7
Crystallization and Consolidation, 1949–1961
The period from the foundation of two separate states in 1949 to the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 is one in which the division of Germany was confirmed, and in which the peculiar characters of the two new states were consolidated. While in 1949 much still appeared open, by the beginning of the 1960s patterns had been laid which were to shape the next quarter of a century of German history.
Before considering the historical development of East and West Germany in this crucial decade, we must briefly consider certain features of their constitutions and political systems. The very different political systems – liberal democracy in the West and a ‘democratic centralism’ based on Marxist–Leninist theory in the East – provided the framework for the very different patterns of political, social and economic development in the two German states which succeeded the Third Reich.
The Constitution and Political System of the Federal Republic
The Federal Republic of Germany represented Germany’s second attempt at a liberal parliamentary democracy in the twentieth century. The writers of the constitution in 1948–9 had an ever-present regard for the failures of the Weimar Republic, and although the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) was the result of many positive considerations, it was also a document written with an eye to perceived weaknesses in the Weimar constitution. But a simple comparison of the constitutional and political frameworks of the Bonn and Weimar democracies can only serve to open the question of the bases of the stability and longevity of Bonn democracy in contrast to that of Weimar. Just as the total explanation of Weimar’s failure is not the Weimar constitution, so too is there more to the explanation of Bonn’s success. The constitutional framework could not in itself guarantee the success of Germany’s second attempt at democracy, but it at least provided certain safeguards and provisions to protect the new democracy against some of the problems experienced on the first attempt.
There were a number of key differences between the Bonn and Weimar constitutions. In the Federal Republic the role of the President – remembering the fateful actions of President Hindenburg – was weakened considerably. The President of the Bonn Republic was to be more of a ceremonial figurehead, a head of state in the symbolic sense with few real powers. He was not to be elected by popular plebiscite, as in the Weimar Republic, but rather – reflecting a certain mistrust in the voice of the people – indirectly by an electoral college. Chancellors could only be ousted by what was called a ‘constructive vote of no confidence’. This meant that Parliament could not simply indicate its lack of support for a particular Chancellor; it had at the same time to vote in, ‘constructively’, an alternative who could command majority support in Parliament. If no majority could be found for a successor, then a General Election was to be called. (Normally there was no leeway for deciding to call an ‘early’ election, as in Britain: the standard term of office of West German governments was to be four years.) Thus the President could not simply appoint his own Chancellor and promulgate laws by emergency decree. The notorious Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, with its dubious history, had gone.
The voting system was to be a rather complicated one based on the so-called d’Hondt formula. According to the Electoral Law of 1956 each West German elector was to have two votes: one for a named local representative (the equivalent of the British constituency MP) and one for a party. The political parties were to draw up lists of candidates and take as many representatives from these lists as their proportion of the vote entitled them to. The system of proportional representation was however modified by the 5 per cent hurdle: in order to receive parliamentary representation, a party must receive at least 5 per cent of the popular vote, or win one constituency outright. This provision was intended to hinder small parties from gaining a national platform for their programmes, as the NSDAP did with only 2.6 per cent of the vote in 1928, and to avoid the problem of having numerous small parties rendering complicated post-election coalition bargaining necessary before a government could be formed. In the event, the fairly numerous small parties active in the early years of the Federal Republic soon became absorbed into the main larger ones, with a couple of important exceptions (the FDP throughout, and from the early 1980s the Greens). There was also a restriction on the type of party that would be permitted to compete for a share of the popular vote: parties deemed to have aims and ideals at odds with those embodied in the ‘free democratic basic order’ of the constitution were to be banned from organization and activity. The Federal Republic was to be formally a ‘party state’. Article 21 of the constitution explicitly stated that ‘the political parties shall take part in forming the political will of the people. They may be freely established. They must publicly account for the sources of their funds’.1
Elections were to take place also for regional (Land) governments. The Federal Republic was to be, as its name implies, a federal state: the separate regional states were to have considerable powers over their own internal affairs. Locally elected Land Parliaments (Landtage) were to control such matters as cultural policy and education. Federalism was an extremely important feature of West German politics, with local elections being matters of considerable importance, and local personalities and issues having high profiles. (The most notable example for much of West Germany’s postwar history until his death in 1988 was the ‘uncrowned king’ of Bavaria, and leader of the Bavarian CSU, Franz-Josef Strauss.) The Länder were to send representatives to the second chamber in Bonn, the Bundesrat. This was to have certain powers of veto (when the issues directly concerned the Länder) and some powers of amending and delaying legislation. The party which commanded a majority in the lower house, the Bundestag, need not necessarily command a majority in the Bundesrat, given the variable election dates and different political complexions of the local states. The West German upper house thus had a rather different composition than the (historically peculiar) British House of Lords. As a city under Allied control with special status (and not able to elect members of the Bonn Parliament directly), West Berlin’s city government was also able to send representatives to Bonn.
The West German constitution, as adopted in 1949, subsequently underwent a number of amendments and alterations, both with respect to specific issues (such as remilitarization) and with respect to broader questions, such as the balance between the central Bund and the regional Länder, and the nature and location of emergency powers. Originally, the constitution stressed a representative, rather than participatory, form of democracy (as in, for example, the indirect election of the President): few Western democrats in 1949 were prepared to trust the German people, so soon after the war, with the degree of democratic freedom that had allowed them, in the Weimar Republic, to bring Hitler to power. The question of the degree to which the constitution of the Federal Republic contributed to its political stability, in contrast to the Weimar Republic, is one to which we shall return below.
The Constitution and Political System of the GDR
In 1949, when the first constitution of the German Democratic Republic was proclaimed, its status and future prospects were by no means certain. The constitution, which was not ratified by popular vote, was designed to be compatible with that of the Federal Republic, providing the basis for possible future reunification.
