Contemporary Germany

Essays and Texts on Politics, Economics & Society

Mark Allinson, Jeremy Leaman, Stuart Parkes, Barbara Tolkiehn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780582357143
• eBook ISBN: 9781317879763
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Designed for combined Language and Social Science 2nd and 3rd year courses on Germany found in departments of, German, Politics, Modern Language and European Studies. This book charts the post-war development of Germany - East & West - through to reunification and Germany's evolving role in world politics and economics. It combines a concise yet comprehensive introduction in English to contemporary German politics, society & economics with extensive authentic extracts from German language publications backed up with specially developed language exercises

Part I

German Politics Since 1945: From Division to Divided Unity

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Mark Allinson

Introduction

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In the beginning was Hitler. Although his death on 30 April 1945 and the unconditional surrender of his system a few days later were the vital prerequisites for the start of a new politics in postwar Germany, Hitler’s presence hung eerily over Germany for decades after 1945, shaping the contours of political life in two quite different German states. In both the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), established in the western part of the defeated Reich’s in May 1949, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), created in defiant response in what remained of Germany’s eastern provinces a few months later, the patterns of political life were principally dictated by an overwhelming desire to enshrine democracy and ensure that Germany should never again threaten world peace. This aim was shared not only by the victorious allied powers (the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France), but by German democrats of all political leanings, who emerged from internal exile and from the concentration camps of the Third Reich to rebuild and defend democracy for the future. Under the shock of defeat and the revelations of the Nazis’ crimes, for a brief period these German politicians spontaneously developed something approaching a consensus. The two imperatives on which this rested were antifascism and considerations of broadly socialist principles, both designed to render impossible any return to national socialism. One thing was clear: there was to be no repeat of the ‘democracy without democrats’, the ‘republic without republicans’ which had existed before the Third Reich. All recognised the importance of remedying the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic, which had emerged from Germany’s defeat in 1918. The Weimar Republic, Germany’s first attempt at democracy and named after the town in which the new constitution was agreed in 1919, failed to lay down firm foundations and to gain general acceptance. Its politicians had placed party above the national interest despite the serious financial burdens placed on Germany after her defeat in World War One, and much of the population attached the blame for these difficulties on democracy itself. After fifteen years of almost uninterrupted crisis, the Weimar Republic finally gave way to dictatorial and criminal government under Hitier in 1933.

In 1945, while the goals and aims were common to all who rejected Hider, disagreements arose over how to achieve them. The old fault lines of German politics quickly re-emerged between communists and social democrats, and between Christian politicians and the left wing. More seriously still, the term ‘democracy’ meant different things to the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, and the American president, Harry Truman. The two men were divided by incompatible ideologies, communism in the Soviet Union and liberal market capitalism in the United States, and each was keen to impose on defeated Germany a political system which accorded with his own principles. The two superpowers also had differing security imperatives. Germany’s size and central location had economic and demographic significance to both sides in the developing Cold War. Following a surrender which robbed her of sovereign power, Germany fell prey to a physical and ideological division which was a miniature version of that in the wider world, and which could only end when the Cold War itself was over.

However, Germany’s division was not merely a reflection of the gulf between the superpowers. Within the framework of the Cold War, German politicians themselves contributed to the deepening divisions. Those who essentially wished to return to the status quo ante and to promote traditional German values lined up behind the western powers and built in the Federal Republic a state which, while fundamentally and stably democratic, displayed many lines of continuity with aspects of Germany’s past. Meanwhile, those (not just communists) who believed that fundamental change was required in Germany’s political and economic structures to avert a return to the nightmare of national socialism, saw their chance to build this new Germany with the backing of the Soviet Union in the GDR.

Each half of Germany displayed a mix of sincerity and optimism in its own political path, and often bigoted prejudice against the other side. Indeed, this geographically entrenched partition between the traditional, conservative and the reformist, socialist outlooks contributed to the long-term stability of both postwar German states. In the Weimar Republic these incompatible and fairly evenly matched forces had been unable to find a modus vivendi, and the divisions between them had undermined faith in the democratic republic; after 1945, however, these two sides were no longer forced to coexist within one state, but instead faced each other off across a fortified border, with the support, respectively, of the world superpowers. This is not to say that opposition to the prevailing political ideology did not exist in either state – it did, even though the nature of the GDR’s political structures often forced it underground in the east. However, the two states and their rulers repelled each other as effectively as any magnets and this mutual antagonism confirmed the political line of each.

By 1990, the GDR, its planned economy and its Soviet guardian had collapsed, and most east Germans had abandoned Marxism-Leninism as a viable ideology. Yet despite the unification of the two German states in 1990, which seemed to herald the end of the postwar era, and the election defeat in 1998 of Chancellor Kohl, a man indelibly marked by the legacy of the Second World War, Hitler clearly still casts his long shadow as the Federal Republic’s establishment and its principal political parties defend the domestic political settiement which produced them three generations ago. Although many Germans fear losing their own currency, and despite a revived nationalism in Germany and many other European states which gains in support and extremism as the European Union increases its role, in foreign policy, too, the Federal Republic remains committed to the ideal of European community and union mapped out in the late 1940s as a means of removing the danger of war between the European nations.

In domestic affairs, unification has presented new challenges to the Federal Republic’s constitutional order. Political extremism on both the right and left has been exacerbated by the FRG’s political and economic failure fully to digest the eastern provinces it gained from the collapse of the GDR in 1990, or to overcome the fault lines entrenched during forty years of division. A sense of political instability has been heightened both by a desire, particularly in the east, for a new form of politics, and by a deepening frustration with the often self- imposed restrictions placed on Germany’s ability to stride the world stage as a diplomatic and military power since the end of the Second World War. Inevitably, even well over half a century after Hitler’s death, the spectre of upheaval in Germany is a constant source of worry to her neighbours.

Yet the long shadow which the past casts over German public life ensures that Germany’s political structures remain essentially stable and are unlikely to produce any major upheavals, despite the difficulties of unification. In this chapter we shall explore in more detail the contours of Germany’s division in the Cold War and the political heritage of the Federal Republic outlined above.

Dividing Germany

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Before considering the structures and development of the two German states between their creation in 1949 and unification in 1990, we must look in more detail at the forces which divided Germany in the first place.

The framework which allowed Germany’s political division to occur within geographically distinct zones emerged from allied decisions which reflected the military situation at the end of the Second World War. The United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain were each allotted a zone of occupation which corresponded approximately to the area each conquered during 1944–45. Additionally, France was granted a smaller zone in the south west. Given the importance of the capital, Berlin, the city was carved into four occupation sectors. Following Germany’s unconditional surrender, by July 1945 each ally had total control over its own occupation zone and sector of Berlin, enabling the western powers to develop an institutional framework in western Berlin and the western zones of Germany which incorporated their own democratic values, while the Red Army’s officers implemented a political order in the Soviet zone and east...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• List of Texts
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I German Politics Since 1945: From Division to Divided Unity
• Part II The Postwar German Economy
• Part III German Society
• Chronology
• Index