Union Ostpolitik from Adenauer to the Grand Coalition

The postwar German politicians who chose to label themselves Christian Democrats emerged from diverse political, religious, and geographic backgrounds. But this ideological "patchwork" had several strong common threads—above all a desire to expunge the legacy of Nazism by creating new political and economic structures infused with traditional Christian values. Though most early movement leaders and supporters were drawn from the old pre-1933 Catholic Center party, they appealed successfully for Cooperation between Germany's two long-divided Christian communities.

Early on, however, tension developed between those who wanted to let the Christian Democratic Union's initial burst of idealism propel it to political success and those with a more pragmatic bent. Many of the former, led by Jakob Kaiser, Ernst Lemmer, and Karl Arnold—men from the Catholic trade union movement in the Rhineland and Berlin—advocated a Christian "third way" between capitalism and communism, making Germany, socially and politically, a "bridge" between East and West. The CDU's Aahlen program of 1947 partly reflected this stream of thought. But the "Christian socialists" were handicapped because much of their grass-roots strength was in the Soviet-occupied zone, which quickly underwent Stalinization.

Moreover, they were outmaneuvered by Catholic Cologne's former mayor, Konrad Adenauer, who—though a cofounder of the new Christian Democratic Union—was skeptical of the Christian third way and aimed to transform Germany into a bastion of anticommunism. A master of sharp polemics and the ironic witticism, a tireless campaigner and stubbornly patient bargainer, this aging Rhinelander allied with south German conservatives against the trade union and Berlin wings of his party, and quickly rose to the top of the CDU. He also became chairman of the Council established by the Western-occupying authorities to draw up a constitution for the new West German state. At the same time Adenauer brought into the CDU a man whose economic policies had already proven popular and successful—Ludwig Erhard, father of the so-called social market economy: free enterprise rather than central planning, yet with some constraints on monopolies and social welfare programs to protect against the excesses of capitalism. In 1949 Adenauer was named the party's candidate for chancellor in the first federal elections following the establishment of the new state.

After the CDU eked out a narrow victory over his archrival, Social Democratic chief Kurt Schumacher, Adenauer formed a center-right majority coalition (including the nationalistic, conservative-liberal Free Democrats) and set about building the Federal Republic. First and foremost the chancellor wanted to make his country a paragon of stability and respectability, thereby erasing the legacy of Adolf Hitler. At the same time he was determined to mold West Germany into a bulwark against Soviet communism. These goals impelled him to purge the country of those extremist viruses on the left and right that he considered potentially fatal. The chancellor also aimed at undercutting Social Democracy, which he suspected was inherently vulnerable to Subversion from the far left.

To achieve these goals, Adenauer took personal command of the new federal government, which he maintained against challengers from his party or coalition partners for at least the first ten of his nearly fifteen years as chancellor. Under his paternalistic guidance the FRG became a "chancellor democracy." With supreme self-confidence, this elderly pragmatist regarded the survival of political stability in West Germany as dependent upon his continuing ability to shape its domestic and foreign policies.

Adenauer transformed the CDU into his personal political vehicle. Its express purpose became to assure the chancellor's reelection and facilitate his governance of the country. Only the party's top elected officials in the FRG's ten separate states maintained some influence over Adenauer; thanks to the country's federalist System they retained independent power bases, and decision-making in the party to some extent remained decentralized. Yet in general the regional "barons" shared Adenauer's basic goals. Consequently, year by year the Union's original ideological momentum slowed as it took on the character of a broad electoral coalition reaching out to all classes, confessions, regions, and interest groups of the center-right. As the Union co-opted and absorbed the smaller political rivals that had represented those diverse groups, its early idealism waned and was replaced by pragmatic political objectives. Intraconfessionalism remained a major leitmotif of the CDU, but more because of its desire to attract Protestant votes in the 1950s than because of any lingering idealistic Christian impetus. In spirit the Union abandoned its search for a "Christian path" between capitalism and socialism; enough of the party's initial progressivism on social issues survived to sustain at best a modest trade union–supported Christian socialist wing.

Under Adenauer's tutelage—and thereafter—the Union was thus formally a broad church that included some social and liberal groups but was dominated by conservatives and pragmatists. This was largely due to Adenauer's success as chancellor and Erhard's as economics minister. As the Union received ever-greater credit for a flourishing social market economy, waxing world influence, and respectability, its willingness to tamper with the Status quo waned. The party's famous 1957 election slogan—"No experiments!"—expressed its growing identification with the emerging West German social and political establishment. Industrialists as well as small-scale, independent businessmen and farmers became ready adherents of the chancellor's party. Eventually the CDU established auxiliary organizations to institutionalize the representation of large corporations and smaller private firms within the party (Germany's well-organized farm lobby also maintained close ties to the CDU). With Erhard as their chief spokesman, leaders of business and industry became a dominant force in shaping CDU economic and social policy, generally—if not always—prevailing over the...