abuse by simple party majorities in the parlia-
mentary assembly. The strong element of pro-
portional representation allows a voice for the
views of those who do not wish to choose
between the two mass parties. The 5 per cent rule
prevents the proliferation of small parties, which
destabilised Weimar and has undermined govern-
ments in Italy; on the other hand, proportional
representation can allow too much influence to a
minority. In most years since 1949, the two major
parties could gain a majority only with the help
of a third party, the Free Democratic Party, which
could bargain with either in order to gain its
objectives and switch support accordingly.
No constitution is perfect; its success depends
on the politicians and the parties who bring it to
life, and on the attitude of the electorate towards
the government and the institutions established
under it. The Federal Republic has enjoyed great
stability in good times and, more importantly,
in bad.
The German Socialist Party (SPD) was the most
coherent and best-organised mass party to put
itself before the electorate when the first
Bundestag elections were held in 1949. Despite a
tendency to strong central leadership, local and
district organisations during the subsequent four
decades acted as ginger groups and at times stood
well to the left of the party leadership. This
became especially true of the young socialists after
the revolt of youth in the 1960s. A serious hand-
icap for the party was the separation from the
Federal Republic of Berlin and the Soviet zone,
which had traditionally been the stronghold of
the Social Democratic Party. Their leader in 1949
was Kurt Schumacher, passionate and autocratic
in style, but his suffering in concentration camps
had undermined his health, and he died in August
1952, only three years after the elections. He
stood for a clear, uncompromising policy in both
domestic and international affairs. His opposition
to communism was total and he ensured that the
Western SPD would have no truck with the com-
munists. Schumacher’s socialism had its basis in
ethics: his appeal was a moral one, for the bet-
terment of the majority, of the poorer sections of
society, for an end to the exploitation by capital
of labour, of working people. But the party
stressed that socialism without democracy would
only lead back to the dark years of Hitler’s total-
itarianism or to Soviet tyranny. The British
Labour Party was the model. Two other planks in
the party programme were important: a strong
anti-clericalism, which condemned interference
by the Church in politics and education, and an
insistence on the recovery of national independ-
ence for all of Germany, not just for the Western
zones. The SPD wanted to be seen as the patri-
otic party. This stance led to the most bitter
clashes with the governing Christian Democrats.
The Christian Democrats were less coherent
than the Social Democrats, even to the extent of
avoiding the label ‘party’ and calling themselves a
‘movement’ (union). They too set out to learn the
lessons of the Hitler years. Politics should be
anchored in ethical values, not vaguely but
specifically in Christian ethics. Yet the Christian
Democrats would not become a narrow Catholic
party. From its foundation Protestants participated
with Catholics in its organisation. Christian
Democrats also championed parliamentary democ-
racy and saw in communism the principal threat
to civil liberties in the West. They were fiercely
anti-Marxist, vociferous in their opposition to class
warfare and state ownership of production. The
Rhineland CDU, with its strong industrial Ruhr
base, was overwhelmingly Catholic and led suc-
cessful efforts to align the party with policies limit-
ing the exclusion of workers from the exercise of
power and its concentration in the hands of indus-
trialists. Worker participation in industrial man-
agement became one of the planks of the CDU in
the 1950s and so attracted support from sections
of the trade unions. Capitalism was to be modified
and restricted: industrial policies would be based
on free enterprise, but the social good would
be taken into account. The CDU’s sister party,
the Bavarian CSU, has traditionally represented
more conservative views. Adenauer, more conser-
vative than the Rhinelanders he led, skilfully rec-
onciled the different elements, moving the party
to the centre-right in doing so. Until his last
few years der Alte(the Old One, a term of affec-
tionate respect) stood head and shoulders above
his party colleagues; he succeeded in putting his
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