Page 149 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

122 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

1946, this figure now rose to 40 per cent; in Berlin, where the situation
was consistently worse, even up to 74 per cent reported insufficient supply
of food in February 1947. Those family treasures that had not been
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destroyed by bombs, stolen or broken were now eaten up; and so-called
‘Hamstern’, i.e. the illegal trading with farmers and smallholders, did little to
supplement rationing since farmers did not trust the money. In the winter
of 1946/47, as many as 60,000 chiefly elderly Germans died of the cold
and hunger. In this situation, various hunger demonstrations and even
disturbances took place all over the western zones. In Wuppertal the
occupying military forces even had to deploy troops and tanks in order to
curb the enraged crowd. Confidence in Allied-German cooperation
deteriorated radically: in January 1946, 15 per cent were pessimistic
regarding the relations; by the spring of 1947 the figure had risen to 70 per
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cent. Similarly, Germans lost faith in the probability of economic
recovery. Whereas in December 1945 nearly eight in ten thought that
economic conditions would improve, by April 1947 only 45 per cent
believed so. In the course of the first 22 months following the Allied
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victory the mood among the German populace swung from relief at the
mere prospect of peace and a fresh start, to stony resignation and growing
disillusion mainly due to the reparations, the privileged situation of the
Allies regarding food supply and the magnitude of the tasks still ahead.
Due to the then severe economic situation, complicated even further by
the challenge to integrate some 10 million refugees and expellees from the
eastern parts of the former Reich and the German-occupied territories,
economic and social concerns dominated not only the political but also
the public debate in spring 1947. Hence, the political parties’ concepts of
social and economic policy increasingly came to the fore in the run-up to
the Landtag elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and
Lower Saxony on 20 April, and in Baden, Rhineland-Palatinate and
Wuerttemberg-Hohenzollern on 18 May 1947. Whereas mainly socio-
political issues had dominated election campaigns in the previous year,
henceforth socio-economic issues generally displaced these. In contrast to
the Social Democrats advocating centralist macroeconomic planning and
the nationalisation of core industries in order to overcome the economic
and social misery of that time, the Christian Democrats competed with
their concept of a Gemeinwirtschaft. While both parties endorsed
socialisation, the CDU’s economic programme set clear limits to
collectivisation and governmental control of the economy by maintaining
private entrepreneurship. For the time being, however, the Christian
Democrats did not venture further economic reforms and, thus, the public
believed that it observed political parties competing towards the left. The
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dire consequences of the war were still too noticeable and most people