ARNHEM, Netherlands -- The last time this city tried to rid itself of unwelcome Germans it took three Allied airborne divisions and a column of tanks, and even that wasn't enough at first.
A half-century later, Arnhem again has its hands full with invading Germans. Up to 40,000 a year cross the nearby border to visit the city's 37 "cannabis coffee shops" -- odd, smoky establishments tolerated by liberal Dutch drug laws. The result, depending on whom you ask, is either a mild nuisance of noise and traffic or a plague of imported crime and hard drugs.
With military force no longer an option for fighting back, city council member Joeke Van Doorne recently suggested a more subtle defense. If marijuana draws Germans into Arnhem, she says, perhaps it will also lure them out.
Ms. Van Doorne proposed converting a deserted gas station outside the city into a marijuana coffee shop, while shutting down 17 or more of the in-town shops. And if the proprietor of the remote location by the border wanted to install a drive-through window for faster service, even that might be OK.
"This would be the business of the owner," said city council spokeswoman Elli Van Schoonderwalt. "He could do whatever he liked."
So far, no one has taken the city up on the offer, and Ms. Van Doorne's proposal has drawn unfavorable notices from no less than the Dutch Ministers for Health and for Justice. The idea now seems likely to wither away without action.
But the fact it received serious consideration at all indicates the level of frustration over so-called marijuana tourism in Dutch border towns such as Arnhem.
To the south of Arnhem, officials in the smaller border town of Venlo have shut down all but eight of 40 coffee shops in an attempt to stem the flow of Germans. To the north, the city council of Enschede recently outlawed the sale of marijuana to Germans, only to have a court rule that the law was unfairly discriminatory. The treaty-enforced togetherness of the European Union makes it virtually impossible to uphold any such law.
The sale and use of marijuana are still technically illegal in the Netherlands. But since 1976, the country has tolerated marijuana use and the coffee shops in order to insulate young users from the crime and danger of the hard drug market.
In some ways, the policy has worked, keeping the two markets divided.
"But it has never been our purpose to serve this function for other countries," said Ton Cramer, spokesman for the drug policy division of the Health Ministry.
And in the border towns, say some municipal officials, the distinction between the two markets has been blurred by the activities of the drug tourists.
"It is a nuisance for the citizens of Arnhem, and we have to do something about that," Ms. Van Schoonderwalt said.
Ironically, Arnhem and markets are forever linked in a different way. "Operation Market Garden" in World War II called for Allied paratroopers to lay a 65-mile corridor to the Rhine by seizing a series of bridges. The operation collapsed when Allied tanks could not reach the last bridge, at Arnhem. The failure became the subject of a book and Hollywood film, "A Bridge Too Far."
On a recent weeknight in Arnhem, the perils of the Germans postwar invasion hardly seemed evident in the few blocks of the Hommelsweg district, home to about 20 of the city's coffee shops.
"Am I a problem?" asked Juergen Moeller as he quietly rolled a marijuana cigarette on a battered couch at one of the clubs. "I am legally parked. I do not come here to buy or sell hard drugs. I am not loud or making trouble in the street. I am spending money here. Where is the problem in this?"
Indeed, a check of other nearby clubs and of cars parked on the street showed no evidence of any other Germans on that chilly Tuesday.
But it's a different story on weekends, when business picks up.
"On vacation days you have traffic jams from here to the border," said Ed Konengs, a customer at the THC coffee shop.
As Mr. Konengs spoke, he lit a fat hashish cigarette and browsed through a recent issue of Highlife, a Dutch magazine that includes such features as coffee shop reviews and price surveys (an ounce of a marijuana variety known as Bio Skunk is going for $160 to $220 these days).
"The problem that you've got here with the Germans is that they buy some heroin, and maybe it's a piece of garbage," Mr. Konengs said. "They go sit in their car to shoot up and a minute later they're lying in the street and shouting, 'Oh God,' and then it's a mess. . . . I would say that most of the Germans who come also buy some hard drugs."
But others said that the city is overreacting to nothing more than some minor rowdiness and a few parking problems.
Early on a recent morning at a coffee shop called "The Midnight Express," where proprietor Sander de Vries and two customers appeared to have derailed at about dawn, Mr. de Vries criticized the city's proposal.
"It is a crazy idea," he said.
"You'll have to excuse us," a bleary-eyed Harim Slump interjected. "We had a big 'tripping' party last night, and we're still awake but we're not really here."
Mr. de Vries continued, saying: "Most people in the coffee shops are from in town. For them it is like having your own pub. You have your own coffee shop. With the Germans, business comes and goes. Sometimes you have 10 on a day in here, and sometimes you have none all week."
The Dutch government, even with the benefit of more sober consideration, has tended to agree with Mr. de Vries' assessment of the Arnhem proposal.
Mr. Cramer said that the justice minister and the health minister concurred that the idea for a drive-in coffee shop "was not a very wise thing to do. It would only encourage more people to come across the border. It would serve as an open invitation."
So for now, the business will keep coming into the heart of Arnhem. And, yes, Mr. de Vries said, sometimes there will be problems.
"But that's life in a city," he said, "and you go along with it."