Nominally, the German Democratic Republic was to have a multi-party political system with a two-tiered Parliament. The lower house of Parliament, the Volkskammer or People’s Chamber, was the equivalent of the West German Bundestag, although its actual role and make-up were in practice somewhat different. The upper house, the Länderkammer, was to represent the interests of different Länder in the GDR, being the equivalent of the West German Bundesrat. The Volkskammer included representatives of all the permitted parties – CDU, LDPD, NDPD and DBD – as well as members of the mass organizations, including the Free German Youth (FDJ) and the Confederation of Free German Trade Unions, the FDGB. However, according to Marxist–Leninist principles, elections were held on the basis of single lists of candidates, and each party or organization had a previously determined number of allotted seats in the Volkskammer. Thus, given both the fact that the SED had the largest number of seats, and that it dominated the personnel and policies of the other parties and groups which were only nominally independent of communist control, the real character of East German democracy was rather different from that in West Germany.
Formal similarities existed in 1949 in other respects too. But the constitutional similarities between the two systems disappeared as the realities of political, social and economic divergence developed over the decades after the founding of the two Republics. In 1952 the five Länder of the GDR were abolished and replaced by thirteen Bezirke. These rather smaller regions aided the SED’s attainment of its goal of the centralization of politics, and the suppression of regional political strongholds for alternative power bases. In 1958 the Länderkammer was abolished.
Another initial similarity with the Federal Republic was the position of the ceremonial head of state, the President. In 1960 the first President of the GDR, Wilhelm Pieck, died; and with his demise went that of the office of President. In its place the Staatsrat, or Council of State, took over as a collective head of state, chaired by the leader of the SED, Walter Ulbricht. But the pre-eminence of the Staatsrat was similarly short-lived. When Ulbricht was replaced by Honecker in 1971 as First Secretary of the SED, Ulbricht retained the chairmanship of the Council of State; but this was shortly thereafter demoted in importance in favour of the Ministerrat or Council of Ministers. In 1968 and again in 1974 there were major amendments of the East German constitution, to take account of changed political realities. In 1968 the ‘leading role’ of the SED was enshrined in the constitution, rendering any remaining apparent similarities to the West German constitution devoid of all real significance, since the Marxist–Leninist party was able to interpret the formal ‘rights’ of citizens in any way it chose. In 1974 the constitution was again changed in response to the new status of the GDR under Ostpolitik (see Chapter 8).
In theory, the state structure of the East German political system consisted of a pyramid. At the top was the formal head of state – first the President, later the collective head of state, the Staatsrat. Below this was the Council of Ministers, to which the different ministries were responsible and where important decision-making in such areas as economics and state security took place. Below this was the People’s Chamber (Volkskammer), which met infrequently, effectively to ratify and promulgate legislation decided upon at a higher level. Its functions were therefore very different from those of the West German Parliament. There were bodies for local government at regional, district and local levels. At all levels of government the leading role of the SED was evident – and, indeed, after the 1968 revision, enshrined in the East German constitution until the revolution of 1989.
The SED was itself organized hierarchically, according to the principle of democratic centralism. Lower levels of the hierarchy, while able to have a say in any formulation of policy, were bound ultimately to accept and execute the decisions taken by superior bodies. Ultimately, power lay with the leadership in the Politburo and its secretariat, with the party leader (General Secretary or First Secretary) primus inter pares; below the Politburo, the next most important body was the Central Committee, with its specialist subgroups, although membership of the Central Committee might imply more of an advisory than a decision-making role. This was particularly true of so-called candidate members of the Central Committee, who did not have voting rights. Membership of these bodies was, particularly from the 1960s, increasingly predicated on a level of technical expertise in some important area – whether the economy, military matters or culture. But political commitment to party goals and methods remained the decisive factor. The Central Committee was elected by the Party Congress, which met about every five years (although it was also possible to convene extraordinary party congresses under certain circumstances). At lower levels there were regional and district party organizations comparable in organizational structure to those at the national level, with their own executive, secretariat and conference. At the most basic level party membership was organized in work-based branches, or, where this was not possible, in branches based on place of residence.
As with the West German, so the East German constitution provides only a partial insight into the realities of political development in the GDR. More dramatically than in the West, East Germany actually adopted new constitutions in 1968 and 1974, prior to the more fundamental upheavals of 1989. These were intended partly to reflect more accurately changed political circumstances; and it is in the political realities, rather than the constitutional provisions, that clues to the development and longevity of the GDR must be sought. We shall return to a discussion of the political structures and dynamics of the two German states in more detail in Chapters 10 and 11 below; first, however, we must establish a basic chronological framework for the political and socioeconomic development of the two Germanies, and for their relations with the wider world and with each other.
The Problem of Missed Opportunities, 1949–1961
A number of open questions concerning the future of Germany remained, even after the formal foundation of the two Republics in 1949. For one thing, it was still quite possible that some means would be found to facilitate reunification. For another, even if Germany remained divided into two states, incorporated into different international spheres of influence, there were a number of possible options available for the internal political development of each Germany. Many Germans, returning from exile or emerging from ‘inner emigration’, still hoped that a means would be found to develop a democratic, socialist Germany. In the event, in neither East nor West were their hopes to be realized.
In 1949 Adenauer was elected Chancellor by a majority of only one vote, supported by a coalition which had been put together only after considerable politicking and pressurizing. It seemed quite possible that the CDU-dominated coalition government could soon be ousted by an SPD-led government, or at least a coalition of the two major parties (an option which had been seriously canvassed). Had this indeed been the case, the whole future course of West German history – and then also that of both Germanies – might have been quite different. Under Adenauer, the rump state formed out of the British, American and French zones of occupation was to be transformed into a Western-orientated, liberal–conservative, materialistic form of ‘Chancellor-democracy’. The price paid for the Federal Republic’s rapid economic and political rehabilitation was the jettisoning of fellow-countrymen to their fate in the East – and Adenauer deemed it a price worth paying. The Adenauer era poses many problems of evaluation: many criticize Adenauer’s policies on a range of grounds while recognizing that the early economic success of the Federal Republic – and its importance to Western defence strategies in the Cold War – were vital to the successful establishment of Bonn democracy. Debates about ‘missed opportunities’ and ‘suppressed historical alternatives’ are also debates about the likely consequences of alternative policies; and evaluations are frequently complicated by confusions between the immediate effects or acceptability of certain policies on the one hand, and their long-term consequences on the other. These points will be considered in detail in connection with the economic and foreign policies of Adenauer’s Germany, as well as the inevitably controversial question of the integration of former Nazis into the new democracy.
