The Impact of the Cold War on German Politics

As the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard enjoyed ever growing support for their economic policy; in strictly material terms, they could point to overwhelming evidence that private enterprise and free markets were promoting dramatic economic growth. Political discourse was complicated and embittered, however, by the complex connections between economic policy and foreign policy. Chancellor Adenauer soon made it clear that he intended to link his economic policy with the causes of European integration and support for NATO. These policies bewildered many Germans, however, because they appeared to violate the fundamental principle of national sovereignty. Stalin proved skillful, moreover, at nurturing the impression that he would be willing to permit national reunification in exchange for firm guarantees that Germany would pursue a nonaligned foreign policy. Even some leaders of the left wing of the CDU agreed with the Social Democrats that Stalin had every right to demand the nationalization of heavy industry as the only meaningful guarantee against the revival of the aggressive German "military-industrial complex" that had twice plunged the world into war. Kurt Schumacher of the SPD believed that his party had blundered badly in the Weimar Republic by allowing the political Right to exploit the German people's legitimate anger against the Treaty of Versailles, and he persuaded his party after 1945 to embrace the old-fashioned nationalist principle that the highest priority of West German foreign policy must be national reunification. Some figures on the political Left revived something like the old "stab-in-the-back" legend to attack Adenauer's alleged subservience to U.S. business interests and indifference to the fate of the millions of Germans in the Soviet Occupation Zone. Adenauer and his political allies responded heatedly that their leftist critics were witting or unwitting servants of the Soviet campaign to expand totalitarian Communist rule throughout Europe. The CDU nevertheless suffered painful defections by a number of distinguished Christian pacifists in the early 1950s, as it became clear that Adenauer was committed to a policy of rearming West Germany in support of NATO. In retrospect it appears that the brutal suppression of the East German uprising of 17 June 1953, may have been the greatest stroke of fortune in Adenauer's career. The bad behavior of the Communist regimes and the rising tide of prosperity helped the chancellor to isolate the pacifist defectors and achieve dramatic election victories in 1953 and 1957.

Unless otherwise noted, the images below are taken from the "Living Museum Online," which is run by the German Historical Museum of Berlin: www.dhm.de/lemo.