Western Europe was doing. The most significant
feature of the Federal Republic’s condition, how-
ever, has proved to be its stability in difficult times.
Unlike the Germans under Weimar, the vast
majority of today’s electorate have no wish for
radical change. The new SPD leader, Hans-Jochen
Vogel, moved his party slightly to the left but
failed to capture the Green constituency. The new
protest party, the Greens, who made their debut
in 1979 and won an astonishing 5.6 per cent of
the vote, giving them twenty-seven seats in the
Bundestag, represent a mixture of left-wing causes
and concern for the environment. They struck a
genuine chord and on environmental issues con-
tinue to exert a wholesome influence, despite their
eccentric behaviour in and out of parliament and
their lack of unity. They have added a refreshing
touch to the rather staid and mature demo-
cratic republic that West Germany has thankfully
become. Extremism failed to win sufficient elec-
toral votes to gain any seats. Terrorism remained a
worrying feature of social life, but in one form
or other it had become common throughout
Western Europe, the Middle East and many
regions of the world.
Kohl’s chief problem was to satisfy Franz Josef
Strauss, his CSU coalition partner and prime
minister of Bavaria, who on most social issues
stood well to his right. Genscher wished to retain
the Foreign Ministry and was to become almost
a permanent holder of the office, but Strauss also
wanted to become foreign minister. In the end
Kohl got the upper hand and Strauss was
thwarted – but he had no other home to go to.
The two issues dominating the administration
from 1983 to 1987 were the economy and East–
West relations, which centred on the stationing of
nuclear missiles in the Federal Republic to match
the Soviet build-up and, it was hoped, pave the
way to comprehensive disarmament on both
sides. But for a while another unexpected polit-
ical development, the Flick affair, overshadowed
politics at home and worryingly raised questions
about the health of Germany’s democracy. A
large group of companies was controlled by a
senior manager of the Flick concern. He was
accused of bribing the CDU, SPD and FDP
parties and individual politicians. The FDP
economics minister Count Otto Lambsdorff had
to resign in June 1984, as did the chairman of
the CDU and the speaker of the Bundestag after
accusations of involvement. But, on the positive
side, economic recovery began in 1984 and con-
tinued steadily until 1987. Inflation fell to its
lowest rate in decades; in 1986 there was none at
all. Exports boomed and the trade surplus grew
larger. For the great majority in work all this
promised continued stable prosperity. But the
black spot was unemployment, which hardly
improved. Nine per cent of the workforce, more
than 2 million people, remained without a job.
What was true of other Western countries was
true of West Germany: even as the majority were
increasing their standards of living, a heteroge-
neous underclass was forming. These were the
‘classless’, below any recognisable class: immi-
grants who could find no place in Western
society, who were either unemployed or illegally
employed at sweated wages, the mentally sick
without family ties, drug addicts and prostitutes,
some little more than children, haunting such
areas as Bahnhof Zoo in Berlin. Then there were
those sleeping rough in cardboard boxes, for
example under the arches of London’s Waterloo
railway station. Few were aggressive – the squat-
ters in Hafenstrasse in Hamburg were something
of an exception. In many cities unemployment
was unacceptably high, but the social climate of836 WESTERN EUROPE GATHERS STRENGTH: AFTER 1968
Bundestag elections, 1983 and 1988 (percentage of
votes)
CDU/CSU FDP SPD Greens1980 44.5 10.6 42.9 –
1983 48.8 6.9 38.2 5.6
1987 44.4 9.1 37.0 8.3
Gross Domestic Product (US$ millions)1983 1985 1987 2000
Federal 654,565 622,249 1,117,731 3,976,000
Republic
of Germany
Britain 455,995 455,740 669,572 1,414,600