Similarly, the dominance of Walter Ulbricht and his particular brand of hard-line communism was by no means predetermined in the GDR. Indeed, his authority and position were seriously in question at the time of the June Uprising of 1953; and it was an ironic outcome of this event that Moscow decided to confirm Ulbricht in power rather than topple him, purging Ulbricht’s opponents instead. Ulbricht was able in the course of the 1950s to deal with further factional dissent of one sort or another, and from the late 1950s until the 1980s the SED was marked by relatively little internal factional strife. The form of communism which became established in the GDR was a variant of Stalinism which was anathema to humanistic Marxists of the ‘Third Way’. Curiously, this too had as a consequence a relative stabilization of the political system in East Germany. In contrast to those communist states where reform communists retained a hold or developed factions within the ruling party, and which subsequently experienced major revolts (Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1956, 1970–1 and 1980–1), East Germany was relatively stable for four decades, before the revolutionary year of 1989. While the longevity of the GDR as a communist state cannot be explained solely in terms of the relative cohesion of the ruling party, this was undoubtedly an important factor; and one which Ulbricht’s early hard-line policies and purging of dissent did much to create.
In neither Germany, then, were democratic socialists or humanist Marxists able to impose their vision of what they thought post-Nazi society should be like; in the course of the 1950s and 1960s very different patterns emerged and crystallized. And in different ways, the two new Germanies repressed their past. The issue of Nazism was ignored, suppressed or argued away, as new realities and new struggles took precedence in contemporary life.
Associated with the consolidation of new patterns was the question of non-reunification. As with internal politics, certain key turning-points – or missed opportunities – can be discerned. One such is the Stalin overture of 1952, interpreted by the West as more a matter of propaganda than policy. By 1955, when the Soviet Union under Nikita Krushchev made another gesture towards reunification, it was clearly too late. In August 1961 the division of the two Germanies was literally cemented with the building of the Berlin Wall, which closed the last means of escape from East to West. While the two Germanies had been radically ripped apart in the 1950s, and energetically pointed in different directions, there had yet been a lingering sense of impermanence; but in the 1960s, with division sealed, the two societies witnessed changes of generation and internal divergences as they more gradually, but no less fundamentally, proceeded to grow apart.
Foreign Relations
In October 1949, only a few months after the foundation of the Federal Republic, West Germany became a member of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC); in March 1951 the Occupation Statute was revised; in April 1951 West Germany entered the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and in May became a full member of the Council of Europe. In 1957, in the Treaty of Rome, West Germany became a founder member of the European Economic Community. Curiously, what began as an attempt to contain the German threat eventuated ultimately in a strong German economy becoming one of the pillars of emerging West European integration in the later postwar period, in contrast to the declining economic power and European influence of Britain, which tended to lag behind as far as European affairs were concerned. Meanwhile, in July 1951 the Western powers declared the state of war with Germany to be at an end, although there could still be no peace treaty, as there was no all-German government with which to negotiate it.
Along with West German economic integration went plans for Western European defence. In 1950 France began planning the European Defence Community. In the event, considering the proposal for ‘mixed units’ from different states participating in a supranational force to be an inadequate safeguard against potential future German aggression, the French Parliament in the summer of 1954 failed to ratify the participation of a French Army in this Defence Community, following earlier British refusal. (It is curious that a form of this was later revived with a small joint German–French defence force in January 1988.) However, Eden’s plan for Germany to become a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which had been founded in 1949, was agreed in the Paris Treaties, including the German Treaty, of autumn 1954, which took effect on 5 May 1955. On this date the Occupation Statute lapsed and the Federal Republic of Germany became a fully sovereign state. The Saar, following a plebiscite, was returned to Germany in 1957. Political and economic rehabilitation of the partial state appeared to be well under way.
But this Western integration was not without considerable opposition, both from within West Germany and from the East. As far as the Western alliance was concerned, the strategic dimension was crucial: forward troops had to be stationed on German soil to make NATO effective. But within West Germany there was widespread opposition to remilitarization. In the light of the disasters of recent history, many Germans adopted the so-called ohne mich attitude (literally ‘without me’, or ‘count me out’) in relation to rearmament. The refoundation of a German Army and the introduction of conscription were highly contentious issues, by no means unanimously supported by the populace of Adenauer’s new Germany. (We shall consider the nature and political implications of the Army further in Chapter 10, below.) As far as the USSR was concerned, Western integration of the Federal Republic appeared extremely threatening, and to be averted if at all possible.
