No one could have foreseen the remarkable transformation
undergone by a defeated Germany in
just one decade. Two Germanies had emerged by
the 1950s, military allies of their former enemies,
Russia, Britain, the US and France. Germans in
the West were no longer treated with contempt
and condescension but were admired for the discipline
and hard work that had restored their
prosperity. Not that both halves of Germany
prospered equally. The free-market economy in
the Western part proved itself to be far more efficient
in the production of wealth than the stateplanned
economy of the Eastern third. The
Democratic Republic was a truncated state: the
former German agricultural and industrial territories
east of the Oder–Neisse had been lost to
Poland and the Soviet Union. In 1945 some 17
million Germans lived in the Soviet zone, the later
Democratic Republic, and nearly 44 million in
the Western zones. Twenty years later, together
with their respective parts of Berlin, the preponderance
of West Germany over East had become
even greater; almost 60 million were living in the
Federal Republic and West Berlin, and 17 million
in the DDR including East Berlin. The two
Germanies provided something like a test of the
relative efficiency of the Western economies and
the command economies of the East, given that
both of these new states were starting from much
the same base in 1945.
The results were little short of astonishing.
Progress was certainly made in the East, but the
disparity in wealth, let alone liberty and quality of
life, between the countries grew with every
passing year. Just how backward the DDR had
become was hidden from the West until the
collapse of the East German state in 1990.
Before the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 millions
had walked to the freedom of the West.
They tended to be young, more active and more
enterprising. With barbed wire, control towers
and orders to shoot, the East German regime survived
almost another three decades. It is possible
that without the fortified barrier between East
and West the DDR would have collapsed before
from a haemorrhage of its active population
seeking a better life in the West.
The transition to parliamentary democracy in
the West seemed smooth, the path almost too
easy. In the early years of occupation the Allied
authorities still had much suspicion of German
grass-roots revanchism. At least one generation
had to pass before support for the democratic
institutions of the Federal Republic became
something more than opportunism for the majority
and turned into a conviction that democratic
values were worth defending. The concerns of the
adult population in the immediate post-war years
were necessarily materialistic: to put together the
bare necessities for family life and after that to
gain a share of the good things – a home, furniture,
enough to eat, a refrigerator, a car.
The Germans were also asked in the 1950s to
help defend the West. The sudden change in
Allied attitudes on the issue of German rearmament
was not universally popular, since only a few
years before German militarism had been condemned
as the root of all evil. But the Second
World War had brought about a great change in
German thinking: if a third world war broke out,
it would be fought in Germany, and everyone
understood that it would totally destroy the
country. Militarism was dead. Indeed, in the
1950s, a strong extra-parliamentary movement
opposed to rearmament made itself felt.
The Federal German Republic had a better
start than Weimar, because its birth in May 1949
did not coincide with the hour of defeat, as had
that of the Weimar Republic. Instead, it was the
Allies and their occupation policies that were
blamed for the hardship of the early years. The
evolution of a fully sovereign parliamentary
democratic state was a gradual one that was not
completed until six years later in 1955. Political
parties, assemblies and administrations had been
set up in ten Länder (regional territories), though
West Berlin was not included in the Federal
Republic. In the spring of 1948, France, Britain
and the US had agreed to the formation of a
central German government for the Western
zones, but ultimate powers still remained in the
hands of the three Allied governments. The
minister presidents of the Länder were invited to
call a constituent assembly to draft a constitution.
But the minister presidents, fearing that this
would make the division of Germany permanent,
would agree only to call a ‘council’ and to draft
a ‘basic law’, thus emphasising the transitional
nature of what they were doing: Germany would
not have a constitution until it was reunited. The
two major parties, the SPD and the CDU/CSU,
sent the same number of delegates to the parliamentary
council; Adenauer by astute management
secured the presidency, so establishing an ascendancy
in German politics that was to last for
fifteen years.
Given the bitter personal relations and conflict
between the SPD and the CDU/CSU, not to
mention the deep divisions within the parties
themselves over the extent of federal powers, over
regional self-government, over voting procedures
and over a host of other practical questions, the
framing of an agreed basic law was a remarkable
achievement. Behind all these questions always lay
assessments of how, eventually, complete sovereignty
could be achieved and how reunification
could be brought about. Reunification was still
the goal; it appeared unthinkable then that
Germany would remain divided for long.
