CONFLICTING VISIONS OF GERMANY’S FUTURE

• In September 1944 U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau secured FDR’s approval for a plan to partition and “de-industrialize” Germany. He also urged the summary execution of all war criminals. Stalin held similar ideas.

• Secretary of War Henry Stimson protested that German industry must be revived for the sake of Europe’s economic recovery, and that top German officials should receive a fair trial by an International Military Tribunal.

• JCS 1067 of April 26, 1945: “It should be brought home to the Germans that Germany’s ruthless warfare …has destroyed the German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable and that Germans cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves. Germany will not be occupied for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation.”

War propaganda conflated Nazism and Prussian militarism

Residents of Aachen flee a bombed-out

neighborhood, December 1944

“Through the streets, beggar-like,

We go thanks to the Nazi Reich”

(placard by Oskar Pfeiffer, Cologne,

1945)

A G.I. distributes candy to German children in 1945

The Potsdam Conference, July 1945:Clement Attlee, Harry Truman, and Stalin

They agreed on the Four D’s in the Potsdam Accord:DenazificationDemocratizationDemilitarizationDecartelization

Occupation zones for Germany, Austria, &

Berlin:Poland

received the mostly

German provinces of Lower Silesia & Pomerania

Some of the 12.5 million German refugees from Eastern Europe

Sudeten Germans assembled in Prague, July 20, 1945,awaiting deportation to Germany

GI’s were shocked when they liberated concentration camps: Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, & Patton view the bodies of camp inmates in Ohrdruf on April 12,

1945

A German woman sobs as American soldiers force her to view

corpses

The standard daily ration for a German adultin autumn 1945 only averaged 1,000 calories

“26 million dead are

accusing! In Nuremberg there is a

reckoning!”

The historic city of Nuremberg in the summer of 1945

Opening session of the Nuremberg Trial, November 20, 1945

THE INDICTMENT AT NUREMBERG

1. Crimes against peace (based on the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928).

2. Crimes of war (as defined by the Hague Convention on the Rules of Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention of 1929).

3. Crimes against humanity: participation in mass murder, the use of slave labor, or the suppression of religion (an unprecedented charge under international law).

“Duress” was acknowledged as a legitimate defense, but NOT the mere receipt of orders from a superior.

Tu quoque arguments (“but you did it too!”) were forbidden.

Defendants’ benches at the Nuremberg Trial, September 1945

VICTORS’ JUSTICE?THE NUREMBERG VERDICTS

Sentenced to death:

Göring, Ribbentrop, Gen. Keitel, Gen. Jodl, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Frick, Seyss-Inquart, Fritz Sauckel, Bormann [in absentia], Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hans Frank, and Julius Streicher

Life imprisonment:

Walter Funk, Rudolf Hess, Admiral Raeder

Prison terms of 10 to 20 years:

Albert Speer, Baldur von Schirach, Konstantin von Neurath, Admiral Dönitz

Acquitted (over Soviet protest):

Franz von Papen, Hjalmar Schacht, Hans Fritzsche (Propaganda Ministry)

German Denazification Committee, Berlin, 1946

The U.S., British, & French occupations

banned any government jobs for ex-Nazis and

collected 6.7 million of these questionnaires. Military tribunals convicted 5,000

German war criminals and executed 486, while another

50,000 Germans stood trial in

formerly occupied countries

REVIVING DEMOCRACY IN OCCUPIED GERMANY

1945: The old SPD and KPD revive; Catholics & Protestants found a new Christian Democratic Union (CDU); and liberals found a small Free Democratic Party (FDP).

1945: New, unified, nonpartisan industrial unions emerge.1946: The Western Allies organize democratic municipal

elections; in their zone, the Soviets force the SPD & KPD to merge in the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

1947: The Western Allies allow democratic state elections.1948: The British and American zones merge in Bizonia,

with a new currency and no price controls; the Soviets retaliate by blockading Berlin.

1949: Foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and German Democratic Republic (GDR).

THE NEW STATES OF 1947:

Schleswig-HolsteinHamburg

Lower SaxonyBremen

North Rhine-Westphalia

Rhineland-PalatinateHesse

Baden-WürttembergBavaria

SPD chair Kurt Schumacher

(1895-1952):Combat veteran of

the Great War; beaten and abused

in concentration camps from 1933 to 1945

SCHUMACHER’S PROGRAM FOR A POST-MARXIST SPD

The SPD must transform itself from a “class party” for blue-collar workers into a “people’s party” with appeal for intellectuals, white-collar workers, small business, and idealistic Christians.All large-scale industry must be nationalized. Businessmen accepted democracy in England and the USA, but in Germany, “democracy will be socialist, or there will be none at all,” because German capitalists “always feel compelled to convert their money into political power and use it against democracy and peace.”The SPD should stand up for the legitimate rights of the German nation. Its worst mistake in the Weimar Republic had been to allow the Right to monopolize legitimate indignation against the Versailles Treaty.