The year 1952 was a key turning-point which has provoked debates about responsibility for ‘lost chances’ for reunification. In March 1952, at a crucial stage of negotiations between Paris and Bonn over the European Defence Community, Stalin sent a famous note in which, in return for the abandonment of the West German rearmament process, he proposed a united, neutral, unoccupied Germany. Western historians have spent considerable time speculating on whether or not Stalin’s motives were genuine at this time – a debate which reflects the puzzlement of contemporaries, who were also divided and uncertain as to how to react to Stalin’s initiative. The most plausible explanation appears to be that at the time of the first note on 10 March, Stalin was indeed genuinely pursuing what was for him a relatively risky course in the interests of averting West Germany’s absorption into a Western military alliance. By the time of the third note, however, when the Western powers had made it clear that they were not amenable to Stalin’s overtures, Stalin was simply making propaganda and clarifying to the Germans themselves exactly what options were being closed by the policy of Western integration. There is also the question of the responsibility for the failure of this last serious reunification attempt. Many have castigated Adenauer, who – despite compulsory lip-service to the cause of reunification – was firmly committed to a CDU-dominated, Western capitalist democracy, and who viewed the prospect of a united, neutral, SPD-dominated state with a predominance of Protestants with little enthusiasm. Whatever the strength of Adenauer’s personal views, however, it also seems clear that his ideas ran in the same vein as the perceived interests of the Western allies. The American and British plans for Western defence were too far developed for them to consider the Soviet offer seriously at this time. To official policies of ‘containment’ and ‘roll-back’ of communism, and the importance of negotiation from strength, the Western allies could add the ‘democratic’ argument – against Stalin’s view that a peace treaty imposing neutrality should be signed before any elections – that only a democratically elected all-German government could accord binding status to a peace treaty and it would have to be free to determine its own foreign policy, its own neutrality or alliances. Whatever the contribution of different considerations, individuals and policies, the outcome was that Stalin’s reunification initiative of 1952 failed. A subsequent Soviet attempt made in 1955 was viewed as a propaganda gesture with little if any credibility.2
In partial response to the integration of the Federal Republic in the West, the German Democratic Republic entered into a comparable set of economic and military alliances in the East. In 1950 East Germany was integrated into the eastern bloc’s economic system in the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON). In 1952 the ‘building of socialism’ was announced, making it clear that East Germany was now embarking formally on a path of development quite divergent from that of West Germany. In March 1954 the Soviets made a declaration on East German sovereignty, granting the GDR the rights of an ‘equal people’s democratic state’. The ‘People’s Police in Barracks’ (Kasernierte Volkspolizei), which had been set up in 1946, was renamed the ‘national armed forces’ in 1952; in January 1956 the ‘National People’s Army’ (Nationale Volksarmee, NVA) was formally established, and become an integral part of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (or Warsaw Pact) forces. It consisted of 100,000 regular troops, which with additional security and border guards, made a total force altogether of somewhat under 200,000 men.
By the mid-1950s, far from a united German people being viewed with hostility by allied Soviet and Western powers as a decade previously, a divided German people now faced each other in hostility, with their respective armed forces representing the wider opposition of the Western and Soviet blocs. This dramatic transformation had much to do with the changed international system, and in particular the changed interests of the USA and the USSR in a Europe which they had divided into spheres of interest; but it also reflected the ways in which domestic politicians in each Germany responded to opportunities and constraints during this period. And, whatever the causes of the failure of reunification attempts, in practice both sides consolidated the division by the institutional embedding of the two partial states into two very different systems and spheres of influence.
Adenauer’s Germany
When Adenauer came to power, the CDU/CSU held 31 per cent of the vote. He had to rely on the support of a number of small parties in addition to the liberal FDP. In many respects the situation looked comparable to that of the Weimar Republic: larger parties were dependent on coalitions with small, frequently single-issue or regional, parties. Despite the transformation from a purely Catholic party into a more broadly based Christian Conservative one, the CDU/CSU was not simply assured of a majority; and it seemed quite possible that the instabilities of Weimar politics might bedevil the Federal Republic also. Two extremist parties which were deemed to be hostile to the constitution were outlawed: the right-wing SRP (Socialist Reich Party) in 1952, and the communist KPD in 1956. At the same time, many adherents of small permitted parties (such as that representing refugees and expellees) began to be won over to the CDU/CSU. In 1957 the CDU/CSU gained over 50 per cent of the vote, achieving an absolute majority for the first time.
A number of factors are relevant to any explanation of the success of Adenauer and the CDU in the 1950s. Probably the single most important factor was the vigorous rate of economic growth. Pragmatic, material considerations undoubtedly played a major role in sustaining and increasing popular support for the CDU. The so-called economic miracle, with the astonishing leaps in West Germany’s productivity, an economy growing at around 8 per cent a year, and rapid improvements in living conditions, made many Germans willing to accept a regime that seemed to be delivering the goods. Adenauer’s election slogan, ‘No experiments!’ (Keine Experimente!), symbolized the cautious, pragmatic approach to politics of many people who had been through too many ideological and socioeconomic upheavals in recent years to want to commit themselves in a wholehearted, idealistic way to a new political orientation. They were prepared simply to assent, relatively passively, to the system that appeared to be working for the time being. This benefited both the political system in general – democracy was at last being associated, not with economic crises, as in the Weimar Republic, but with economic success – and the CDU-led government in particular, since it was Adenauer’s Economics Minister, Ludwig Erhard, who was presiding over the economic miracle. Few were willing to risk or jettison this fragile, recent success in order to experiment with Social Democratic theories or policies.
The economy of the Western zones of occupied Germany was already beginning to pick up before the full impact of the Marshall Plan, or European Recovery Programme, was felt. The role of Marshall Aid in furthering an economic recovery which was already underway was not only financial – it has been estimated that in the Western zones the total occupation costs and reparations may have exceeded the amount of actual aid received – but also, perhaps more importantly, it was a stimulant to economic activity and a psychological prop, lending credence to the Deutschmark and encouraging investment in an economy which had American backing. The Marshall Plan also had consequences for the psychology of industrial relations, and the political organization of the economy, which are more nebulous and difficult to quantify but in the long term just as important for German economic recovery. The fostering of a managerial climate of opinion, and the depoliticizing of industrial relations, with a focus on enhanced productivity rather than social redistribution, were certainly important factors in postwar economic growth. Low wage demands, a low strike record and a relative lack of militancy characterized the conduct of federal German trade unions. The refugees’ urgent desire for jobs even at low wages was an obvious factor but other factors too, including the exclusion of communist influence, were important. And as the economy grew, people were even less inclined to rock the economic boat, subscribing rather to the psychology of ‘rebuilding’ (‘Wir bauen wieder auf’).3
The structure of the West German economy has often been labelled ‘social market’, a term that became current among neoliberal economists in the late 1940s. (Whatever the relevance of the label at first, the Western German economy turned towards neo-Keynesianism in the mid- and later 1960s, and changed again in the 1980s, but the original label has tended to stick.) To some extent the revival of neoliberal (or so-called Ordo-liberal) ideas represented an understandable desire to mark a break with the state-directed economy of the Nazi period, and to give a freer rein to market forces, with the state merely guaranteeing the conditions for productivity but not playing too interventionist a role. Some analysts have suggested however that the West German economy of the 1950s and 1960s was neither ‘social’ nor ‘market’. Interventions, steering and control by the state made the notion of a ‘free market’ into at best a half-truth. The qualification ‘social’ was intended to deal with this, since the state was not only to ensure the conditions for economic growth, but also to protect the weaker members of society from the full ravages of market forces. Conservatives and Social Democrats differed in their interpretations of the extent and character of such protection. It was quite clear to both supporters and opponents of the conservative government in the 1950s that its economic policies would serve to increase the gaps between rich and poor, would increase disparities in wealth and lead to a more unequal society. High profits, tax incentives and squeezes on domestic credit encouraged investment, while workers’ wages were kept low, with only modest increases. By the mid-1960s a large proportion of the nation’s wealth was concentrated in a small minority of hands. But the assumption was made that overall growth would be of a sufficient scale and speed that all members of society would benefit from increased shares in a larger national cake, even if some benefited more than others. And the 1952 Equalization of Burdens Law was intended to compensate those who had suffered disproportionately as a result of the war, particularly refugees from the East.
