Introduction: Changes in the Nature of the Political Terrain after 1945

Abstract

The Federal Republic of Germany, if one is to believe the dominant image projected by the media outside that country, must be considered a paragon of social and economic stability. Within the EEC it is without doubt the most dynamic and the most influential economic force, and the virtues of its financial management have placed it at the helm of the currency bloc known as the European Monetary System. By the mid-1970s the West Germans themselves had evidently come to believe in the paradigmatic nature of their society so that under the leadership of Chancellor Schmidt an election campaign could be fought and won under the slogan Modell Deutschland. This phrase was perhaps more evocative than the earlier one of Keine Experimente used by Chancellor Adenauer, but nevertheless echoed it. Adenauer had promised the electorate to ‘stay on course’, which meant, firstly, continuing the construction of a capitalist society tempered by social legislation and, secondly, establishing West Germany as a cornerstone of the Western military alliance. Schmidt, building on this heritage, could portray the Federal Republic as a country whose social and economic achievements had meanwhile made it the spearhead of West European societies.