Table Of ContentPOLITICS AFTER HITLER
STUDIES IN MODERN HISTORY
General Editor: J.C.D. Clark, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
Published titles
Doron Ben-Atar, THE ORIGINS OF JEFFERSONIAN COMMERCIAL
POLICY AND DIPLOMACY
Conal Condren, THE LANGUAGE OF POLITICS IN SEVENTEENTH-
CENTURY ENGLAND
Cadoc Leighton, CATHOLICISM IN A PROTESTANT KINGDOM: A
Study of the Irish Ancien Regime
Cecilia Miller, GIAMBATTISTA VICO: Imagination and Historical
Knowledge
Marjorie Morgan: MANNERS, MORALS AND CLASS IN ENGLAND,
1774-1858
Dermot Quinn, PATRONAGE AND PIETY: The Politics of English
Roman Catholicism, 185O-1900
Daniel E. Rogers, POLITICS AFTER HITLER: The Western Allies and
the German Party System
M.N.S. Sellers, AMERICAN REPUBLICANISM: Roman Ideology in the
United States Constitution
Jim Smyth, THE MEN OF NO PROPERTY: Irish Radicals and Popular
Politics in Late-Eighteenth-Century England
Politics after Hitler
The Western Allies and the German
Party System
Daniel E. Rogers
Assistant Professor of History
University of South Alabama, Mobile
MACMILLAN
© Daniel E. Rogers 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995 978-0-333-62815-7
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First published 1995 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
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and London
Companies and representatives
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ISBN 978-1-349-39359-6 ISBN 978-0-230-37995-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230379954
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95
To my parents, Claire and Emmett Rogers
Contents
List of Figures viii
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
1 Allied Occupation and German Political Party Tradition:
Preconditions for a Revival 1
2 Crafting a Party System: The Return of German Party
Politics and the Beginning of Licensing Regimes 20
3 In Fear of Reaction: Restraining the Rise of a Far Right 49
4 In Fear of Revolution: Confronting the Communist
Parties 73
5 In Fear of a Greater Germany 104
6 In Fear of Fragmenting Stability: Limiting the Splinter
Parties 119
7 Conclusion 139
Notes and References 144
Bibliography 183
Index 200
vn
List of Figures
1.1 Organization of the United States Military Government in
Germany and its regulation of political parties, 1945-1949 4
1.2 Organization of the British Military Government in Germany
and its regulation of political parties, 1945-1949 8
1.3 Organization of the French Military Government in Germany
and its regulation of political parties, 1945-1949 11
7.1 Major party percentage of vote in the former occupation zones
of Germany, 1946-1957 (CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP, KPD) 141
7.2 Parties represented in the Bundestag, 1949-1991 143
vm
Preface
In August 1949, West Germans elected the first parliament for the Federal
Republic of Germany. This Bundestag would prove the cornerstone of a
new, successful, and liberal democracy, one that supplanted both the
political immaturity of four years of foreign occupation and the discord,
fragmentation, instability and downright confusion of the Weimar Republic,
Germany's earlier, failed experiment with parliamentary democracy.
Historians and political scientists have advanced dozens of reasons for the
striking contrast between the moderation and the stability of the party
system of the Federal Republic and the disarray of Weimar. The reasons
range from the psychological effects of Germany's destruction and defeat in
the Second World War, to new electoral laws, to a discrediting of extremist
politicians in the Nazi era.1 Only rarely have scholars advanced American,
British and French intervention in Germany after World War II as a major
cause.2 This scholarly reluctance is understandable: since a three-party
system did not entrench itself in West Germany until the late 1950s, it
makes little sense - on the surface - to think that anything the Allies did
before 1949, when their full occupation rights ended, could have produced
the salutary effects. This view, though superficially appealing, cannot stand
up to the results of long research in Allied and German archives.
That research reveals the Western Allies3 limiting the German party
system for four years neither by prior design nor by accident, but by
consistent reaction to certain fears they held about the future of Germany
if they did not properly establish Germany's political order. This book is
about those fears, how the Germans evoked them, and how the Allies then
reacted to limit the partly system. The Allies may not have known exactly
what kind of political party system they wanted, but they certainly did
know what they did not want.
The thesis of this book is that the Allies, fearful of reaction, revolution,
nationalism and fragmentation, reacted to German political initiatives by
limiting the incipient political party system to fewer and more moderate
parties than would have otherwise arisen. At the very least, Allied
interference simplified German voters' choices. Had the Allies not
restrained politics, a multitude of parties would have confronted the
voters. Many of these parties would have lacked the political moderation
the Allies thought desirable, for the occupation era gave Germany a
chance for total political renewal. It provided an intellectual hothouse in
which ideas about a new Germany combined with hundreds of notions
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