of drive. The opposition Christian Democratic Union increased its charges that Germany was leaderless...
...future. He was thoroughly committed to the dream of European unity. At the 1969 Hague meeting of the Common Market, he forcefully advocated Britain's admission to the EEC. He spoke eloquently about his belief that Europe could achieve economic integration by 1980; yet he hesitated to use Bonn's economic muscle as a political weapon, reasoning that it could revive memories of the "same old bad Germans...
...Social Democrats won the 1969 election, Brandt chose Schmidt -who would have preferred to be Foreign Minister-as his defense chief. In that thankless job, Schmidt modernized the West German arsenal and shook up the creaky officer corps, earning high marks from NATO leaders. One top American diplomat in Bonn called him "the best German Defense Minister since the war." He raised military morale and attracted volunteers by improving barracks life and allowing them to sport Beatle-length hair. To traditionalists' complaints that he was turning the Bundeswehr into the "German hair force," Schmidt asserted: "I couldn...