In the event, the average disposable income of West German households grew by 400 per cent between 1950 and 1970. People compared their own situations, not with the degree to which other people’s prosperity had increased, but rather with their own past: and they were for the most part able to register an extraordinary change from the ruins and devastation of the immediate postwar period. Being well-fed and well-housed mattered more to most West Germans than the seemingly more academic question of whether theirs was becoming a more unequal society. Interestingly, the percentages supporting democratic – rather than monarchical or Nazi – political views in opinion polls of the 1950s and early 1960s grew in close correlation with the increase in the average weights of ever more satiated West Germans.4
A number of factors are relevant to explaining West Germany’s rapid growth, in addition to the direct and indirect effects of the Marshall Plan mentioned above. It was uniquely adapted to benefit from the Korean War which broke out in June 1950, and from subsequent defence policies (in favour of nuclear, rather than conventional, defences, as favoured by Defence Minister Franz-Josef Strauss). The structure of unions was simplified, with one union per industry, and the unified unions belonging to a single umbrella organization, the DGB. A myth soon grew up of ‘social partnership’ between employers and employees. ‘Co-determination’ in industry (Mitbestimmung) was in fact only introduced, against considerable employer opposition, in a limited fashion in 1951, so that all joint stock companies in the coal and steel industries with over a thousand employees had to have representation of workers’ views at the managerial level. (It was extended, once more against considerable employer opposition, in 1976 to cover all joint stock companies with over two thousand employees.) In 1952 the Works Constitution Law provided that there should be works councils for enterprises with more than twenty employees. West Germany had a relatively low strike record. It also uniquely benefited, in the first decade or so after its foundation, from a supply of cheap and mobile labour: the refugees from the German Democratic Republic. Initially these people represented a burden of extra bodies to be housed and fed; and in 1950 the unemployment rate stood at 8.1 per cent. But the rapidly expanding economy was soon able to absorb them (with early help from the Korean War boom), and by the mid-1960s the unemployment rate stood at a mere 0.5 per cent. During the 1950s around three million people fled from the East, and a large proportion of these were young, skilled people in search of better career prospects than they could find in East Germany. Many of the attempts by the Allies to restructure and decentralize the economy were successfully resisted by West German industrialists: there was fairly rapid reconcentration and recentralization, and the revised Law on Decartelization which was passed after many amendments in 1957 left sufficient loopholes as to be little impediment to West German industrialists.
Whatever the reasons, in the course of the 1950s West Germany was becoming a prosperous society. By the later 1950s writers such as Heinrich Böll were beginning to pour scorn on what they saw as a bourgeois, self-satisfied materialism which lived only for current comforts and suppressed the past; but rapid economic success was certainly a powerful factor in ensuring the early commitment of vast numbers of formerly undemocratic Germans to the new democracy which had been in large measure thrust upon them in an hour of national humiliation and defeat. The contrast to the early years of Weimar democracy is striking.
Despite the relative lack of positive ideological commitment to democracy, there was nevertheless a powerful transitional ideology in the 1950s: that of anti-communism. Anti-communism had long been a prevalent orientation among the German middle classes, and it had played an important role in the rise of Hitler. It was not something new which had to be inculcated in the Germans by foreign powers. Yet it took on new flavours during the Cold War, and was stimulated by the anti-communism in particular of the Americans. Fear of the ‘bolshevist threat’ provided powerful support for Adenauer’s policies of Western integration, outweighing the natural desire of most Germans to see their country reunified. At the same time, the example of Marxist–Leninist practice in the East was used to cast aspersions on the West German SPD, which, despite its constant and genuine avowal of commitment to democracy, was adversely affected by slur campaigns from the Right.
The SPD itself was somewhat in disarray in the 1950s, and did not present a powerful and united opposition to Adenauer and the CDU. There had always been tensions within the SPD since its foundation, and we have seen the way in which splits among socialists facilitated the rise of Hitler. In the 1950s there were debates on a number of issues, including the fiercely divisive question of German rearmament and remilitarization. But by the late 1950s, under the rather drab leadership of Erich Ollenhauer who had succeeded Schumacher as leader on his death in 1952, the issue was less one of principle than of pragmatic politics: how, with its electoral support static or even declining, could the SPD ever hope to present a serious challenge to the broadly based and recently triumphant CDU? The SPD’s solution to the conundrum of being seen as a working-class and radical party in an increasingly middle-class, affluent and materialist society, was contained in the Bad Godesberg programme of 1959: the SPD simply abandoned the electorally damaging Marxist rhetoric it had inherited from its pre-Nazi past, and aimed instead to become a ‘catch-all people’s party’ (Volkspartei). No longer did the SPD profess the revolutionary aim of transforming and overthrowing the capitalist socioeconomic order; rather, like the CDU, it aimed to improve its functioning so that inequities could be alleviated by growth in the national cake.5 Differences in domestic socioeconomic policy between the parties were subsequently to be more differences of method, rather than of principle or goal. Nevertheless, certain key differences between the two major parties remained, particularly in the sphere of foreign policy before the completion of Ostpolitik.
