I appreciate your concern and thanks for the links you provided. I'm thinking of going with the antiseize for three or four reasons:
1. The MB manual says to lube the 18mm bolt
2. I'll need to go to a shop to verify the torque and that would break the loctite seal. Plus the rotation of the engine would tend to tighten rather than loosen the bolt (or "screw" as the Germans call it lol).
3. I think most of the failures are due to the bolt not being tightened to spec or something else going wrong.
4. And the biggest reason--the Germans tend to over engineer things. If an 18mm bolt torqued to 300Nm with three cup springs comes loose, there is probably a reason. Even though the big bolt coming loose would be bad, I think a glued in big bolt coming loose would compromise the "if something is going to break, make it the less expensive parts" principle.

Number four is just a big assumption on my part but comes from a good number of years working on different types of German built equipment (mostly lab equipment). But one thing seems to remain constant, if they designed something a certain way, there were several good reasons.

Of course, I could be talking out my ass and would appreciate "been there, done that" advice.

Again, thanks for your help; I'm certain I would have been chasing my tail over this one if I had had everyone's help.

Any other input?