DESCRIPTIONS of West Germany's young Green Party inevitably invite comparison with American civil rights and antiwar movement leaders of the 1960s. A Wall Street Journal article recently called the Greens "a lively, irreverent, topsy-turvy coalition of assorted left-wingers who decided they are both a party and a movement." At last year's national Green party convention, dogs raced around the podium and paper airplanes flew during the proceedings. But what was once considered a ragtag, disorganized group of hippies has taken practical steps towards gaining power and turning rhetoric into public policy--enough so that the older politicians have become increasingly worried about the March 6 national elections.

First and foremost, the Greens want to reverse current NATO plans to begin putting hundreds of U.S.-built nuclear missiles in Germany later this year. As one Green spokesman put it, "We don't want to be a ball of the superpowers." Another party member explains why the young Germans want to make their country a neutral, nuclear-free zone: "We're the generation that grew up asking parents what they did during Hitler and the war. They my son grown up and asks, 'Daddy, where were you when they turned Germany into concrete?' I have to have an answer."

The Greens appeal to those distrustful of nuclear weapons and to those who support the almost romantic anti-technology stand of the party, which effectively used rallies and other mass-appeal tactics to block the construction of nuclear energy plants between 1977 and 1981. Conservation too remains a cornerstone of the Greens' projected "renaissance", in which windmills and solar power would supplant current "dirty" energy sources.

Beyond the questions of peace and the environment, the Green party positions seem vague, which worries some Germans. They also seem anti-American, which worries the U. S. government. The party vehemently rejects the American consumer culture, symbolized by McDonald's and cable television. Only 15 percent of the party, as opposed to 52 percent of West Germany as a whole, favors working more closely with the United States. Predictably, anti-Americanism has led to charges that the Greens are communist-leaning, dangerous to the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union. One distrustful conservative German politician has compared the party to tomatoes; "They start out Green and end up red."

Whatever their feelings about letting Germany remain the playing board in a superpower chess game, the Greens have become a force to be reckoned with. They hold more than 1000 city government seats and are represented in six of the country's II state countries. The latest polls predict the Greens will get 5.5 percent of the vote in a national election in March, enough to put them in the German national parliament, the Bundestag. More significantly, members have turned some of the romantic parts of their party platform into clearer, although still hazy, proposals. Three weeks ago, in a party caucus at Sindelfingen, the Greens drew up a manifesto calling for banks and factories to be converted from private to "other modes" of ownership. Other proposals include a shorter workweek to decrease Germany's 9.5 percent unemployment rate and adoption of a long-term goal of domestic economic self-sufficiency. Public uncertainty has hurt the Greens in the past; it was difficult to support a party that dealt mainly in rhetoric. But with these first faltering steps toward Green political maturity, the German people will have something tangible to go on in the coming weeks when the in-fighting, scrambling and parliamentary coalition-building begin.

Such a string of commendable positions deserves its growing support. But some German politicians fear that the U.S. government, at the invitation of the ruling conservative German party, may annouson a new, superficial peace proposal right before March 6 to drain support from opponents like the Greens. Such a move, if successful, would be a major setback for a fascinating political development--a party that has captured the imagination of millions and injected a needed bit of sanity into the nuclear debate.