In West Germany in the 1950s many people were able to find a new way of life and to forget or repress unpleasant memories of the recent past. People were able to find jobs and live in relatively comfortable homes; they obtained enough food to eat, and increasing numbers were able to afford luxuries and durable consumer goods such as fridges and cars. Under Adenauer’s leadership West Germany was beginning to be able to assert itself as a responsible and necessary partner in a number of transnational activities, both economic and political, in the Western world. The Nazi past could be ignored, except in so far as the privations of recent years of war and occupation were contrasted with the modest but increasing prosperity of the present. Former Nazis, both the committed and the conformists, were able to fit relatively easily into Adenauer’s Germany.6 Although in the immediate postwar period about 53,000 civil servants had been dismissed for membership of the NSDAP, only about 1,000 were excluded permanently from any future employment. Under the 1951 Reinstatement Act many were reemployed in the civil service and obtained full pension credits for their service in the Third Reich. By the early 1950s between 40 and 80 per cent of officials were former NSDAP members. Similarly, only a very few members of the judiciary were permanently disqualified.7 Former Nazis were even able to gain prominent positions in public life: Adenauer was quite prepared to include former Nazis in his cabinet, such as former SS-member Oberländer as Minister for Refugees. Perhaps the most controversial of Adenauer’s appointments was that of Hans Globke, the author of the official commentary on the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, as Adenauer’s chief aide in his Chancellery. (Subsequent apologists for this appointment have tried to suggest that Globke’s interpretation of the Nuremberg Laws was a milder one than others might have written.)8 Past misdemeanours in different circumstances were ignored in favour of current attitudes and expressed changes of heart. If the Hitler-period was considered at all, it was more or less dismissed as an isolated aberration in German history when a madman unfortunately took over the country and misled the poor German people, leading them into war and committing atrocities in their name about which they had known nothing. (On the other hand, many West Germans still assented to the statement that Hitler would have been one of the greatest statesmen there had ever been, if only he had not lost the war.) For the most part, however, working for the present and the future was more important – and certainly more productive – than raking over the ashes of the past. The main point was to rebuild, not sort through the ruins.
The period is an exceedingly difficult one to evaluate – if indeed it is part of the task of historians to evaluate. It is a period which has provoked heated debates among Germans. A number of facts are clear, and lead to somewhat contradictory conclusions. From one point of view, it can be pointed out that many former Nazis received minimal, if any, punishment for their crimes or complicity in an evil regime. It can even be shown that entrepreneurs who built up vast personal fortunes on the basis of Nazi ‘aryanization’ policies (forcible expropriation of Jewish concerns) and exploitation of slave labour, working Poles and Jews to the bone before their death by exhaustion, starvation or gassing, were able to use the capital thus amassed to continue successful entrepreneurial careers in the Federal Republic – and to influence prominent politicians in their favour.9 It can be pointed out that there was a massive wastage of talent, as thousands of courageous people who had refused to compromise with the Third Reich found their paths to postwar careers in the Civil Service blocked, as positions were retained or refilled by Nazi time-servers.10 It can be pointed out that the chance of a fundamental restructuring of German society was missed, as neither structure nor personnel were radically changed in an era of conservative ‘restoration’. Against all this, it can be asserted that without the integration of former Nazis, and without the startling economic success, Bonn democracy might have had as little chance of survival as Weimar democracy. Radical anti-system opposition on the part of a few activists would have combined with mass discontent based on economic misery and uncertainty to provide powerful forces for political destabilization. The argument can be mounted that the end, retrospectively, might have justified the means: actions which can be criticized on moral grounds might have had consequences which even the critics would applaud. In any event, the ambiguities which are contained in these historical reflections were ambiguities which were to explode into the West German public arena in the 1960s, although not always in a manner characterized by rational discussion.
Ulbricht’s Germany, 1949–1961
Meanwhile, a comparable if rather more fragile consolidation – based more on repression than success – was taking place in the GDR. In 1948 the SED had become a ‘party of a new type’, in line with the general Stalinization of East European Soviet satellite states. The proponent of the notion of a ‘German road to socialism’, Anton Ackermann, was subjected to a process of ‘criticism and self-criticism’ and forced to recant.11 Stalin was introduced as a new idol, and party schools forced the Stalin cult onto party members. Although the word Volksdemokratie (People’s Republic) was not formally used until the Second Party Conference of July 1952, in practice the GDR was already in 1949 comparable to other Soviet satellite states.
At the Third Party Congress of the SED in 1950, Walter Ulbricht was elected General Secretary of the SED (a title which was changed to First Secretary in 1954, when the Soviet Union moved to a more collective form of leadership after Stalin’s death), thus gaining a position of dominance which he succeeded in retaining until 1971. The late 1940s and early 1950s saw the transformation of the structure of the SED, with the introduction of a Central Committee and Politburo in 1950 and the development of cadre politics, as well as the ‘cleansing’ of the party with the purging of individuals with social democratic or Western leanings or associations. At the Second Party Conference of 9–12 July 1952 the ‘building of socialism’ was announced.
A combination of methods was employed to ensure the compliance of the East German populace, including terror as well as attempted ideological indoctrination, as the SED sought both to control the state means of administration, policing and justice, and to exert its influence in education, the media and all avenues of opinion formation. Schoolteachers were supposed to teach the new political principles, and those unwilling to do so were likely to be replaced. Christians were subjected to coercion, with the secularization of schools, and the squeezing out of religious education – although curiously, given the radical measures of expropriation taken in other areas, church property had been left intact in the occupation period, and the churches had been left to denazify their own personnel (which, it might be noted in passing, they had accomplished in a less than energetic manner). While Christian institutions remained relatively unscathed – and at this time retained their all-German links – individual Christians were subjected to considerable harassment. The young Christians’ organization Junge Gemeinde was tarnished as an ‘illegal organization’ of political opposition, supposedly harbouring enemy agents and spies. The introduction in 1954 of a secular state ‘confirmation’ ceremony, the Jugendweihe, which Christians viewed as incompatible with confirmation in church, was used as a means to identify and discriminate against the children of those not fully committed to the state ideology.12 Members of the ‘bourgeoisie’ and their children were also systematically discriminated against, in favour of the ideologically committed and the politically sound members of the working classes and peasantry. Life was less than comfortable for many previously relatively privileged people in the new GDR of the 1950s.
