NEWS ANALYSIS : Border Issue Unleashes Anti-German Backlash : Europe: Kohl draws fire for allowing the dispute with Poland to get out of hand. Some say it is an unsettling omen.

BONN--At one level, political observers here admit, the current Poland-West German border dispute is the ultimate tempest in a teapot.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, they note, has been pressed by Warsaw to guarantee a frontier that West Germany formally recognized in a treaty with Poland 20 years ago, reaffirmed first in 1975 by signing the Helsinki agreement on European security and more recently in the form of a parliamentary declaration last November.

Not even those Germans expelled after World War II from territory ceded to Poland demand the land back.

Kohl’s latest response has been to demand that Poland renounce all World War II-related reparations claims.

The fact that Poland did exactly that in a 1953 treaty seems only to complete a diplomatic rhetorical exercise devoid of real substance, whose only significance lies in its decibel level.

The issue, however, carries an importance that extends far beyond the German-Polish frontier to the process of reunification itself.

For many here, it is a warning that the move toward German unity is likely to be the most serious test ever of relationships West Germany has carefully nurtured during its four decades of successful democracy.

For if the Polish border dispute illustrates anything, it is how vivid the memories remain of an aggressive, powerful Germany and, nearly half a century later, how nervous the victims of that power are about the idea of a united Germany.

While Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki currently commands center stage, the Dutch, the Belgians and the Yugoslavs have already registered their concerns. The Soviet Union talks of imposing neutrality on a unified Germany, an idea already rejected by Bonn.

“Reunification presents the West Germans with the biggest crisis of their history,” said Michael Stuermer, director of the Institute of Science and Policy Research in Ebenhausen, near Munich.

The present dispute also has provided a hint of how sensitive West Germans are to insinuations that 40 years of democracy and loyalty to the Atlantic Alliance are somehow not enough proof that Germans can be trusted.

An editorial cartoon depicting Kohl as an overweight Adolf Hitler--replete with mustache and “Sieg Heil” salute--published in The Times on Friday may have been just one more political statement in the United States. But in West Germany, it was reprinted at the top of Page 1 of the country’s mass-circulation Bild Zeitung on Saturday, illustrating a story alleging that the Polish border issue had unleashed a wave of anti-German hate from its most trusted allies.

By contrast, a letter from U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III to Kohl purportedly offering unequivocal U.S. support on the eve of his departure for Moscow last month had the chancellery aglow for days.

The combination of both foreign and domestic sensitivities places an enormous responsibility on Kohl, whose actions are bound to influence heavily the political climate into which a reunited Germany begins its life.

While few political observers here doubt the chancellor’s sincerity or his intentions to build a peaceful united Germany, they note that neither subtlety nor international diplomacy have been among his strengths during his years as chancellor.

Allowing the Polish border issue to get out of hand is cited as an example of these shortcomings and an unsettling omen for the future, analysts here noted.

Although possibly a minor point, the fact that Kohl does not speak any foreign language is thought by some to hamper his understanding of the need for reassurance among Germany’s neighbors about unity. In international meetings, Kohl has rarely appeared relaxed.

While Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Europe’s longest-serving foreign minister, can kick back and engage in informal give-and-take sessions with his foreign counterparts, Kohl must always rely on an interpreter. The fact that such gatherings are Genscher’s playground is viewed as one reason for his clear statement that there can be no unity without a resolution of the Polish border question.

On foreign policy issues, it accounts for some of his other sharp differences with Kohl, observers believe.

But another, more dominant factor divides Genscher and Kohl on the Polish question, a factor that can only exacerbate the difficulties on the path to unity: 1990 is an election year in West Germany, and Kohl’s Christian Democrats are in trouble.

The chancellor’s often vague remarks on the Polish border issue have been chiefly based on the need to retain support from the estimated 2 million members of organizations with strong cultural ties to the former German areas that now belong to Poland.

Former Chancellor Willy Brandt won international adulation and a Nobel Peace Prize for reopening West Germany’s relations with the East in 1970, but he did so the year after winning an election. Although his government nearly fell on a parliamentary no-confidence vote, Brandt survived and the popularity of his “Ostpolitik” brought his Social Democrats their biggest-ever election triumph two years later.

Strong domestic criticism of Kohl’s stance on the Polish border issue is believed to have come as much from the political gut as from the hearts of the chancellor’s opponents. On Sunday, it was Genscher’s Free Democratic Party that attacked Kohl’s stance on the Polish border, not Genscher himself.

“It is the domestic political considerations that drive both men the hardest,” a Western diplomat said.

Such political posturing on the unity issue is likely only to complicate Kohl’s task, analysts believe.

There is also temptation for Germany’s neighbors to use the issue for domestic purposes.

At the same time, the border issue illustrates the potential temptation for Germany’s neighbors to use unification for their own domestic purposes.

While Poland’s Solidarity-led government administers the unpopular medicine of economic reform, standing tough against the Germans finds few domestic critics.