EUROPE : Party’s Ads Fail to Sock It to ‘Em : Controversial anti-leftist campaign by Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats draws fire from within.

The Cold War, it turns out, is not entirely over.

After parading with President Clinton through Brandenburg Gate to celebrate the end of communism, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has revived its specter to slap his main opponents in federal elections this fall.

Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union launched a new ad campaign last week accusing the Social Democrats of making a pact with the devil by forming a minority government in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt with the leftist Greens and help from former Communists.

The chancellor set the tone for the final months of his reelection campaign by charging that the Social Democratic Party “broke with the decades-old consensus of all democrats in Germany not to work together with extremists on the left or the right.”

One of his party’s new posters revives Cold War rhetoric to warn of a “leftist front” on the national level. Another billboard shows a red sock hanging on a clothesline and says: “Off into the future . . . but not in red socks.”

The sock ads have been controversial among conservatives in Kohl’s own party--not because they seem outmoded, but because they seem to easterners in particular to make light of a perceived “red” threat.

Social Democratic leader Rudolf Scharping is not exactly out defending his party’s tacit alliance with the Party of Democratic Socialism--the reformed East German Communist Party. Playing to voters who fear communism, Scharping denied plans to come to national power with such a coalition, and his party accused the Christian Democrats of having made their own pact with the Communist devil.

Social Democratic campaign manager Guenter Verheugen said a majority of eastern Christian Democratic members of Parliament came from the old East German Christian Democrats, a puppet party of the former East German government.

The former Communists, meanwhile, are enjoying the brouhaha that has given them considerable free advertising and fueled their hopes of winning seats in the federal Parliament.

The Saxony-Anhalt vote was a surprise to all parties and presents another scenario--unlikely but not impossible--for the formation of a new federal government after the Oct. 16 election.

The Christian Democrats won the most votes, but their partners in the governing coalition, the liberal Free Democratic Party, did not win enough to return to the state legislature, leaving the Christian Democrats without a majority to elect a state premier.

After much negotiation, the Social Democrats agreed to join forces with the Greens, who in several state votes now have become the third political force.

It was a risky decision for the Social Democrats, who fear losing centrist voters throughout the country, but they managed to stave off a “grand coalition” with the Christian Democrats.

The former Communists won a stunning 20% of the state vote, presumably among easterners disillusioned with the high cost of capitalism. Seven members of the Party of Democratic Socialism voted for the Social Democratic premier, Reinhard Hoeppner, and the others abstained. Hoeppner will need the party’s support to pass laws.

A day after losing the state, the Christian Democrats put out their “red” ads. They represent a change in strategy for Kohl, who has been leading in opinion polls with a campaign based on his experience as a statesman and on upbeat economic predictions.

Perhaps Kohl wishes he had stuck to the old strategy. Party chiefs in all five eastern states have announced they will not be using the sock ads.