Adenauer

Question 1

Who was Adenauer?

Answer 1

-he was the first chancellor of the FRG presiding over it’s reconstruction after WW2

Question 2

When was Adenauer elected?

Answer 2

15th September 1949

Question 3

What role had Adenauer played in Weimar and Nazi Germany?

Answer 3

-a leading politician of the Catholic Centre Party in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917-1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council
-replaced as Mayor of Cologne after the Nazis came to power

Question 4

When was Adenauer briefly imprisoned?

Answer 4

1934

Question 5

When was Adenauer arrested by the Gestapo? Why?

Answer 5

-September 1944->accused of involvement in the failed July Bomb Plot against Hitler

Question 6

When was Adenauer appointed as Mayor of Cologne?

Answer 6

-after Cologne was liberated by the US

Question 7

What were his main aims and principles?

Answer 7

-restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage
-establish a political platform that would unite people around core Christian and democratic values and it was on this basis that he was elected as the first Chancellor of the FRG
-ensure West Germany’s transition to a sovereign, democratic state
-keep to encourage closer ties with the USA and France

Question 8

What problems did he face as chancellor of the FRG?

Answer 8

-his opponents had demanded that Germany be neutralised and placed in a position of nonalignment between the East and West->Adenauer and his party declared that the risks to security of such a policy would be intolerable