The Basic Law, or West German constitution,
stood the test of time and by the 1980s had lost
its provisional appearance just when it turned out
to be, indeed, provisional. Voting was by a combination
of proportional representation (with candidates
drawn from party lists in each of the
Länder) and constituency representation by
simple majority; a barrier was created on the
Länder list, so that no party with less than 5 per
cent of the vote in the Federal Republic could win
a seat in the parliament, the Bundestag (although,
if three seats were won in direct constituency elections
in one Land, the per cent rule was set aside).
Presidential powers, largely ceremonial were less
extensive than those held by the presidents of the
Weimar Republic. The chancellor became the
most powerful member of the executive; he and
his government could gain office only if he
enjoyed the support of a parliamentary majority.
But a vote against him by a majority would bring
about his fall only if the Bundestag could agree
by majority on a successor. The rationale for this
‘constructive vote of no confidence’ was to
prevent a repetition of the extinction of Weimar,
brought about by the combination of two antidemocratic
parties, the National Socialists and the
communists. The constitution could be changed
only by a two-thirds majority and was buttressed
by nineteen articles defining inviolable fundamental
rights; a constitutional court was set up to
decide claims that the constitution was not being
observed. Legislation by the elected Bundestag
could be delayed by the Bundesrat, a second
chamber to which the Länder sent representatives
and whose purpose is to scrutinise legislation
which affects particularly the Länder.
The constitution is a long and complex document
and only its salient features are here
described. As a written constitution embodying
individual rights and a constitutional court to
enforce them, it provides safeguards against their
abuse by simple party majorities in the parliamentary
assembly. The strong element of proportional
representation allows a voice for the
views of those who do not wish to choose
between the two mass parties. The 5 per cent rule
prevents the proliferation of small parties, which
destabilised Weimar and has undermined governments
in Italy; on the other hand, proportional
representation can allow too much influence to a
minority. In most years since 1949, the two major
parties could gain a majority only with the help
of a third party, the Free Democratic Party, which
could bargain with either in order to gain its
objectives and switch support accordingly.
No constitution is perfect; its success depends
on the politicians and the parties who bring it to
life, and on the attitude of the electorate towards
the government and the institutions established
under it. The Federal Republic has enjoyed great
stability in good times and, more importantly,
in bad.
The German Socialist Party (SPD) was the most
coherent and best-organised mass party to put
itself before the electorate when the first
Bundestag elections were held in 1949. Despite a
tendency to strong central leadership, local and
district organisations during the subsequent four
decades acted as ginger groups and at times stood
well to the left of the party leadership. This
became especially true of the young socialists after
the revolt of youth in the 1960s. A serious handicap
for the party was the separation from the
Federal Republic of Berlin and the Soviet zone,
which had traditionally been the stronghold of
the Social Democratic Party. Their leader in 1949
was Kurt Schumacher, passionate and autocratic
in style, but his suffering in concentration camps
had undermined his health, and he died in August
1952, only three years after the elections. He
stood for a clear, uncompromising policy in both
domestic and international affairs. His opposition
to communism was total and he ensured that the
Western SPD would have no truck with the communists.
Schumacher’s socialism had its basis in
ethics: his appeal was a moral one, for the betterment
of the majority, of the poorer sections of
society, for an end to the exploitation by capital
of labour, of working people. But the party
stressed that socialism without democracy would
only lead back to the dark years of Hitler’s totalitarianism
or to Soviet tyranny. The British
Labour Party was the model. Two other planks in
the party programme were important: a strong
anti-clericalism, which condemned interference
by the Church in politics and education, and an
insistence on the recovery of national independence
for all of Germany, not just for the Western
zones. The SPD wanted to be seen as the patriotic
party. This stance led to the most bitter
clashes with the governing Christian Democrats.
The Christian Democrats were less coherent
than the Social Democrats, even to the extent of
avoiding the label ‘party’ and calling themselves a
‘movement’ (union). They too set out to learn the
lessons of the Hitler years. Politics should be
anchored in ethical values, not vaguely but
specifically in Christian ethics. Yet the Christian
Democrats would not become a narrow Catholic
party. From its foundation Protestants participated
with Catholics in its organisation. Christian
Democrats also championed parliamentary democracy
and saw in communism the principal threat
to civil liberties in the West. They were fiercely
anti-Marxist, vociferous in their opposition to class
warfare and state ownership of production. The
Rhineland CDU, with its strong industrial Ruhr
base, was overwhelmingly Catholic and led successful
efforts to align the party with policies limiting
the exclusion of workers from the exercise of
power and its concentration in the hands of industrialists.
