Adenauer killed by Gestapo 1944-45

"Very difficult times lie behind us. My wife was imprisoned for some time in September 1944, [and] I was, for more than three months, up to the end of November, in a concentration camp, and then in the Gestapo prison in Brauweiler [near Cologne]. If the advance of the American army had not taken place so surprisingly near us here, I probably would have been taken away and killed by the Gestapo..." --Konrad Adenauer, letter to a friend in the US, April 10, 1945

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Suppose Adenauer had indeed been killed by the Gestapo in 1944-45? Conservative Weimar-era politicians like Adenauer were comparatively safe for most of the 1934-44 era, provided of course that they were "Aryan" and did not talk too loudly against the regime. Following the July 1944 attempt on Hitler's life, though, things changed; a reign of terror against "reactionaries" (among others) took place, and it is not inconceivable that Adenauer (though he had pretty much remained aloof from anti-Nazi resistance organizations) could have been killed. (What may have saved Adenauer's life is that his son Max, a lieutenant in the army, interceded on his father's behalf at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, which resulted in Adenauer's release. But let's say that Max had been killed earlier in the war...)

Anyway, suppose Adenauer had been killed. To name just one obvious change this might have made: The CDU might have become a different party from the one we know. We think of the CDU as a center-right party devoted to a "social market economy." But in its early years, the CDU contained many Christian Socialists like Jakob Kaiser (Kaiser was closely involved with the participants in the July plot, and was wanted by the Gestapo, but managed to go underground and survive the war).

Kaiser's views are summed up as follows in Dennis L. Bark and David R. Gress, *A History of West Germany, Volume One: From Shadow to Substance 1945-1963* (second edition), p. 114:

"Kaiser's domestic economic policy called for nationalization of heavy industry and worker co-determination in operating business enterprises. He shared the Catholic socialist view that because workers were indispensable to production and had definite interests of their own as a social class, they had a right to exercise those interests in setting the terms of their employment and in enjoying a direct share in the profits resulting from their work. Concerning Germany's position in central Europe, Kaiser saw the new Germany as a bridge between east and west. He believed that a neutral, socialist German government based on Christian principles could mediate between the Soviet Union and the West and help to maintain peace in Europe by reassuring both sides that they had nothing to fear from each other or from Germany.

"In Berlin Jakob Kaiser and Andreas Hermes, both associated with the Catholic trade unions of the Weimar period, led the call in June 1945 for an alliance of all Christian and democratic forces in a Christian Democratic Union. The Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) approved the party, but only in order to bring it under control. Although he fought heroically, Kaiser was unable to prevent the German communist party in the Soviet zone, the SED, from gradually taking away his party's independence. Finally, in 1948, he abandoned the Soviet zone CDU to its inevitable fate and gave his efforts to the democratic CDU in the Western zones. He remained, however, committed to Christian socialist ideas and to a neutral, reunited Germany, which put him permanently at adds with his party leader, Konrad Adenauer."

How likely was it that someone like Kaiser could come out on top in the CDU if there were no Adenauer? Of course he would face the obvious problem that the Americans would prefer someone more conservative, but was there a plausible conservative replacement for Adenauer as of 1945-8 (the years when Adenauer gained control of the party and gradually moved it away from Christian Socialism)? Perhaps I am overestimating the chances of Kaiser leading the party, but who else was there? Erhard is one alternative, but in the first place, he himself was in some danger in 1944-5 (he had some ties to Goerdeler). A more thorough "brown-on-black" (i.e., Nazis versus "clericals") terror in 1944-45 could lead to the death of Erhard as well as Adenauer. Even if Erhard survived, the fact is that he was disliked by a lot of CDU/CSU activists at first--they thought he was a liberal who would be more at home in the FDP. Indeed, "Erhard enjoyed far better relations with the Bavarian FDP than with the CSU." http://books.google.com/books?id=nFtkBXw7i38C&pg=PA154 Eventually Erhard's critics were mostly won over, but would they have been without Adenauer?

I am trying to think of pre-1933 Zentrum politicians other than Adenauer and Kaiser who could have headed the CDU but it is difficult. Wilhelm Marx was much older than even Adenauer, and was to die in 1946. Joseph Wirth was way too pro-Soviet. Bruening was still remembered as the "Hunger Chancellor." Adam Stegerwald was only a year older than Adenauer, but died in late 1945. There was, to be sure, Andreas Hermes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Hermes but it's a little hard to imagine the Nazis executing Adenauer and sparing Hermes. In any event, Hermes was on the left wing of the CDU. Josef Mueller was still another possibility, but again he would be unlikely to be spared in any more thorough terror. (Anyway, his being Bavarian created special problems: he had been a member of the Bavarian People's Party and after the war helped to form the Bavarian CSU, which was independent of the CDU, though allied with it.) So it's hard to see any defender of OTL Adenauer/Erhard (and yes, I know Adenauer never really liked Erhard...) policies heading the party.
 
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Karl Arnold comes in my mind. And a German TV documentation says Werner Hilpert was a possible candidate for Bundeskanzler.
 
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