4 - West Germany Flashcards
Adenauer’s de-Nazification process
Failure
Speech on 20 September 1949, he denounced the denazification process by the Allied governments, announcing that he was planning to bring in this amnesty law.
= 800,000 Germans who had been classed as Nazi war criminals were freed in 1951= ‘politics of the past’
- 66% of foreign office diplomats were former Nazis
- denazification officially ended in the US zone in 1951
- Hans Globke helped write the Nuremberg laws and was in Adenauer’s cabinet= secrectary of state in 1953 (was undersectary at the German Chancellery in 1949)
Adenauer’s de-Nazification process
Success
The first amnesty law = This allowed 150,000 Germans previously removed from jobs to return in May 1951 = more workers
August 1952 = neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party was banned
Money paid to Israel = DM3 billion September 1952 = They agreed on the amount in the Luxembourg Agreements
– effective as not many Jews in Germany to pay compensation too as many did not return: 3.5 million
After the war in 1950, most Jews (51%) lived in the Americas (North and South), while only 1/3 of the world’s Jewish population lived in Europe.
Conferences that formed West Germany
FUSS + GASP
Yalta - February 1945
FUSS = Free elections, UN created, Sections (Germany split), Sphere of influence [around Stalin]
Potsdam - July-Aug. 1945
GASP = German compensation, Atom bomb caused suspicion, Soviet policy [control over Eastern Europe], Punishing Germany
First steps
Elections + parties
June 1946 elections for Lander = US
Lander elections in French and British zones took place in May 1947
Main parties = SPD under Kurt Schumacher vs. Christian Democratic Union (CDU) under Konrad Adenauer
New Constitution
P,C,B,E,B,C,W
President = honorary role with little power and influence, every 5 years elected by Lander
Chancellor + government = constructive vote of no confidence followed by second vote on new representative prevents a power vacuum, Article 48 removed
Bundestag = federal system, small parties removed = must gain 5% of the vote, set federal tax
Elections = Proportional representation, every 4 years, men and women over 18 could vote
Bundestrat = made up of representatives of Lander (state parliaments), Lander controlled education and police, Bunderstrat had to agree on taxes
Civil service + judiciary = politically independent, checks and balances, constitutional court established to outlaw parties it thought were undemocratic
Welfare State = protected status to religions, subsitised healthcare, better unemployment benefits and sick pay = funded by Marshall Aid - $1.4 billion in the first four years and began in 1947
The Berlin Question
West Berliners would not vote in federal elections
Lacked a landtag representative in the lander
22 members of the Berlin Assembly did sit in the Bundestag and 4 in the Bundestrat = could not vote on laws but observed
Adenauer
Background facts
Mayor of Cologne in1917 - held for 16 years
1944 - rounded up in Gestapo purge and was in a detention camp
Elected President of the Parliamentary Council, created in 1948
45% of population Catholic in 1949
Elected Chancellor in September 1949 in a coalition with the Free Democratic Party = they formed 208 out of 402 seats
East Germany formation
Ulbricht Group = Walter Ulbricht set up East Germany
SPD and KPD formed the SED in April 1946
Communist Youth (FDJ) for both boys and girls - set up in March 1946 - led by Erich Honecker
60% of industry and commerce was nationalised by 1949
‘Junker land into peasant hands’ = counterproductive - 7,000 large estates involved had been more productive when one large estat erather than thier smaller replacements
Education Reform = Law for the Democratisation of German Schools 1946
Adenauer’s importance
Minister for Economics = Ludwig Erhard - GNP trebled during the 1950s
Using Marshall Aid = $1.4 billion in the first four years — began in 1947 - Adenauer chosen by the US to distribute it pre-election = foreign support for him
Guest workers from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Turkey took up lower paid jobs = 14 million by 1973
14th August 1949 = first election = CDU - 31% so 139 seats vs. SPD 29.2% and 131 seats
Adenauer remaned Chancellor from Sept 1949 until 1963
CDU became first political party in German history to win a majority = in 1957 - 50.2%
The CDU’s role in shaping the FRG
The European Coal and Steel Community [ECSC] = signed 1951 - combined heavy industries in key European countries into one common market: France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Luxembourg
The European Economic Community [EEC] = signed 1957 - abolished tariffs between member states - improved West German exports
Real wages doubled from 1950-64
5th May 1955 = FRG joined NATO
Tension rising between West and East Germany
West Germany remained demilitarised following the Petersberg Agreement of 22nd November 1949.
Koream war [1950-53] raised tension that East Germany may invade so FRG army created = 150,000 men in 1950
Hallstein Doctrine = if the GDR was dipomatically recognised by any other country apart from the USSR, that would be a hostile act against the FRG = that would trigger NATO
- casued the GDR to face economic consequences; no one wanted to trade with them
- ended in 1972 by Chancellor Willy Brandt to improve political relations
SPD’s significance
Schumacher by the end of WW2 was the only SPD politician alive who had not fled or collaborated with the Nazis
SPD proposed a planned economy vs. the CDU’s free market = sounded like Stalin’s command economy so scared voters
Schumacher died in August 1952
Willy Brandt = Chancellor in 1964 - supportedby Kennedy - He was Mayor of West Berlin in October 1957
Godesberg Programme = 1959 - rejected nationalisation as a form of socilaism - got rid of Marxist policies, replaced by ethical socialism
Process of de-Nazification
The USA and the Fragebogen = questionnaire to discover who was a Nazi - 133 questions - without this people could not apply for work relief or apply for jobs in the US zone
Hitler Youth was compulsory from 1939 so many were refused work
In one Landtag 2.5 million Germans were being investigated for being possible Nazis
A black market for work certificates emerged
in 1951, the policy was officially ended
Nuremberg Trials October 1946 = sentences ranged from acquittal to death
Rudolph Hoss sentenced to death by hanging, on April 2, 1947
