Even if U.S. soldiers don’t have to fight a ground war, Americans aren’t likely to forget Germany’s role in arming Saddam Hussein. Last week the news magazine Der Spiegel published its latest bombshell: one firm allegedly violated the U.N. embargo against Iraq some 70 times. Among other recent charges: that German firms supplied Baghdad with sarin, a deadly nerve agent; that they trained Iraqi troops in the use of biological weapons; that they helped upgrade Scud missiles to enable them to hit targets in Israel and Riyadh, and that they built many of the bunkers used by Saddam and his troops. This national “disgrace,” as Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher has called it, has spooked even innocent companies, from mighty Daimler-Benz, maker of Mercedes-Benz cars, to the lowliest exporters. A recent survey by the magazine Wirtschaftswoche finds that one out of every three German companies believes that the war will hurt sales. The worry, says Alexander Batschari, spokesman for the German Association of Machinery Manufacturers, is that buyers will want to avoid the taint of “buying German.”
Perhaps that’s a bum rap. After all, Americans, French and British also played an active role in building Baghdad’s war machine. Yet the Germans - partly because of their past - have drawn particularly close scrutiny. Daimler-Benz and Lufthansa airline, reluctant to draw attention to themselves, have pulled ads out of many U.S. magazines, even though they are not directly involved in the arms trade. Audi and BMW have toned down their sales pitches. Gone are the paeans to German efficiency and engineering. “They don’t want to remind anyone how ’efficiently’ [Germans] built Iraq’s chemical-weapons industry,” says a German advertising executive in Frankfurt.
Meanwhile, executives live in dread of being added to Der Spiegel’s weekly hit list. If the magazine is to be believed, more than 100 companies still deal with Iraq despite U.N. sanctions. Already consumer groups in Israel and throughout Europe have urged a boycott of German arms exporters. U.S. lawmakers have called for legislation to keep German and other Western firms from selling military equipment to potentially hostile nations. Some U.S. and German politicians warn of an upsurge in protectionism in Washington, touched off by the perception that Bonn hasn’t done enough to support the allies. A rapid end to the war could ease the backlash. “If it ends quickly, we will see little effect on our business,” predicts a spokesman for Siemens, the German electronics giant. But if it drags on much longer, partly thanks to German-built bunkers and weapons, who knows? Instead of Porsches or BMWs, more Americans may go back to buying Cadillacs.
