Page 39 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

12 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

affirmed the new American goal to establish stable political and economic
conditions in Germany to enable the country to make a maximum
contribution to European recovery. Thus, the American authorities
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encouraged German self-government and sought to establish a political
organisation which derived from the people and was subject to their
control, which operated in accordance with democratic electoral
procedures and which was dedicated to uphold the basic civil and human
rights of the individual. Within these principles, the ultimate
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constitutional form of German political life was supposed to be left to the
decision of the German people made freely in accordance with democratic
processes. In doing so, all political parties whose programmes, activities
and structure demonstrated their allegiance to democratic principles were
encouraged, none enjoying a privileged status. Thus the first occupying
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power to provide the essentials for a democratic structure was the US
administration. Initially, however, German politicians were recruited into
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the American governmental machinery rather than democratically
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elected. On 28 May 1945, the former member of the conservative
Bayerische Volkspartei (BVP) and founding member of the CSU, Fritz
Schäffer, was appointed Prime Minister of Bavaria. Although he was
arbitrarily dismissed just four months later, there were Land governments
headed by appointed German politicians throughout the American
occupation zone by the end of 1945. In order to provide for growing
coherence of the individual Länder as policy-making units within the
federal organised American sovereign territory, a so-called ‘Länderrat’
(Council of States), composed of the respective Prime Ministers of the
states in the American zone, was established in Stuttgart on 5 October
1945. Although the institution, designed primarily to coordinate the
efforts of the governments of Bavaria, Hesse, Wuerttemberg-Baden, and
Bremen in their attempts to reconstruct the economic and social system of
their Länder, was not given executive authority, the Länderrat’s agreements,
when approved by the Military Government, could be issued as decrees in
each state. Nevertheless, the German officials were still appointees of the
occupying authority and were neither selected by nor responsible to the
German people. In making the German administration responsible to the
people, the American Military Government for Germany argued for
public elections to be held progressively from the village to the state level.
Regarding the electoral system, all western occupation powers virtually
left the decision to the Germans in their respective zones while the Soviet
occupiers resorted to the so-called ‘unity list’ system which pre-arranged
quotas for the individual quotas to secure Communist dominance. Due to
historical experience and in order to stabilise support for the emerging
democratic political parties, seven of the originally eleven West German