Germany: West Germany

West Germany

West Germany, 95,742 sq mi (247,973 sq km), consisted of the ten states that had been included in the U.S., British, and French occupation zones after the war. Bonn was the seat of government. The country adopted a constitution in May, 1949, to establish the Federal Republic of Germany.

The new republic was similar in structure to the Weimar Republic, except that the individual states had somewhat more power, and the president's powers were much reduced. In the first elections (Aug., 1949), the Christian Democratic party (CDU), along with its close ally, the Bavarian-centered Christian Social Union (CSU), gained a small plurality of seats in the Bundestag (Federal Diet). The CDU leader Konrad Adenauer formed a coalition government and became the first chancellor of West Germany; he remained in office until 1963. The Social Democratic party (SPD), led successively by Kurt Schumacher, Erich Ollenauer, and Willy Brandt, was the main opposition party until 1969, when it came to power. The middle-class-oriented Free Democratic party (FDP) was influential, although small, and it participated in coalition governments with both the CDU (1949–53; 1961–66, 1982–98) and the SPD (1969–82). The first president of West Germany was Theodor Heuss; he was succeeded by Heinrich Lübke (1959), Gustav Heinemann (1969), Walter Scheel (1974), Karl Carstens (1979), and Richard von Weizsäcker (1984).

The occupying powers allowed West Germany considerable autonomy from the start, except in foreign affairs. The three resident High Commissioners could review actions taken by the Bonn government, but in practice they rarely intervened. In 1951, West Germany was given the right to conduct its own foreign relations. In 1952, West Germany, the United States, France, and Great Britain signed the Bonn Convention, in effect a peace treaty, which granted West Germany most of the attributes of national sovereignty. The Paris agreements of 1954, which came into force in 1955, gave West Germany full independence, except that the former occupying powers reserved the right to negotiate with the USSR on matters relating to Berlin and to Germany as a whole. Also, the powers continued to maintain troops in the country. In 1955, West Germany was recognized as an independent country by numerous nations, including the USSR, and it became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, thus solidifying its ties with the West. In the same year, legislation was passed providing for the creation of West German armed forces.

In postwar West Germany, there were occasional, mostly minor, recurrences of anti-Semitism and extreme nationalism (e.g., the temporary growth of the nationalistic National Democratic Party in the mid-1960s); more important, however, the country tried to make up in part for the Nazi atrocities by granting considerable aid to Israel and by paying reparations to individuals who suffered loss or injury at the hands of the Nazi regime. During the 1950s, the West German economy grew dramatically; in 1958, the country became a charter member of the European Economic Community, or Common Market (now the European Union). It also gave much economic and technical assistance to the developing nations of Asia and Africa. In 1957, the Saarland was assigned to West Germany by France, after a plebiscite.

National politics in the 1950s and early 1960s were stable and were dominated by Adenauer. The CDU-CSU held firmly to the position that Germany should be reunited on the basis of democratic elections; it followed the “Hallstein doctrine” (named for Walter Hallstein, an official in the ministry of foreign affairs), under which West Germany refused to have diplomatic relations with any nation (except the USSR) that recognized East Germany. Until the 1970s, East and West Germany had virtually no contact on an official level, but there was considerable trade between them.

Later in 1963, Adenauer retired and was replaced as chancellor by Ludwig Erhard, also a Christian Democrat and an expert on economics. Erhard's government was shaken by a downturn in the economic boom and by controversy over foreign policy. In 1966, Erhard resigned and was replaced by Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a Christian Democrat, who headed a “grand coalition” of the CDU-CSU and the SPD; SPD leader Willy Brandt assumed the posts of vice chancellor and foreign minister. Under Kiesinger, economic conditions improved, ties with France were strengthened, and talks with the nations of Eastern Europe (with whom West Germany did not have diplomatic relations) were initiated.

The general election of 1969 resulted in a small plurality for the CDU-CSU, but Brandt was able to become chancellor at the head of an SPD-FDP coalition government. In the 1972 general election the coalition was returned to power with a substantial majority. Brandt launched a major program, called the Ostpolitik [eastern policy], to improve relations with Eastern Europe. Important milestones in the Ostpolitik were the signing (1970) of treaties of nonaggression and cooperation with the Soviet Union and Poland (ratified in 1972); the signing (1972) of an agreement among the four former occupying powers improving access to West Berlin and permitting West Berliners to visit East Berlin and East Germany more often; and a treaty (1973) between East and West Germany that called for increased cooperation between the two states and prepared the groundwork for the establishment of full diplomatic relations. West Germany was admitted to the United Nations in 1973, after having held permanent observer status since 1953.

Brandt resigned in May, 1974, after it was revealed that an East German spy had been on his personal staff. He was succeeded by Helmut Schmidt, the finance minister. A deteriorating economic situation caused a decline in the popularity of the government and increasing tension between the coalition partners. The emergence in 1980 of the new ecology party, the Greens, significantly changed West Germany's politics. Schmidt's support of NATO policies of European rearmament brought him into conflict with the left wing of his own party. In local elections in 1981 and 1982, the SPD-FDP coalition suffered severe setbacks. Disputes over nuclear power, defense policy, and economic measures continued to divide the parties, and in 1982, the FDP withdrew from the coalition.

On Oct. 1, 1982, Schmidt was replaced as chancellor by the CDU leader Helmut Kohl, and the FDP agreed to form a coalition with the CDU-CSU. The Kohl government brought about a rightward swing in support of the policies of the NATO alliance and toward more conservative economic principles. Kohl supported the continued presence of NATO forces and nuclear weapons on German soil. He also, however, consistently tried to broaden political relations between the West and the Soviet bloc. In 1983 and 1984 the government experienced a series of domestic crises, including labor strikes and massive demonstrations by the country's antinuclear movement. The governing coalition retained power by a slim majority in the 1987 general elections.

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