“Forward, SPD, for a free Germany”

(1949):What is wrong with

this map?

The “Industrial Union for Mining” demands the nationalization of the coal mines at its Recklinghausen Congress in 1948

“The Union: The Gathering of all

Christians on the Political Level”

(CDU campaign poster, 1946)

“Christian Democratic Union:

All strength for reconstruction”(North Rhine-

Westphalia, 1946)

PIUS XI,QUADRAGESIMO ANNO (1931)

“Solidarity” – Christians are obliged to combat poverty“Subsidiarity” – Social problems should be addressed first by the smallest social unit that can solve them. Only when the family fails should local government step in; only when local government fails, should state government get involved; and only when state governments fail, should the federal government get involved.

CHAMPIONS OF “SOCIALISM AS OUR CHRISTIAN DUTY”

Karl Arnold (1901-1958), PM of North Rhine-

Westphalia (1947-1956)

Jakob Kaiser (1888-1961); chair of Berlin CDU, 1946;

FRG cabinet minister, 1949-57

Jakob Kaiser was a Christian trade unionist and hero of the Resistance, close to Carl Goerdeler:

His Gestapo mug shots, October 1938

Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), Mayor of Cologne

(1917-1933), German Chancellor (1949-1963)

CHAMPIONS OF THE “SOCIAL MARKET ECONOMY”(as demanded in the CDU Düsseldorf Guidelines of

1948) Ludwig Erhard (1897-1977),

Minister of Economics (1949-63), Chancellor

(1963-66)

The CDU’s diverging demands in 1946:

Stuttgart: “Free Trade with the countries of the

world”

Berlin: “Christianity, Democracy, Socialism”

Konrad Adenauer confers with Hans Böckler founder of the German Labor Federation (DGB), 1946/47

The Marshall Plan as the wind in Europe’s sails

(West Germany, 1950):

The European Recovery Program

was launched in June 1947 and

invested $11 billion to revive European

industry

The first U.S. CARE package is delivered toa German family in Bremen, November 1947

The occupation powers in the three western zones gave 40 new Deutsche Marks to every

citizen on June 21, 1948. The stores proclaimed: “New currency… New

Prices!”

An American “raisin bomber” is greeted by thankful West Berliners at the height of the Soviet blockade in October 1948

“Up to Here: Democracy and Peaceful Reconstruction.Over There: Dictatorship, Warmongering, Collapse”

(Cold War tensions in Berlin, 30 April 1949)

Prime Minister Karl Arnold (Northrhine-Westphalia, CDU) addresses the Parliamentary Council, Bonn, September

1, 1948

THE TONE OF THE FRG’S FIRST ELECTION CAMPAIGN WAS EXTREMELY BITTER

“Broken Glass Brings Good Luck!”

(cartoon, 1949):Schumacher alleged that

Adenauer was the candidate of the

Allies and the Pope.Adenauer alleged

that the Social Democrats were

the dupes of Stalin.

OUTCOME OF THE FIRSTWEST GERMAN ELECTION, August 14, 1949

(voter turnout=78.5%)

PARTY SHARE

CDU/CSU (including Bavarian Christian Social Union)

31.0%

SPD (Social Democratic) 29.2%

FDP (Free Democratic) 11.9%

KPD (Communist) 5.7%

Bavarian Party (particularist) 4.2%

German Party (Hanoverian nationalist)

4.0%

Center Party (Catholic confessional) 3.1%

German Conservative Party 1.8%The CDU formed a government coalition with the FDP and German Party.

President Theodor Heuss (FDP) swears in Konrad Adenauer (CDU) as the first Chancellor of the

Federal Republic of Germany, September 1949

The East German “People’s Congress” proclaims the foundation of the German Democratic Republic in

October 1949, while Young Pioneers sing praises of Stalin

“BONN IS NOT WEIMAR!”FACTORS IN THE SUCCESS OF THE FRG

1. Unprecedented rates of economic growth throughout Europe in the 1950s (i.e., good macroeconomic luck).

2. U.S. occupation policy, which pruned the garden of West German democracy.

3. A “Basic Law” superior to the Weimar constitution.

4. The learning process among German politicians and voters, especially in the SPD and CDU.

5. The emergence of a unified German Labor Federation and abolition of state labor arbitration.

6. The destruction of the old social hierarchy in the Second World War and enhanced social mobility.