Page 170 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

1949 – CONTENTMENT AND CONFIDENCE 143

Whereas the SPD had acquired the post of Prime Minister in five out of
eleven Länder parliaments and had additionally occupied eight ministries of
economics, it left the key position within the Bizonal Economic Council
with regard to economic policy, i.e. the post of the Director of the
Administration for Economics, to the Union parties. This fateful decision
was unambiguously attributed to the leader of the SPD, Kurt Schumacher,
who considered both the Economic Council and its Administration for
Economics in Frankfurt as mere provisional institutions and not as
decisive political instruments. But the latter is exactly what they were: both
the quasi-parliament and the ministry-like Verwaltung für Wirtschaft in
particular were in fact not only administering but also determining and
ultimately implementing economic policy. This in turn enabled the
CDU/CSU adequately to communicate their socio-political and economic
ideas to both the party base and the general public. In aligning their
campaigns themed ‘the economy is our fate’ and in relentlessly promoting
their economic concept, Alfred Müller-Armack, Konrad Adenauer, and
Ludwig Erhard, in particular, created increasing confidence in economic
liberalisation as the means to a Social Market Economy. After the
economic and monetary reforms eventually turned out to be widely
successful, the population was not only more open to liberal economic
arguments but the CDU/CSU even acquired a governmental or
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incumbency bonus and its socio-economic programme was increasingly
seen as progressive and appealing economic and social policy. Erhard’s
manner spread optimism, and more and more people relied upon the
Christian Union to improve both their material and psychological situation
in the post-war years. Eventually, a prevailing mood of confidence in
economic recovery characterised the months before the federal elections
of August 1949.
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Nonetheless, to some socialism and economic planning still presented a
magnetic attraction. In a public opinion survey conducted by the
Forschungsstelle für Volkspsychologie, a research centre to assess the condition
of the German people, many respondents still considered the SPD to have
the better political and economic programme for a prosperous post-war
Germany. Assured in his pursuit of a socialist controlled economy, Kurt
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Schumacher continued to proclaim socialisation and macroeconomic
planning despite widespread misgivings among the public and the
apparently improved economic conditions. The confrontation of two
opposed economic concepts and ideologies led to a hard-fought election
campaign. In both the political as well as in the public arena, the two
people’s parties competed for support for their programmes. Fuelled by a
CDU publication which claimed that the Pope would not only
excommunicate communists but furthermore that he condemned any