earlier warning of its inevitability caused officials to reconsider his
suitability. In February 1942, he was arrested by Swedish authorities
and charged with “endangerment of Swedish freedom and neutral-
ity.” His defense—that through underground contacts he was laying
the groundwork for a popular revolt in Germany against the Hitler
regime—found little credence with the Stockholm court, and he was
sentenced to one year of hard labor. He was also banned from the
KPD in June 1942 on grounds of treason.
Following his release from an internment camp in July 1944 and
later resettlement in Hamburg, Wehner broke with his communist
past and joined forces with the SPD. Supported by party chair Kurt
Schumacher, he was elected to the first West German parliament in
1949 and, by the end of the next decade, was considered the SPD’s
chief tactician, popularly known as Uncle Herbert. Particularly note-
worthy was his role in the formulation of the Bad Godesberg Pro-
gram of 1959, which called for a less doctrinaire and more pragmatic
approach to political and economic issues, and his speech endorsing
the entry of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the North At-
lantic Treaty Organization. More than any other politician, he moved
the party toward participation in the Grand Coalition of 1966–1969,
in which he served as minister for all-German affairs, and then
helped secure the SPD’s first electoral victory in 1969.
Angered by Wehner’s reversal of political course, the leadership of
the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had launched an intensive
disinformation campaign by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit
(MfS) as early as 1951. Under the operational name wotan, these
attacks on his integrity focused primarily on his wartime activities in
Sweden. According to various articles that appeared in the GDR press,
his fear of returning to Germany had led him to engineer his own arrest,
and he had then revealed the names of German antifascists who were
later executed. A key figure in the anti-Wehner campaign was Hans
Frederik, whose book on Wehner—Gekenntzeichnet vom Zwielicht
seiner Zeit (Marked by the Twilight of His Time)—appeared just prior
to the 1969 elections and became widely read in the FRG, reinforcing
the suspicions that many conservatives already harbored toward the ex-
communist minister.
In May 1973, Wehner met with East German leader Erich Honecker
as part of his efforts to improve relations according to the new policy
WEHNER, HERBERT • 485