reform. He was bitterly opposed to communism
and ready to see Germany align with the West, and
he too championed West European integration.
But he demanded the full recovery of German sov-
ereignty first, the regaining of respect, before the
Federal Republic could, as a free agent, ally with
the West. What he condemned was the kind of bar-
gaining – a West German military contribution as
the price of sovereignty – in which Adenauer was
willing to engage in the spirit of Realpolitik. But
Schumacher’s nationalist tone and his demands for
reunification had an air of unreality. His terms, that
the Germans in the Soviet zone were to be allowed
to choose freely and the Russians were to with-
draw, were unacceptable to the Soviet leaders
despite their blandishing of West German opinion
by holding out the prospect of reunification pro-
vided Germany remained neutral thereafter. Such a
condition was as unacceptable to Schumacher, to
Erich Ollenhauer (who succeeded to the party
leadership after Schumacher’s death in 1952) and
to the majority of the SPD leadership as it was
to Adenauer. The SPD was also united in oppos-
ing all the practical measures for rearmament
Adenauer had negotiated, on the ground that
West Germany had negotiated from an inferior
position. But on the issue of rearmament itself the
party was deeply divided. As an opposition, with-
out ultimate responsibility for policies, they could
more easily afford to take their principled stand.
Adenauer’s approach to rearmament and sover-
eignty won majority support in the Bundestag.
The former enemy was now accepted as an ally.
Adenauer’s closely linked foreign and rearmament
policies had also overcome the most bitter division
at home and had resisted the attacks unleashed on
them by the SPD. Among young Germans, who
now faced conscription, there was understandable
opposition; the ‘re-educated’ Germans could
hardly fathom such a turnaround, and then there
were those genuinely convinced by the experiences
of the war that Germans should not bear arms
again. On the right, among ex-soldiers’ organisa-
tions, arose the demand that the besmirched hon-
our of Hitler’s Wehrmacht must first be restored.
Schumacher’s arguments in the Bundestag were
powerful: the linking of rearmament with political
concessions to German sovereignty, he thundered,
was a cynical bargaining that marked the end of
democracy. But Adenauer secured ratification
of the Paris treaties by the Bundestag in March- He went on to win the elections in
September. Yet with the failure of the EDC, the
Paris treaties had to be renegotiated. The new
Paris Agree-ments (October 1954) now had to
be ratified. Consequently the recovery of German
sovereignty within the Western alliance was post-
poned to 5 May 1955 and conscription to 1956.
During the fierce debates Der Spiegelmagazine
ironically echoed Goebbels’s ‘Do you want total
war?’ Popular opposition to nuclear weapons in
Germany and remilitarisation remained a rallying
cry in demonstrations until 1969 and revived in
the 1980s.
Adenauer’s foreign and rearmament policies
did not win universal support, but the acceptance
of their chancellor as a respected equal in the cap-
itals of Western Europe, and even in Moscow in
September 1955, restored the buffeted sense of
German pride. Yet, more than anything, the
evident success of Erhard’s economic policies and
the marked improvement in standards of living,
the visible recovery of West Germany with the
rebuilding of its cities, assured Adenauer and the
coalitions he led of seemingly inevitable victories
in elections. The CDU/CSU was further helped
in 1953 by the June risings in Berlin and the
Soviet zone, in 1957 by the continuing fear of
Soviet aggression. In both these years, Adenauer
easily won an overall majority. By the next elec-
tion in the summer of 1961, confidence in der
Altewas slipping. His dithering reaction to the
Berlin Wall crisis and his age (he was now eighty-
five), combined with his reluctance to step down
to make way for Erhard, the heir apparent, cost
the CDU/CSU its absolute majority. His last two
years in office were unhappy. The Cabinet squab-
bled; the FDP partners made difficulties; then
the defence minister, the ebullient Franz Josef
Strauss, unwittingly resurrected memories of the
totalitarian past. Der Spiegel had published an
article on defence matters in October 1961.
Believing that confidential information had been
leaked, Strauss ordered police to search the mag-
azine’s offices and an editor was arrested; mean-
while Adenauer absurdly referred to Der Spiegel
510 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s