Worker participation in industrial management
became one of the planks of the CDU in
the 1950s and so attracted support from sections
of the trade unions. Capitalism was to be modified
and restricted: industrial policies would be based
on free enterprise, but the social good would
be taken into account. The CDU’s sister party,
the Bavarian CSU, has traditionally represented
more conservative views. Adenauer, more conservative
than the Rhinelanders he led, skilfully reconciled
the different elements, moving the party
to the centre-right in doing so. Until his last
few years der Alte (the Old One, a term of affectionate
respect) stood head and shoulders above
his party colleagues; he succeeded in putting his
stamp on a broad pragmatic party that could
attract progressive liberals, trade unionists, farmers
and conservatives.
Adenauer had lived through the agony of the
last years of Weimar, when the splintering of
parties had been one factor in bringing Hitler to
power in 1933. He had no high opinion of the
democratic instincts of his fellow Germans. Their
tendency to form religious, political and interest
groups, which zealously pursued their aims
without regard to the destructive effects on the
polity as a whole, had left Adenauer with the conviction
that strong leadership was necessary. He
knew his people, their strengths and weaknesses,
and so was determined that the CDU/CSU
should draw its support from a broad crosssection
of conservatives and liberals and of all
classes and religions. This would isolate the irreconcilables,
even if they breached the 5 per cent
electoral barrier.
To the left of the CDU, but opposed to socialism,
stood the Free Democratic (Liberal) Party
(the FDP), whose programmes were a different
mix of compromises to those of the CDU: they
agreed with the SPD in wishing to exclude clerical
influence but concurred with the CDU in supporting
an ethical or social-market economy.
Other parties gaining more than 5 per cent have
come and generally gone. Despite many internal
divisions, the Green Party, emphasising the
dangers of relentless industrial exploitation of the
environment, especially from nuclear power
plants, and advocating a more anarchic, grassroots
democracy, have survived longer than many
political commentators prophesied when they
were first formed in 1980, becoming partners of
SPD governments in the late 1990s and early
twenty-first century.
The first elections for the Bundestag in August
1949 confounded the expectation of pollsters and
others that amid general hardship the Social
Democrats would win and that Kurt Schumacher
would form the first government as chancellor.
Schumacher had fought a strident campaign, denigrating
the policies of the CDU and the big
bosses, and asserting Germany’s right to self-
determination and self-respect. Now, he declared,
was the German people’s chance to break decisively
with the social structures, the politics, the
economic policies and the interfering clerics that
had brought a Hitler to power. These policies
attracted 6,935,000 votes, not only from the poor
and the working classes. But the broad coalition
represented by the CDU/CSU gained 2 per cent
more votes. Why had the SPD lost? Schumacher
had attacked the opposition on too many fronts
and had alienated voters, among them a number
of the Catholic workers of the Ruhr. The result
was very close, but it proved a decisive turning
point. Had Adenauer listened to a chorus of
advice that with so small a majority a ‘general
coalition’ of CDU and SPD should be formed,
parliamentary democracy might have been strangled
at birth. Many politicians did not understand
this, and such coalitions existed in the Länder,
forcing the small remaining opposition into impotence.
Instead Adenauer was determined to
follow policies that would be in clear contrast to
those of the opposition, the ‘socialists’.
The CDU/CSU had emerged as the largest
party thanks to its broad approach and its compromises
with capitalism, mainly worked out by
Professor Ludwig Erhard, who called his system
a ‘social-market economy’. Free enterprise and
competition on the American model would create
national wealth, but working people would be
protected by wide-ranging social-security measures
guaranteed by the state. The economic management
by the occupying powers had been
rigidly planned and controlled. As far as the Allies
would allow, Erhard (though no more than an
adviser) had daringly made a bonfire of controls
and set the Germans free to choose. The currency
reform of 1948 was another key aspect, substituting
for the worthless old marks a small circulation
of sound Deutsche Marks. Overnight the
shop windows filled up with goods, confidence in
the currency returned, and after an early period
of inflation prices stabilised by the time of the
elections. Erhard’s policies and the injection of
Marshall Aid were beginning to lift the economy.
Living conditions were still harsh but they were
getting better.
