BERLIN -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder holds the slenderest of leads over challenger Edmund Stoiber as Germans go to the polls Sunday to choose their leader.

The election campaign, which featured a startling level of anti-American rhetoric, was one of the most fiercely contested in German history. In many ways, it revealed more about Germany than it did about either of the two candidates.

As a nation, Germany remains wary of military involvements and mistrustful of foreigners. In the contentious lead-up to Sunday's vote, Schroeder and Stoiber did their best to boil it down to a choice between the electorate's worst fears.

After trailing in the polls and almost being written off by the experts, Schroeder surged into the lead last week after he vowed that Germany would not join the U.S. in any military action against Iraq.

'Expel extremists'

Seeing his advantage evaporate, Stoiber, the candidate of the center-right Christian Democrats, tried to regroup by launching a ferocious attack on Germany's immigrants and their alleged links to terrorism. Stoiber told a raucous working-class crowd last week that 30,000 known Muslim extremists were living in Germany.

"Among these 30,000 so-called Islamists, there are 4,000 who are ready for violence. The police know that; 4,000 are known by name as being disposed to violence É I say to you, these 4,000 -- I will expel them from the country," he told the cheering crowd.

Earlier, Gunther Beckstein, the Christian Democrats' spokesman on immigration matters, said a new law that opens the door for a small increase in immigration was a formula for disaster.

"I am convinced that the goal is to make Germany a modern, multicultural country of immigrants," he said. "That is exactly what we don't want."

Playing the immigration card produced the desired result. Stoiber quickly made up some lost ground in the polls.

A spokesman for Schroeder called the tactic "despicable" and accused Stoiber of stooping to "beer hall politics" that evoked shadows of Germany's Nazi past.

But Schroeder's campaign was shaken when his justice minister on Thursday drew a comparison between President Bush's Iraq policy and Adolf Hitler.

"Bush wants to divert attention from domestic sifficulties," said Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, the minister. "That is a popular method. Hitler did it."

Schroeder wrote a letter to Bush apologizing.

"Let me assure you that there is no place at my cabinet table for anyone who makes a connection between the American president and such a criminal," Schroeder wrote, according to a text provided by his office.

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Germany traditionally has been one of Washington's most dependable allies, but Schroeder broke sharply with tradition when he declared that he "will not click his heels" and say yes to whatever Bush decides.

Schroeder pledged that he would not support the U.S. in a war against Iraq even if the Bush administration won the approval of the UN Security Council.

Friendship with the U.S. is a valued asset in Germany, and not one that a serious politician would lightly place in jeopardy. But Schroeder took that risk when nothing else seemed to work for him. If he wins the election, he will have to find a face-saving way to salvage his relationship with Washington while not appearing to renege on his campaign promise.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has tried to position himself as the bridge between America and Europe, offered a fig leaf this week, saying in an interview that "Germany

is throwing up questions that it is very sensible to be asking."

"There may well be differences of opinion, but I have no doubt about the fact that at the end of the day everyone will work very closely together," Blair said. "We should not

exaggerate the differences."

One suggestion has been that Germany could volunteer to take a larger share of the peacekeeping chores in Afghanistan.

When election season began several months ago, most analysts assumed it would hinge on economic issues. Germany's sluggish growth rate, high unemployment, and debt-ridden health, pension and social service sectors spelled trouble for the incumbent.

As state premier in Bavaria, Stoiber presides over a bustling regional economy. The conservative Christian Democrats hoped to contrast their candidate's success on the local level with the nation's shortcomings, but as the campaign unfolded, the risk-averse Stoiber offered little to differentiate himself from the government's cautious approach to fixing the economy.

Because the German economy is the largest and most important in Europe, this election is being anxiously watched by the rest of the European Union. What has become apparent to many is that Germany remains resistant to change, and the problems facing its economy will not be fixed by Sunday's poll no matter who wins.

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One of the few areas in which Schroeder and Stoiber have been able to differentiate themselves is on the slippery terrain of family values. Schroeder has been married four times, and his third wife appears in a campaign poster for the opposition that reads: "I left my husband. You can too."

Here the contrast between Schroeder and Stoiber is almost cultural -- the modern chancellor versus the staid Catholic traditionalist.

The Christian Democrats tried hard to make political hay out of Schroeder's four wives (and four for his Green Party foreign minister, Joschka Fischer). Schroeder is mocked as

"the Audi man" -- a reference to the four-ringed emblem of the German carmaker -- and opponents have gleefully churned out T-shirts reading, "Three women can't be wrong."

But Schroeder's constituency does not seem to care about his personal life. If anything, his fourth wife, whom he married one month after a messy divorce from his third wife, seems to have enhanced his image in the days before Sunday's vote.

Doris Schroeder-Koepf, 39, is a savvy former political journalist and single mother who once lived in New York and likes to wear black. She talks about policy in public.

She stands in sharp contrast to Karin Stoiber. The 59-year-old Catholic Bavarian mother of three stayed at home to raise her children and doesn't discuss politics with her

husband.

Whoever wins Sunday will almost certainly have to rule from within a coalition. Schroeder's Social Democrats are already allied with the Greens, and Stoiber's Christian Democrats would most likely ally with the pro-business Free Democrats.

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Polls indicate that the Greens could improve on their showing of 6.7 percent four years ago, while the Free Democrats appear to be in some distress, grubbing for votes in the political muck of anti-Semitism.

Juergen Moellemann, the Free Democrats' deputy chief, created a stir last spring when he attributed a rise in German anti-Semitism to the acerbic personality of Michel Friedman, a leading spokesman for Germany's Jewish community and a familiar face on the talk-show circuit.

In a new leaflet from Moellemann, Friedman is pictured alongside Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The latter is accused of "warmongering É taking tanks into refugee camps and disregarding the decision of the UN Security Council."

All major parties were quick to condemn this as blatant pandering to the extreme right.

One key feature of German electoral politics that appears to be receding is the historic tension between the country's prosperous western half and the formerly communist east.

Since reunification a decade ago, a solid bloc of eastern Germans has voted for the former communists, now known as Party of Democratic Socialism. This time, polls indicate the party could fall short of the 5 percent needed to enter parliament.

"If the communists lose, it may say something about the evolving unity of the country," said Alexander Klaus, a historian at Berlin's Free University.

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© 2002, Chicago Tribune.

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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): Gerhard Schroeder, Edmund Stoibe