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foundations: its striking prosperity, achieved through its Wirt-schaftswunder (“economic miracle”); its staunch opposition to communism; and its adoption of Western-style democracy, typified by the draft-ing of a constitution and creation of parliamentary institutions. Much of the public seemed content to have the new nation pursue an agenda restricted to promoting economic growth and political stability. “Kein Experiment” —the great slogan of the republic’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer—served as the motto for this cautious course.
The left, meanwhile, was weak. With little public reaction, the Constitutional Court banned the Communist Party (Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) in 1956 for allegedly threatening the principles of the constitution. In its 1959 Godesberger Program, the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland, or SPD) essentially renounced its founding commitment to socialism and assumed a voice of only mild and occasional dissent. When, in 1966, the SPD joined the Christian Democrats (Christlich Demokratische Union, or CDU) and the Christian Socialist Union (Christlich-Sozialen Union, or CSU) in forming the “Great Coalition” government, the SPD’s abandonment of its radical roots was total.
In the early 1960s, perceiving a lack of meaningful alternatives within the political establishment, leftists formed an “extraparliamentary opposition” (Ausserparlamentarische Opposition, or APO), which operated outside of party politics and the electoral process. Student organizations played an important role in the coalition of groups comprising APO.26
Chief among the student groups was the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), the youth wing of the SPD, which had been expelled in 1959 for remaining too strongly committed to socialism. Early on, APO opposed West German rearmament, the basing of nuclear weapons in West Germany, and the proposed “Emergency Laws” (Notstandge-setzte), which would permit the curtailment of democratic rights in times of crisis. To their supporters, these measures were vital to both West Germany’s security and the establishment of its full sovereignty. To APO, they violated the constitution’s stated commitments to peace and democracy. The dissenters additionally questioned whether, in light of the Nazi past, the Federal Republic deserved or could be trusted with greater power.
Germany’s fascist legacy affected the New Left in profound ways.
Young leftists condemned their parents’ generation both for its complicity with Nazism and its conspicuous silence about the Nazi period. The accusation of the near-total suppression or evasion of the past, common 32
“Agents of Necessity”
in the recollections of the postwar generation, likely represents in many cases the selective application of memory. The postwar society had in fact periodically confronted the Nazi past through high-level discussions of reparations for the Nazis’ victims; various war crimes trials, which received extensive media coverage in West Germany (the most notorious were those of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 and the “Auschwitz Trials” of 1963–65); the development of educational materials detailing German crimes during the Nazi period; and the introduction of books, plays, and television programs about the war and the Holocaust (Anne Frank’s Diary was a best seller in Germany in the late 1950s, and millions saw theatrical versions of it either live or on television).27 Yet however intense and seemingly pervasive, such encounters were only intermittent, and the reaction of officialdom and the public alike was often self-justificatory and tinged with resentment at the extraordinary burden of guilt that focus on the past entailed. Crucially, such moments of public reflection did not necessarily translate into sustained, private discussions in German households about the Nazi era, in which parents shared with their children the truth about their
The left, meanwhile, was weak. With little public reaction, the Constitutional Court banned the Communist Party (Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) in 1956 for allegedly threatening the principles of the constitution. In its 1959 Godesberger Program, the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland, or SPD) essentially renounced its founding commitment to socialism and assumed a voice of only mild and occasional dissent. When, in 1966, the SPD joined the Christian Democrats (Christlich Demokratische Union, or CDU) and the Christian Socialist Union (Christlich-Sozialen Union, or CSU) in forming the “Great Coalition” government, the SPD’s abandonment of its radical roots was total.
In the early 1960s, perceiving a lack of meaningful alternatives within the political establishment, leftists formed an “extraparliamentary opposition” (Ausserparlamentarische Opposition, or APO), which operated outside of party politics and the electoral process. Student organizations played an important role in the coalition of groups comprising APO.26
Chief among the student groups was the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), the youth wing of the SPD, which had been expelled in 1959 for remaining too strongly committed to socialism. Early on, APO opposed West German rearmament, the basing of nuclear weapons in West Germany, and the proposed “Emergency Laws” (Notstandge-setzte), which would permit the curtailment of democratic rights in times of crisis. To their supporters, these measures were vital to both West Germany’s security and the establishment of its full sovereignty. To APO, they violated the constitution’s stated commitments to peace and democracy. The dissenters additionally questioned whether, in light of the Nazi past, the Federal Republic deserved or could be trusted with greater power.
Germany’s fascist legacy affected the New Left in profound ways.
Young leftists condemned their parents’ generation both for its complicity with Nazism and its conspicuous silence about the Nazi period. The accusation of the near-total suppression or evasion of the past, common 32
“Agents of Necessity”
in the recollections of the postwar generation, likely represents in many cases the selective application of memory. The postwar society had in fact periodically confronted the Nazi past through high-level discussions of reparations for the Nazis’ victims; various war crimes trials, which received extensive media coverage in West Germany (the most notorious were those of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 and the “Auschwitz Trials” of 1963–65); the development of educational materials detailing German crimes during the Nazi period; and the introduction of books, plays, and television programs about the war and the Holocaust (Anne Frank’s Diary was a best seller in Germany in the late 1950s, and millions saw theatrical versions of it either live or on television).27 Yet however intense and seemingly pervasive, such encounters were only intermittent, and the reaction of officialdom and the public alike was often self-justificatory and tinged with resentment at the extraordinary burden of guilt that focus on the past entailed. Crucially, such moments of public reflection did not necessarily translate into sustained, private discussions in German households about the Nazi era, in which parents shared with their children the truth about their
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