Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has never been in any doubt about the strain NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia would place on his Green Party's commitment to staying in government. Pacifists want to turn a special party conference next month into a massive anti-war rally and some Greens are accusing Mr Fischer of abandoning his most fundamental principles.
Two Germans out of three support their country's participation in NATO's air strikes against Yugoslavia and, along with Mr Fischer, the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder and the Defence Minister, Mr Rudolf Scharping, have seen their popularity soar since the conflict began a month ago.
But as the campaign progresses with little sign that President Slobodan Milosovic is preparing to capitulate, the resolve of some members of Germany's centre-left government is beginning to weaken. And opinion polls show that most Germans oppose the use of land forces to invade Kosovo, a proposal that is gathering momentum among NATO leaders.
Mr Scharping reassured a Social Democratic Party conference earlier this month that he had no intention of sending German infantry soldiers into Kosovo except as part of an international peace-keeping force. But he persuaded delegates not to bind the government's hands at such an early stage of the campaign.
With the opposition Christian Democrats and Liberal Free Democrats opposing the use of ground forces, it is difficult to foresee Bonn backing any NATO decision to mount a land invasion.
When the conflict began last month, Mr Schroder's Social Democrats appeared united behind the government's decision to send German forces into their first hostile action since the end of the second World War. Outright opposition to the air strikes was confined to the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism and an untidy rabble of eccentrics.
The debate over Kosovo has been conducted almost exclusively on the Left, with Mr Fischer as the principal flag-bearer for those who regard this conflict as, in his words, "the first time in its history that Germany is on the right side". The foreign minister has upset former concentration camp inmates by invoking Auschwitz and comparing Mr Milosevic to Hitler and Stalin.
But many intellectuals, including writers Gunter Grass and Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, share Mr Fischer's conviction that Germany can learn the lessons of the Holocaust only by refusing to allow fascism to re-emerge in Europe.
For some on the left, however, the military campaign has now gone on long enough and Mr Grass was among a group of intellectuals who signed a petition last weekend calling for a halt to air strikes and the start of talks.
A number of senior Social Democrats, especially in eastern Germany, chimed in with calls for a 48-hour ceasefire.