As long as the SPD remained restricted by its
socialist doctrines (which it was until 1959), it
could achieve no more than 40 per cent of the
vote; on the other hand, CDU/CSU was strong
enough only in 1957 to govern without the coalition
support of other parties; its main partner was
the FDP. This allowed the FDP a role in German
politics far greater than the electoral support it
could muster, which reached at best about 10 per
cent. The communists barely passed the 5 per
cent barrier in 1949; in 1953 they could not
manage even that and so lost their representation
in the Bundestag; banned until 1969 on the
ground that the party did not support the democratic
state, its support (less than 1 per cent)
thereafter remained too small to regain representation
in the Bundestag.
Adenauer so dominated German politics from
1949 to 1963 that the period came to be referred
to as the Adenauer era. These years irrevocably
determined the course of German history, which
changes of government and international conditions
could only modify before 1990. As chancellor
he followed a clear course, exhibiting an
unblinkered view of the morality and behaviour
of the majority of the electorate and the particular
needs of the new West German state.
The most immediate need was to extricate the
Federal Republic from its leading strings: the
Ruhr, with its steel and coal production, had been
placed under an international authority; the Saar
had voted to remain in close association with
France; the Federal Republic itself was not permitted
to follow an independent foreign policy.
It was still bound to the Allies by the Occupation
Statute (10 April 1949), which reserved supreme
power to the US, France and Great Britain, acting
through their high commissioners. The Federal
Republic was not truly sovereign in September
1949, but was on probation.
Adenauer made concessions and obtained
some in return. He realised that he must win the
total trust of the Western Allies as a precondition
for regaining complete sovereignty. For all his
rhetoric about German unity, he did not seriously
believe it possible that the Soviet Union would
withdraw and grant genuine freedom of choice to
the German people living in the Soviet zone.
After twelve years of Nazi totalitarian rule, the
German people in the Federal Republic would
have to learn and experience the blessings of
democracy and civil liberty for some years and
resist any temptation to compromise with the
Soviet Union or to enter partnership with communists
as the price of unity. In the world of
the 1950s, Adenauer saw a choice that had
to be unequivocally made: between falling into
the grip of the communist-dominated East and
forming the closest possible association with the
Western states prepared to defend their freedom.
There was no neutral road. Moreover, Adenauer
reflected in his memoirs, ‘It was my conviction
that the only way for our country and people to
regain their freedom lay in close agreement and
co-operation with the high commissioners.’ But
the Germans were not necessarily prostrate, nor
completely dependent on Allied goodwill. With
Cold War tensions reaching a climax, the US was
not about to leave West Europe, as it had
intended to do in 1944 and 1945; Adenauer
understood that in such conditions it was in
America’s own vital interests to create a strong
Western Europe, and for this, as he wrote in his
memoirs, Germany was indispensable: ‘A country
in shackles is not a real, full partner. I therefore
thought that our fetters would gradually fall
away.’ He recognised that ‘the most important
prerequisite for partnership is trust’.
With tenacity and skill Adenauer exploited his
country’s position. He had to work simultaneously
on many fronts: to assure the Americans of
his anti-communist commitment, to point out to
the three Western Allies that the dismantling of
German industry must stop and that growing
German prosperity was essential to their own
well-being; to stress that they, especially the
French, need never fear a revival of German
nationalism and aggression; and to demonstrate
that Germany would contribute to Western
European unity and defence and would work for
the common good. At the same time the German
people would have to be convinced of the benefits,
above all the material ones, that would be
conferred by these policies. Adenauer needed to
be flexible, adroit, sometimes tough, sometimes
ready to agree to disadvantageous bargains, able
to assess correctly the feelings of his neighbours,
while proceeding step by step to fulfil his
major objectives. Meanwhile from the opposition
benches he was assailed by Schumacher – sounding
a strident nationalist note and rejecting conciliation
with France – as the ‘chancellor of the
Allies’. But Adenauer could show results. In 1950
West Germany became a member of the Council
of Europe; the dismantling of German industry
was first slowed down, then halted. Then in May
1950 the chancellor responded with warmth to
the French proposals known as the Schuman Plan
to place the French and German production of
coal and steel under a joint high authority and to
invite other states to join. Jean Monnet had put
forward the idea as a practical means to bring
Western Europe into a federation of states and to
remove forever French and German fears of
aggression since neither country could build up
armaments against the other without national
control of its heavy industries. The problem
of the Ruhr as a source of French anxiety was
thereby imaginatively solved. Italy, Belgium, the
Netherlands and Luxembourg participated in the
Paris negotiations. These were completed in April
1951 and Adenauer paid his first visit to Paris to
sign the momentous European Coal and Steel
Community Treaty; it was the first step towards
the formation in 1958 of the European Economic
Community of the six. In Paris, Adenauer was the
first official representative of the new German
state to be received as a friend. He had moved
steadily forward despite hostile French moves in
1950 designed to ensure that the Saar would
become French. Patience was rewarded: the
Saarlanders were given the opportunity to vote to
rejoin West Germany; just as material interests
had first turned them towards France, they now,
in 1957, voted to join the Federal Republic as the
tenth of the Länder.
