Following the end of World War II, divided Germany faced multiple reconstruction challenges, which the Allies played a critical role. One of the most poignant obstacles was overseeing the political developments rapidly evolving in West Germany. Kurt Schumacher and Konrad Adenauer, West Germany's leading political figures in the early cold war period presented different views on how the future of Germany should be shaped. The central theme of this research analyzes the rearmament debate and how a small circle of American officials and governmental departments strategically utilized print media outlets to implement its foreign policy between 1948-1952. The controversy of re-integrating West Germans into military units was a critical issue for Allied personnel and ordinary Germans alike that addressed another concern, German reunification. On the other side of divided Germany, Soviet control in the East is put into context and how willing and prepared the Soviets were militarily to counter any conflict with the Western Allies. The media response in both the U.S. and West Germany polarized the different approaches to the West German rearmament debate between Kurt Schumacher and Konrad Adenauer. The U.S. remained committed to championing Adenauer's conservatism, using newspaper articles to stigmatize Schumacher who was a staunch opponent to Soviet communism. Schumacher's aims of uniting East and West Germany deserve a close examination, particularly at a time when he posed a special problem for U.S. personnel.
