Page 111 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

84 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

so-called ‘Mittlerer Weg’ (Middle way). This third path rejected a planned
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economy and economic liberalism in equal measure. Further, the CSU
argued against collectivisation and general socialisation and advocated
personal responsibility as part of common welfare. Although this
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economic conception was not part of the first post-war Landtag elections
on 1 December 1946, the CSU wholeheartedly and eventually successfully
campaigned for economic reconstruction and political reliance in times of
disenchantment with politics, occupation and a destroyed infrastructure.
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Furthermore, in order to anchor the CSU’s economic and socio-political
ideas in both political and general public opinion, the CSU party chairman
Josef Müller applied to the American military authorities for a permit to
edit the party’s own newspaper. Although the weekly journal in the style
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of the economic concept Der Gerade Weg (The Direct Way) only
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appeared for a few months, the party’s efforts for publicity and public
relations were noticeable. Thus the CSU set going a decisive impulse for
both the conception and communication of an economic and socio-
political model for post-war Germany.
While more recent academic research on the economic and political
reorganisation of Germany generally subsumed the various Christian
Democratic and Christian Socialist approaches in defining and
communicating an economic and socio-political model in the immediate
post-war years, this study of the communication of politics essentially
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provides a differentiated account considering the activities of the Bavarian
Christian Socialists and the federal state under American occupation
which saw the first post-war government with the much lauded ‘founding
father of the Social Market Economy’ Ludwig Erhard as Bavarian Minister
for Economic Affairs, the first political campaigns and the first
democratically elected cabinet. Indeed, while particularly the Rhenish
CDU in the British zone of occupation obtained a more effective
organisational structure and uniform appearance, and thus arguably
disposed of greater political influence in the economic and political
reorganisation of Germany, however, in contrast to the CSU, the CDU
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in general initially did not possess a coherent manifesto defining economic
and socio-political objectives and thus was not representative of the Union
as a whole.
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This deficiency was predominantly due to Konrad Adenauer’s political
calculations aimed at including the several fractions within the party, and
the power struggle between the chairman of the Rhenish CDU and the
chairman of the CDU in Berlin, Jakob Kaiser. In order both to anchor
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his economic ideas and to strengthen his position, Adenauer submitted a
well-structured concept for a party platform, which was widely adopted at
the second party conference in Neheim-Hüsten on 1 March 1946, and,