Two years earlier, on 5 May 1955, the Federal
Republic had regained its sovereignty, and the
occupation was ended – though it persisted in the
Soviet-controlled DDR and in divided Berlin. A
treaty had been concluded on 26 May 1952 to
hand back sovereignty. But it was dependent on
a second treaty signed in Paris a day later, providing
for a German military contribution to
Western defence; this treaty required ratification
by the parliaments of the participating countries
including the French Assembly. What had transformed
the situation so dramatically since 1949
and what had then delayed the actual consummation
of a changed relationship with West
Germany? The process was closely related to the
growing tensions of the Cold War as a result of
the Berlin crisis and the Korean War. The costs
of West European defence had become so high
that both the French and British came to regard
German help in some form as indispensable. So
far, the armies of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation, which had been founded in April
1949 had borne the burden alone. Recognising
the sensitivity internationally of the question of
German rearmament, Adenauer showed no unbecoming
keenness but suggested that only if hardpressed
by the Allies would his countrymen
consider a West German contingent within the
framework of a European army. In discussing
Germany’s possible readiness with the high commissioners
in August 1950, Adenauer astutely
linked the issue to the recovery of sovereignty.
The Americans urged that it should be taken up.
In October 1950 Prime Minister René Pleven, to
allay French fears of a revived Wehrmacht, proposed
what became known as the Pleven Plan –
a European army with only small German contingents
under European command. The ‘Stalin
Note’, 10 March 1952, sought to disrupt the
process by offering unification and a peace treaty
to a non-aligned Germany. A spoiling tactic or a
sincere offer? The West rejected the proposals of
a sovereign Germany forced to remain neutral.
The procrastination over ratifying the treaty to set
up a European Defence Community signed on 27
May 1952 and the refusal of the French Assembly
in August 1954 to ratify, delayed acceptance of
the Federal Republic as an equal, but it was only
a delay. The die had been cast. A West German
army was needed by the NATO allies.
The path to German sovereignty was complex.
A nine-power conference was called in London in
September 1954 consisting of the five original
European Allies – Britain, France, Belgium,
Luxembourg and the Netherlands (the Brussels
Treaty powers) – together with the NATO allies
Italy, Canada and the US; the Federal Republic
was invited to this conference. It then transferred
to Paris, where a number of interdependent
treaties, the Paris Agreements, were concluded on
23 October 1954. In May 1955 the Federal
Republic was integrated into the Western alliances
– the European alliance (to be known as the West
European Union) and NATO. But limits were
placed on West German rearmament, the most
important of which was to forbid the manufacture
of nuclear weapons. The occupation regime was
ended, except for the Allied rights in Berlin, whose
integrity and survival rested on Allied agreements
made with the Russians in 1945. Adenauer gained
the right for the Federal Republic to speak for all
of Germany. The Federal Republic for its part
bound itself not to attempt to change its frontiers
nor to attempt to reunify Germany by force. Thus
the Federal Republic made clear that it would act
only in its own defence with its new allies – NATO
was a defensive alliance. This reflected Adenauer’s
own beliefs. In this respect the foundation for
the new policy towards West Germany’s Eastern
neighbours in the Chancellor Brandt years of the
1970s was already laid in the 1950s. Finally,
France and the Federal Republic agreed on the
new Saar plebiscite. It was a comprehensive clearing
up of problems.
Schumacher’s opposition was, in part, an opposition
to Adenauer personally and to what he believed
he stood for; the gradual reintroduction to
the leadership of German society of all those who
had served and flourished under Hitler. Schumacher
wanted to bring about a thoroughgoing
reform. He was bitterly opposed to communism
and ready to see Germany align with the West, and
he too championed West European integration.
