leader of the Free Democrats, AugustEuler, decided to combine forces withthe National Democrats in the recentelection, even though he had to split hisown party to do so. The deal paid offhandsomely. The F.D.P. in Hesse in-creased its vote from 250,000 to 600,-000, higher than its total in any otherstate. A camouflaged National Demo cratic delegation, with a large percent-age of former Nazis , was sent to Bonn .
Germany is full of groups and organ-izations with a respectable democraticfigure out in front and dubious, com-promised characters in the background.Almost every one of the big parties so
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far has the word" Democratic " in itsfar has the word" Democratic " in itsname, a sure sign of how meaninglessthe term has become.
The Free Democrats, who agree withthe Christian Democrats on economicpolicy, and with the Social Democrats on almost everything else, possess moretactical flexibility than any other party.It is safe to predict that they will neverlack reasons for making deals with any-one to share power. That is the kind ofhinge on which the new west German régime has to turn.
Christian Democrats. The father ofpost war German free enterprise, Dr. Ludwig Erhard , the former Bizonaleconomic director , joined the Chris-tian Democratic Union a few monthsbefore the election. Next to Dr. Konrad Adenauer , he was the most promisingC.D.U. campaigner and, of course, he
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defended his own record. It wasnot his fault that the C.D.U.lost part of the middle- class
vote.
The C.D.U. is a heterogene-ous collection of rich and poor,employers and trade unionists,Protestants and Catholics , Ba varian farmers and Ruhr work-ers. The fact that it did so well,even though it put up so con-servative a campaign, must beattributed to the favorable eco-nomic atmosphere. Keeping itsleft wing in line, while cam-paigning on a free- enterprise
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platform, was a good trick, but it maybe hard to repeat.
It was probably fortunate for theC.D.U., which won thirty- eight percent of the vote in 1947 and thirty- oneper cent in 1949, that the election wasnot much longer delayed, for the partywas beginning to show the strains pecu-liar to such a complex assortment ofinterests. The two surprises in the elec-tion were that the Free Democratsgained so much, and that the Chris-tian Democrats lost so little, with prac-tically indistinguishable economic pol-icies.
The Christian Democrats cannotstand still, and it is hard to see howthey can go forward. Their grip on thegovernment will give them importantsources of power and patronage, but atbest these will be able only to slow upthe backward drift. Their shifting po-sition may have won them votes in thiselection and cost them dearly in thelong run.
When the C.D.U. was formed, a con-scious effort was made to profit fromthe experience of the pre war CenterParty. The new party was to be more" social- minded," and it was to be Prot estant as well as Catholic. After fouryears, both these objectives have begunto fade. In 1947 the Christian Demo cratic conference went so far as to ap-prove the nationalization of basic in-dustries. In 1949 the C.D.U. cam-paign made anti- socialization its maintalking- point. Of the 139 Christian
Democrats in the Bundestag,only about forty representthe so- called left wing. Dr.Adenauer , the Christian Democratic Chancellor , isfar over on the conservativeside.
This transformation of theC.D.U. was partly a resultof the former Military Gov-ernment policy barring ex-treme rightist parties. Aslong as the F.D.P. was rela-tively unimportant, therewere only two major anta-gonists, the Christian Demo-crats and the Social Demo crats . Right- wing interestsautomatically leaned towardthe Christian Democrats, andafter the currency reform theRuhr industrialists beganeven to take an active finan-cial interest in the party, as
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
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