Word: socialist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Riots & Petitions. The campaign on both sides provoked passions that boded no good for German democracy. Bruisers stood on guard at Socialist meetings; admission to Adenauer's meetings was by ticket only, to keep out hecklers. In some towns rivals clashed, and the police used batons and hoses. There were near riots in Frankfurt; in West Berlin cops arrested 239 out of a gang of 500 when they tried to break up a Christian Democratic meeting presided over by the Vice Chancellor of West Germany, Franz Blucher...
...them brought in specially from the East zone. The Reds also imported French Communist Jacques Duclos to warn German audiences against German militarism and to promise, in the name of France, that the Paris accords would never be ratified. But though the Communists talked furiously, it was the massive Socialist campaign that was doing the most harm. In town after town, the SPD was whipping up German youths to riot against rearmament, circulating petitions and questionnaires whose loaded questions (gist: Do you want unity or do you want war?) led Konrad Adenauer to exclaim that these were the same techniques...
...Socialist case against rearmament involves holding out a hope of Soviet generosity and good faith which many Socialists know to be irresponsible. But to the motley coalition of pacifists, patriots, militant trade unionists, left-wing Protestant pastors, wishful thinkers, Marxist intellectuals and East zone refugees who make up the SPD, the oversimplified cry of Einheit Deutschlands (German unity) has a ringing appeal. The Socialists' late leader, Kurt Schumacher, an embittered hulk after the Nazis endlessly roughed him up in concentration camps, left behind a sour political testament: "Never again must the Socialists be caught being less nationalistic than their...
...Left & Right. Since Schumacher's death, a band of progressive reformers on the Socialist right wing have sought to change the party's ways. Led by able, French-born Professor Carlo Schmid, a potbellied b&n vivant, the reformers want the SPD to junk 1) its aging bureaucrats, and 2) its Marxist jargon. The party, says Schmid, should move to the right so as to attract the votes of small shopkeepers and professional...
Wehner sees no hope of the Socialists winning an election until the predominantly Protestant and presumed-to-be Socialist voters of East Germany can vote for the SPD. To get those votes, and with them German unity, Wehner is willing to offer the Soviet Union almost any price, including a totally-militarily, politically and economically-neutralized Germany...