But he demanded the full recovery of German sovereignty
first, the regaining of respect, before the
Federal Republic could, as a free agent, ally with
the West. What he condemned was the kind of bargaining
– a West German military contribution as
the price of sovereignty – in which Adenauer was
willing to engage in the spirit of Realpolitik. But
Schumacher’s nationalist tone and his demands for
reunification had an air of unreality. His terms, that
the Germans in the Soviet zone were to be allowed
to choose freely and the Russians were to withdraw,
were unacceptable to the Soviet leaders
despite their blandishing of West German opinion
by holding out the prospect of reunification provided
Germany remained neutral thereafter. Such a
condition was as unacceptable to Schumacher, to
Erich Ollenhauer (who succeeded to the party
leadership after Schumacher’s death in 1952) and
to the majority of the SPD leadership as it was
to Adenauer. The SPD was also united in opposing
all the practical measures for rearmament
Adenauer had negotiated, on the ground that
West Germany had negotiated from an inferior
position. But on the issue of rearmament itself the
party was deeply divided. As an opposition, without
ultimate responsibility for policies, they could
more easily afford to take their principled stand.
Adenauer’s approach to rearmament and sovereignty
won majority support in the Bundestag.
The former enemy was now accepted as an ally.
Adenauer’s closely linked foreign and rearmament
policies had also overcome the most bitter division
at home and had resisted the attacks unleashed on
them by the SPD. Among young Germans, who
now faced conscription, there was understandable
opposition; the ‘re-educated’ Germans could
hardly fathom such a turnaround, and then there
were those genuinely convinced by the experiences
of the war that Germans should not bear arms
again. On the right, among ex-soldiers’ organisations,
arose the demand that the besmirched honour
of Hitler’s Wehrmacht must first be restored.
Schumacher’s arguments in the Bundestag were
powerful: the linking of rearmament with political
concessions to German sovereignty, he thundered,
was a cynical bargaining that marked the end of
democracy. But Adenauer secured ratification
of the Paris treaties by the Bundestag in March
1953. He went on to win the elections in
September. Yet with the failure of the EDC, the
Paris treaties had to be renegotiated. The new
Paris Agree-ments (October 1954) now had to
be ratified. Consequently the recovery of German
sovereignty within the Western alliance was postponed
to 5 May 1955 and conscription to 1956.
During the fierce debates Der Spiegel magazine
ironically echoed Goebbels’s ‘Do you want total
war?’ Popular opposition to nuclear weapons in
Germany and remilitarisation remained a rallying
cry in demonstrations until 1969 and revived in
the 1980s.
Adenauer’s foreign and rearmament policies
did not win universal support, but the acceptance
of their chancellor as a respected equal in the capitals
of Western Europe, and even in Moscow in
September 1955, restored the buffeted sense of
German pride. Yet, more than anything, the
evident success of Erhard’s economic policies and
the marked improvement in standards of living,
the visible recovery of West Germany with the
rebuilding of its cities, assured Adenauer and the
coalitions he led of seemingly inevitable victories
in elections. The CDU/CSU was further helped
in 1953 by the June risings in Berlin and the
Soviet zone, in 1957 by the continuing fear of
Soviet aggression. In both these years, Adenauer
easily won an overall majority. By the next election
in the summer of 1961, confidence in der
Alte was slipping. His dithering reaction to the
Berlin Wall crisis and his age (he was now eightyfive),
combined with his reluctance to step down
to make way for Erhard, the heir apparent, cost
the CDU/CSU its absolute majority. His last two
years in office were unhappy. The Cabinet squabbled;
the FDP partners made difficulties; then
the defence minister, the ebullient Franz Josef
Strauss, unwittingly resurrected memories of the
totalitarian past. Der Spiegel had published an
article on defence matters in October 1961.
Believing that confidential information had been
leaked, Strauss ordered police to search the magazine’s
offices and an editor was arrested; meanwhile
Adenauer absurdly referred to Der Spiegel
as ‘a hotbed of treason’. But it all ended with a
government rout: democracy had passed a test in
the face of arbitrary government. Two years later,
in October 1963, Adenauer at last made way for
Erhard.
Adenauer had never doubted the path West
Germany had to follow. Unerringly he anchored
the Federal Republic to the community of
Western European nations and to NATO. He
rejected all Soviet blandishments and hints that a
neutral, disarmed Germany might be reunified.
Was there ever a possibility that West Germany
could have chosen the ‘Austrian’ solution?