Admittedly, it could be claimed that this coercion was in a good cause: that of greater social equality. But it appeared to many that it was merely replacing one form of privilege by another, and one form of dictatorship by another. Yet no one could foresee how long the current situation was likely to last. Moreover, the particular hard-line form of communism which developed in the GDR in the 1950s was not inevitable – alternatives seemed possible to many socialist humanists – and the dominance of Ulbricht as party leader did not go unchallenged.
There were serious differences of opinion within the higher echelons of the SED in the summer of 1953, which to some extent reflected differences in Moscow after Stalin’s death in the spring of that year. In some conflict with Ulbricht over certain areas of policy were Rudolf Herrnstadt (editor of Neues Deutschland) and Wilhelm Zaisser (Minister for State Security). They were supported in Moscow by Beria, and Moscow was seriously considering the ousting and replacement of Walter Ulbricht, who was not an entirely convinced supporter of Moscow’s ‘New Course’. Differences of opinion within the SED played a key role in the origins of the only major uprising in the GDR’s history before the revolution of 1989, that of June 1953.13 While productivity goals (or ‘work norms’) were being increased for industrial workers, causing an exacerbation of already existing discontent with living conditions in the ‘Soviet zone’ (as it was still called by those who refused to concede legitimacy to the GDR), concessions were being made to other groups, including the middle classes and the peasantry. These somewhat contradictory policies in relation to increased work norms were announced suddenly, and not only was there no prior warning to the general population, there was also inadequate prior discussion and preparation for those party functionaries who would have to justify the new line. Remarkably for a communist state, quite different official views appeared in the press. On 14 June an article in Neues Deutschland (which was of course edited by Herrnstadt) criticized the SED’s hard-line policies; while on 16 June an article in the official trade union (FDGB) newspaper Tribüne came out in support of the raised work norms.
On 16 June workers in the Stalinallee, who were employed on the massive construction of this imposing street as a monument of Stalinist architecture, decided that rather than sending two representatives they would together down tools and go as a group to the central union building to protest against this measure. Soon the workers from the first site were joined by others. A series of accidental circumstances turned this spontaneous protest against a specific measure into a more general political demonstration. On arrival at the FDGB house, no one in authority appeared; so the crowd moved on to the Haus der Ministerien, where they shouted down Minister Selbmann and Professor Havemann (who was later to gain a reputation as a dissident humanist Marxist, placed under house arrest for most of his life). The situation became further confused as a result of contradictory announcements. While Selbmann proclaimed the retraction of the raised work norms, a Politburo announcement simply said that the decision of the Council of Ministers would have to be reconsidered. There was an increasing sense of power among the crowd, who began to make political demands for the resignation of the regime; but they remained lacking in central direction and leadership, and there was no strike committee to take overall direction of the protest. Nevertheless, one enterprising worker seized a loudspeaker and pronounced a general strike for the following day, 17 June. In the event, on 17 June there were uprisings and demonstrations in a number of places spread across the GDR, with between 300,000 and 372,000 workers going on strike – an estimated 5.5–6.8 per cent of the workforce. Most of those demonstrating were industrial workers, with little or no participation from the middle classes, the intelligentsia or the peasants.
Despite this evidence of widespread popular dissatisfaction among the workers, who were now supposed to be an emancipated proletariat, and despite the obviously quite serious challenge to his authority, Ulbricht came out of the June Uprising with his power augmented rather than decreased. The protesters had failed to develop an adequate organization or leadership, and their movement was already losing impetus and direction before it was finally suppressed by a display of force by Soviet tanks on the afternoon of 17 June. Twenty-one people were killed, and shots were fired mainly in the air as a warning: the level of violence was relatively low in comparison with conflicts on German streets earlier in the twentieth century. Although Ulbricht had to back down on work norms, and workers thus obtained an apparent concession, ironically the main result of the uprising was the confirmation in power of the hardliners and Ulbricht himself. Herrnstadt and Zaisser were removed from their positions in the Politburo, and in January 1954 they were expelled from the SED for ‘factionalism’. This was made easier by the downfall of their supporter in Moscow, Beria. The Justice Minister, Max Fechner, who had been inclined to lenience towards the strikers, was removed from his position on 16 July, and harsh sentences were imposed on many ‘ringleaders’ who were convicted on political charges (since there was under the GDR’s first constitution a right to strike). In the course of the following months the SED was purged throughout its ranks, with the denunciation of approximately twenty thousand functionaries and fifty thousand ordinary members as ‘provocateurs’. Former Social Democrats were particularly affected in this way.
There were still challenges to Ulbricht’s views in the course of the 1950s. Ulbricht himself had considerable difficulty with the destalinization initiated in Eastern Europe by Khrushchev’s speech at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. In the end, he was again more or less saved by another uprising – this time in Hungary. In the context of political instability elsewhere in Eastern Europe, it seemed too risky to the Soviet leadership to open the opportunity of destabilization in the GDR by a change of leadership there.
