f.3 hist urgent

After 1945 only one part of Germany had a chance to give democracy a second go, namely West Germany. In 1948/9, representatives of the freely elected parliaments of the federal states in the American, British and French zones of occupation met in the Parliamentary Council in Bonn and devised a constitution that drew logical conclusions from the mistakes made in preparing the Reich Constitution of 1919 and the failure of the Weimar Republic: The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. This second German democracy was to be a functioning parliamentary democracy with a strong Federal Chancellor, who could only be toppled by a “constructive vote of no confidence”, i.e., by a successor being voted, and a Federal President who played a nominal role only. As opposed to Weimar days, parallel legislative powers for the people were not envisaged. The Basic Law put a shot across the bows of any self- confessed opponents of democracy, by stating that the fight for basic rights and a ban on political parties that were not in line with the constitution would be taken as far as the Federal Constitutional Court. The principles of the state were given very strong foundations by making it impossible even for a majority vote to change the constitution, rendering the “legal” elimination of democracy, as in 1933, impossible.

While the West of Germany drew “anti-totalitarian” conclusions from the most recent German history, the East, that is the Soviet zone of occupation and later East Germany, had to put up with “anti-fascist” consequences. These served to legitimize a Marxist-Leninist-influenced party dictatorship. The break with the principles of Nazi rule was to be achieved primarily through class struggle, by dispossessing large landowners and industrialists. Former Nazi “supporters”, by contrast, were to be allowed to prove their worth to society by helping “build socialism”. Once the process of “denazification” had been completed, in East Germany former Nazi party officials also managed to occupy leading positions. They were, however, fewer and their cases less spectacular than in West Germany.

In retrospect, had it not been for the Economic miracle in the 1950s and 1960s, the longest boom period in the 20th century, there could hardly have been talk of a success story with regard to West Germany. The booming economy gave legitimacy to the model of a social market economy promulgated by Ludwig Erhard, the first Federal Economics Minister by virtue of its success. It enabled the swift integration of the eight million displaced persons from the former Eastern territories of the German Reich, the Sudetenland and other areas of East and Southeast Europe.

It made a decisive contribution to class and religious differences being eliminated, to the attraction of radical parties being curbed, and to the major democratic parties, initially the Christian Democrat (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), followed by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) becoming major popular parties. With regard to politics and social mores, however, there was also a different side to this prosperity: It made it easier for many citizens of West Germany neither to ask themselves searching questions about their own role in the years between 1933 and 1945, nor to let others ask them about it. The philosopher Hermann Lübbe referred to this approach to recent history as “communicative refusing to mention” (and judged it to be necessary in the stabilizing of West German democracy).....

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