Adenauer regarded as the centrepiece of his
achievement the Franco-German reconciliation,
and the creation between them of an ‘unarmed
frontier’. The Franco-German friendship treaty of
January 1963 symbolised the special relationship
that had been established between the two countries.
Adenauer did not have to create tension with
the Soviet Union to drive his countrymen into the
arms of the Western alliance. The repression of
freedoms in the Soviet zone, the harsh Ulbricht
regime in the German Democratic Republic which
led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 to
prevent even more millions of Germans leaving
their people’s republic, the periodic Soviet threats
to West Berlin, the preponderance of Soviet
troops and tanks, not at a safe distance but just
across the border, their use in East Berlin in 1953
and in Budapest in 1956 were all sufficient to convince
the majority that safety lay in close alliance
with Germany’s NATO partners.
In the Adenauer period there was little opportunity
to improve relations with the Soviet Union
and the DDR. Adenauer’s claim that his government
could speak for all Germans until free elections
were held in what was, in Western eyes, still
the Soviet zone took up the moral high ground,
even if the claim was looking increasingly unreal.
The Federal Republic broke off diplomatic relations
with any country that recognised the sovereignty
of the DDR and exchanged ambassadors
(the Hallstein Doctrine). On his visit to Moscow
in 1955, however, Adenauer had to breach this
line and agree to an exchange of ambassadors
with the Soviet Union, as part of a bargain to
release German prisoners of war still languishing
in the USSR. The Soviet Union in the post-Stalin
decades was realistic too and accepted the Federal
Republic as an independent and powerful nation
whose loyalty to the Western alliance could not
be shaken. Responding immediately to the
Schuman Plan, Adenauer had also helped to lay
the foundations of the European Economic
Community, accepting that in its relations with
France, Germany would for a time have to show
deference to de Gaulle’s visions of grandeur. In
changed circumstances, his successors were able
to modify the policies adopted towards the Soviet
Union and the DDR, but in all its essentials
Adenauer had set the fundamental course to be
followed by the Federal Republic in its relations
with its neighbours and the rest of the world. He
possessed that rare gift of the statesman, the
ability to distinguish the important from the secondary,
and steadfastly to pursue the main objectives
of his policy without being led astray by
subsidiary considerations.
In his policies at home Adenauer was less successful.
Autocratic in his Cabinet, he manipulated
colleagues and felt little loyalty towards them.
His views of the past and present were clear to
the point of cynicism. Above reproach in his
own behaviour during the Nazi years, he knew
that the same could not be said of the majority
of his countrymen. But the nation could not
simply discard all former adherents of National
Socialism; who would have been left to run the
country and to rebuild it? Everyone would need
to pull together, whatever their past, except for a
few members of the Nazi elite. There would be
no witch-hunts. The administration that had run
the country before 1945 ran it again in the 1950s.
Owners, managers and workers pulled together to
achieve better living standards. The watchword
was Wiedergutmachung, restitution. Pensions to
those who had helped Hitler were honoured;
refugees from the East received capital to start
again; those who had survived the war with property
intact were taxed to pay for this. Jewish
victims received some compensation and, for
those millions who had been murdered during
the war, the new State of Israel received a global
sum which, by 1980, amounted to nearly 3.5
billion DM. But despite the large sums paid they
could not match all the looted wealth or compensate
for millions of murders – though this was
not the view taken by many Germans at the
time. Nonetheless, Adenauer persistently backed
Wiedergutmachung as morally necessary, and
essential for the good name of the new Germany.
At the same time he defended the employment of
former high officials of the Nazi state, even
employing in his own office Hans Globke, the
civil servant who had helped to draft the
Nürnberg anti-Semitic laws in 1935. The past was
past and new loyalties were allowed to replace old
ones.
To one man in his Cabinet Adenauer owed
more than to any other. Ludwig Erhard, minister
of economic affairs, symbolised the new-found
German prosperity: jovial and rotund, he was
never seen in public without a fat cigar. A vote for
the CDU/CSU was as much a vote for Erhard
and his concept of the socially responsible market
economy as it was for Adenauer, the father figure,
the ‘helmsman’. How did the economic transformation
come about? Erhard could only provide
the right conditions for workers and management
to create the export-led boom. It was the quality
and reliability of German manufacture, machine
tools, products of heavy engineering and cars that
brought success. It was also the willingness of the
trade union leaders to give up class warfare and for
two decades to restrain wage demands. Abroad
and at home there was an almost insatiable
appetite for capital goods and cars. The cities had
to be rebuilt. The ‘American dream’ propagated
by Hollywood created desires and expectations
that only hard work could fulfil. The change for
the better from the low point of 1945 to 1947 was
so dramatic by the mid-1950s that people spoke
of an ‘economic miracle’. Confidence in a better
future was rekindled.
