Repeatedly this has affected British politics. The great pre-war debate in foreign affairs was waged between those who, like Churchill, were not willing to trust the Germans and those who, like Chamberlain, were. Since the end of World War II the international political issue that generated the most heat in Britain was the debate over the rearmament of Germany. One effect of this debate was the emergence of the Bevanites in the Labor Party as a political force. Aneurin Bevan believed that German rearmament would unite the pacifists, old anti-fascists, and others as no other issue could. He was correct. The leadership of Clement Attlee was gravely endangered for a time when the party officially supported arms for the nation's former enemies. The State Department and other American officials have taken the position that British opposition to German rearmament was the product of wild-eyed agitators on the left and had no popular support. This was an inaccurate, even a dangerous attitude. Field Marshal Lord Wavell opposed it. So did Viscount Norwich, who as Alfred Duff Cooper had allied himself with Churchill in the latter's long fight against the appeasement policy of Chamberlain and Baldwin. For the time being, the issue is dead. Germany is being rearmed. But the excitement the issue provoked testified to the abiding British uneasiness about Germany. This concern centers upon the prospect that West Germany will someday succumb to Russian enticement, be united with East Germany, and leave NATO. A permanently divided Germany may be a danger to peace, but few Britons outside the Foreign Office see it that way. Two wars have come out of a united Germany. The attitude of the upper-class Englishman toward people of the same class in Germany has altered since the war. Before World War I, and in the long week-end between the wars, upper-class Germans and Britons mingled a good deal. Ties of affection and respect were created. "I can't stand this feller Hitler," you were told, "but I know old Von Schlitz, and he's a first-rate chap. You can trust the Prussians." But in the end Von Schlitz and his friends, with a few honorable exceptions, threw in their lot with the Nazis. When the British see old Von Schlitz nowadays they wonder what deceits, what cruelties, what moral compromises he has countenanced to survive and prosper. Seen from this background, the British acceptance of a Western policy that rebuilt German industry into Britain's leading competitor for export markets and created a strong state in the Federal Republic of West Germany was a remarkable victory of the head over the heart. The policy was accepted because the British saw that the Soviet Union under Stalin was the greater, more immediate threat. Any relaxation of that threat is bound to affect the British attitude toward Germany and her ambitions.