Ulbricht also had to deal with a number of individuals and groups in the GDR who hoped for a real destalinization and liberalization of East German socialism. A curious and eclectic set of political demands from a group of critical Marxists associated with Wolfgang Harich was published in 1956. Their programme implied a general liberalization and democratization and even, in the context of possible reunification with West Germany, suggested that the SED would have to step down in favour of the SPD if this were the democratic majority will of the people in free all-German elections. Harich was himself in communication both with the West German SPD and the Polish reform communists. Ulbricht was understandably less than enthusiastic about Harich’s proposals and activities, and Harich was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment (but released in 1964 after an apparent change of heart). His associates received varying lesser sentences. Politics as such was not the only area in which Ulbricht had to contend with vocal, explicit differences of opinion. Fritz Behrens, Arne Benary and other revisionist economists were advocating economic reforms implying decentralization. They too were at this time attacked and silenced (although some of their ideas were subsequently resurrected in the New Economic System of the 1960s). Finally, in 1958, certain rivals or opponents of Ulbricht in the Central Committee and Politburo – Karl Schirdewan, Ernst Wollweber, Gerhart Ziller, Fritz Selbmann, Paul Wandel and Fred Oelssner – were removed. By the end of the 1950s Ulbricht had effectively consolidated his political hold and eradicated the presence of ‘Third Way’, humanistic Marxists, at least from the higher echelons of the SED.14
Ulbricht had not, however, gained the kind of pragmatic support among the population that was evident in Adenauer’s Germany. The differences were partly political, partly economic. People resented the repression, the existence of the security police, the harsh measures imposed on those with differences of political opinion, the constraints on the activities of Christians, the uniform worldview which was being inculcated in the schools and the media, the sense of fear and the pressures towards conformity in every area of life which necessitated the continuous leading of a double life (to which many Germans had become all too accustomed, in different ways, under the Nazi regime). At the same time, there were few material advantages to be enjoyed in the GDR, particularly for skilled people who could potentially be high earners in the West. The East German concentration on heavy industrial production rather than on consumer goods, and the extraordinary difficulties experienced in transforming and centralizing the economy, led to difficulties in the supply and quality of basic necessities such as food and clothing. People simply did not like the standard of living in the GDR in the 1950s, particularly in comparison with the ever-improving living conditions in West Germany.
Throughout the 1950s there were attempts at central state control of the economy launched via major ‘plans’ on the Soviet model. These were perpetually being subjected to revision in order that at least some measure of fulfilment might be seen to have been achieved. There were numerous problems associated with central planning. The aim in industry was the production of quantity, with little concern for the quality – or saleability – of goods. Prices were fixed, in order to aid planning, and did not represent any true measure of supply and demand. The time lag of plans meant that they were generally out-of-date before they were implemented; and the one-year focus of plan-fulfilment meant that managers would either produce ‘soft’ plans that were easily ‘over fulfilled’, or, if difficulties were experienced in fulfilling a plan, use up stock and not replace capital equipment in order to achieve the appropriate balance at the end of the year. The lack of managerial responsibility for investment also led to a wastefulness in the use of resources.
Initially the emphasis was, in line with the Soviet Union, on heavy capital goods industries. Following the death of Stalin in 1953 and the introduction of the ‘New Course’ under Malenkov, there was in theory a shift towards greater consumer orientation in production (also related to the impact of the 1953 Uprising). However, in 1954 the New Course was abandoned in the USSR, and the GDR now adopted the dual aim of combining consumer orientation with the production of capital goods. The need for greater inter-regional specialization within the COMECON states was recognized, and reflected in the second Five Year Plan announced for 1956–60. However, considerable problems were experienced in the reorientation of the East German economy towards its eastern neighbours and partners. The Five Year Plan was abandoned, and a Seven Year Plan was announced for 1959–65 to synchronize the GDR’s economic development with that of the USSR. The end of the 1950s actually saw an upturn in the GDR’s economy, coinciding with a brief period of economic difficulty in the Federal Republic. The GDR now proudly proclaimed that its goal was to overtake the West Germans in material as well as moral terms. It was even suggested that those considering flight to the West would be better off staying in the East. However, the beginning of the 1960s saw renewed economic problems, and the Seven Year Plan had been dropped by the summer of 1962. A second Seven Year Plan was announced for 1962–70, but was never enacted, as other developments intervened (on which more below).
The 1950s also witnessed the collectivization of East German agriculture. In 1952–3 agricultural production co-operatives (Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften, LPGs) were set up. Initially, only the land was tilled together, and use was made of machine and tractor-lending stations. (These were known as ‘Type I’ collectives.) By 1959 LPGs accounted for about 45 per cent of the agricultural sector. In 1959–60 there was a further wave of enforced collectivization, raising the proportion of co-operative farms to about 85 per cent. By the end of the 1960s most co-operatives were of the so-called Type III, where there was total collectivization including livestock and machinery. Initial collectivization of agriculture was associated with decreased productivity. Just as the first wave of collectivization was associated with economic and ultimately political problems in 1952–3, so the second wave in 1960 saw the flight of farmers to the West, and of townspeople as the food position worsened, necessitating the reintroduction of rationing in 1961.
Plate 5 West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer looks uncomfortable on a visit to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, in August 1961, a week after the Berlin Wall was erected.
There was still one simple means for people to escape from East Germany, provided that they did not want to take too much by way of possessions: they could travel to East Berlin, proceed to West Berlin and then leave for West Germany from there. Figures of refugees adopting this route varied from year to year, with particularly bad figures in years of economic crisis, as in the wake of the rapid collectivization of agriculture in 1959–60. Up to 1961 an estimated three and a half million people left the GDR for the West (with a counter-traffic of perhaps half a million, implying a net loss to the GDR of three million). Given the predominantly skilled, educated nature of these refugees – who, according to some surveys, gave economic considerations and better material and career prospects in the West as their primary motives for leaving – it was a drain of talent and labour that the postwar economy of the GDR could ill sustain. It served only to exacerbate the problems which were also the main cause of the haemorrhage. In 1961 Ulbricht terminated this flow with the building of the Berlin Wall. On 13 August 1961 Berliners stood amazed and aghast as barbed wire, bricks and concrete rapidly divided their streets, and neighbours and families living only a few yards from each other were separated as finally and effectively as if they had been resident in Moscow and Washington. The building of the Wall was an admission that the population had to be contained by a form of national house arrest, imprisonment within its own country; but also, in some ways, it created the conditions for a subsequent process of coming to terms with, and finding an acceptable way of life in, that country. From 1961 there were very clearly two Germanies; and, with such different political and economic structures, they increasingly grew apart in their social and cultural patterns also. The 1960s proved to be a decade of divergence and inner transformation in East and West Germany alike.