The statistics in the accompanying tables reveal
the steady growth with unemployment falling to
negligible proportions in 1971, though inflation
increased from 1 per cent to 5 per cent in the
1960s. Unemployment was a particularly sensitive
issue in Germany. High unemployment in
1932–3 was widely credited with having made
possible the rise of Hitler. Could the democracy
of the Federal Republic survive high unemployment?
Progress was not smooth: between 1954
and 1958 unemployment reached 7 per cent and
fell no lower than 4 per cent, which alarmed the
electorate; but thereafter from 1973 until the
1990s never exceeded 3 per cent, and for the
period 1961–6 it stayed below 1 per cent. The
shortage of workers was first filled by the steady
influx of refugees from the Soviet zone of
Germany and then increasingly from the pool of
unemployed in the Mediterranean countries,
especially Italy and Turkey. By 1973 there were
2.6 million Gastarbeiter (guestworkers) in the
Federal Republic. This availability of labour was
one reason for West Germany’s rapid industrial
expansion. Periodic boosts were given by
Marshall Aid, by the boom that followed the outbreak
of the Korean War in 1950 and by the
establishment of the Common Market in 1958.
Management and trade unions were prepared to
work together, investment provided up-to-date
production methods and German goods gained a
reputation for quality in a widening world market
hungry for goods. The over-valuation of the
German currency during the 1950s and beyond
acted as a spur to efficiency and productivity.
Ultimately it was the skill and will of management
and workers that created the ‘miracle’ of recovery
based on export-led growth. The Germans had
come to expect improvements in their standard of
living and low inflation; a sound economy was
regarded as the natural state of affairs.
By 1963 Erhard no longer received the credit for
Germany’s prosperity. The heir apparent had
been kept too long in the wings. Now as federal
chancellor he lacked lustre and soon ran into difficulties
with his FDP partners and particularly
with the ambitious Franz Josef Strauss. There
were Cabinet squabbles over Erhard’s preference
for America to de Gaulle’s France, over the
support price for grain, which caused a deep
Franco-German rift, and over the supply of arms
to Israel. The electorate in the 1960s, however,
was more concerned with continuing the economic
policies that had served them so well and
were not about to entrust government to the
Social Democratic opposition. Despite Erhard’s
declining prestige, the CDU/CSU won another
resounding electoral victory in 1965. Just a year
later, the FDP ministers resigned; the economic
climate had worsened temporarily, and between
1965 and 1967 the gross national product grew
by less than 2 per cent. Haunted by fears of inflation
– another trauma of the 1920s the Germans
could not shake off – government expenditure
was cut back and unemployment averaged 3 per
cent. To German perceptions it appeared as if a
grave crisis was at hand. What in fact had
occurred was no more than a swing in the business
cycle. As the economy developed the Federal
Republic could not sustain the rates of growth of
earlier years. But Erhard had lost the confidence
of his own party, the CDU, and Strauss and other
leading politicians were ready to fight for the
succession; in the event, Kurt Georg Kiesinger
emerged as his successor and leader of the
CDU/CSU.
The outcome of all the political intrigues and
negotiations was an astonishing one. The FDP
became the opposition party, and the CDU/CSU
and SPD led by the charismatic former mayor
of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, formed a Grand
Coalition in December 1966 under Chancellor
Kiesinger, with Brandt as his deputy and foreign
minister. The coalition had been possible only
because the SPD had formally abandoned its
Marxist doctrines in 1959 at the Gotha party conference.
To win the opportunity of becoming the
party of government, the SPD moved to the
political centre. Like the CDU, the SPD now
turned itself into an umbrella party appealing to
a wide spectrum, from the socialist left, who had
nowhere else to go, to the liberal centre. This
became its source of electoral strength, but also
brought with it an internal weakness as the left
wing came into conflict with its right wing. The
years of the Grand Coalition also saw a kind of
midlife crisis for the Federal Republic. A new,
young post-war electorate, bored with bourgeois
values and prosperity, made its presence violently
felt in 1967. Traditional society in the Federal
Republic and elsewhere in Europe and the US
was on the eve of fundamental changes.
World History
