Page 146 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

1945/1946 – STUPOR AND SEARCH FOR DIRECTION 119

these were ‘politics is a dirty business’ and ‘one is a politician for ten years
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and then lands in a concentration camp.’ Although the percentage seeing
politics as a worthy profession was considerably low, levels of political
participation in Germany were not inordinately low. Eventually, the then
difficult economic circumstances, the unsatisfying political situation and
the increased confidence to determine their own future – whereas in 1945,
45, 70 or rather 61 per cent of the respondents thought that the German
people as a whole were capable of governing themselves in a democratic
way, in 1946, as many as 79 per cent believed in self-government and only
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6 per cent did not – drew not only the politically active but also the
ordinary German to the polls. Like all the destroyed residential houses in
post-war Germany, a new state had to be rebuilt. On this account it is not
surprising at all – the then American Military Commander-in-Chief,
General Lucius D. Clay, appeared astonished by the high voter
participation – that 78 per cent of the eligible voters in the American
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zone planned to vote in the upcoming state legislature elections taking
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place in Wuerttemberg-Baden on 24 November and Hesse and Bavaria on
1 December 1946, though often not knowing about the purpose of the
elections (74 per cent) or merely out of civic duty (35 per cent). Those
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least likely to vote in the elections were former Nazi Party members (58
per cent), men (36 per cent), and individuals under the age of 30 (45 per
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cent); voters belonging to a political party showed by far the highest
percentage of those expected to vote (97 per cent). Among the latter, the
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KPD had the highest percentage of expected voters (89 per cent),
followed by the CSU (88 per cent), the CDU (87 per cent), the LDP (86
per cent), and the SPD (85 per cent).
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In comparison to voter participation and composition, the electorate’s
preference for the newly established conservative parties, namely the
CDU, the CSU and also the LDP, was rather surprising. According to a
special political survey conducted by the OMGUS on 1 April 1946, of the
162 respondents, 67 preferred the CDU or the CSU, 47 the SPD, 9 the
KPD, 7 the LDP and 2 the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party)
which existed in the British zone. Eventually, the Union was the most
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successful party (often by a clear margin) at local and state legislature
elections in seven out of thirteen Länder in the three western zones of
occupation. The victory of the CDU/CSU parties became even more
manifest when they gained the majority of popular support in 16 of the 25
local elections although the SPD won four out of six regional elections in
the year 1946. These outstanding results of the first free elections in
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post-war Germany can be attributed to the fact that after 1945, the Union
had a near-monopoly of the Catholic vote. At that time, this still mattered
a lot: the Catholic vote was still heavily conservative, especially on social