Word: rhine
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...miners and ruled ruthlessly by a wealthy elite of powerful iron and war mongers. At various times the Ruhr indeed may have fitted these descriptions, but things have changed. "That is the legend of the Ruhr," says Gerhard Kienbaum, economics minister of West Germany's state of North Rhine-Westphalia. "Today it corresponds to reality about as well as the Nibelungenlied does...
Lifting Its Chin. Acting much like a developing country, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has begun to offer tax breaks, low-cost land and long-term 4% loans to new enterprises. Tempted as well by cheap river transportation and by West Germany's biggest floating labor pool (due largely to the mine layoffs), more than 100 foreign firms have settled in the Ruhr since 1961, including 63 Japanese companies and a battery manufacturer from Israel...
...planes. Germany's renascent airframe industry, also, needs the work that the Transall would provide. And there was a further international consideration; by buying Rolls-Royce engines for its Transall, the Germans hope to lessen Britain's foreign-exchange problems in maintaining British troops on the Rhine...
Traveling Light. The nexus of activity was Fort Hood, Texas, home of the 2nd Armored. The "Hell on Wheels" outfit lived up to its name in Germany in 1945, when it bridged the Rhine in seven hours under heavy fire and began the race to Berlin. Some of the soldiers in Big Lift had not even been born then, and for two weeks before the operation began, all traffic signs at Fort Hood bore identical English and German phrases for the benefit of young tankers and truck drivers...
...shortage. But whether a U.S. reduction would have the desired effect is doubtful. Charles de Gaulle, for one, has deprived NATO of some French troops on a considerably smaller pretense, and Britain, beset by balance-of-payments problems of its own, would gladly find excuses to pull back its Rhine army; already the London Daily Express advises its readers that if the U.S. can swiftly fly divisions across the Atlantic, it would be all the easier for Britain to perform the same stunt across the Channel...