AHCWI: Schumacher comes to power

Under what circumstances, could Kurt Schumacher win the elections and come to power in post-WWII Germany, and what would be the effect of this on Allied policy on Germany, and German politics and Germany over the course of the Cold War?
 
Schmacher avoids being the best helper for the CDU in the 1949 election campaine, so the SPD becomes strongest party. He avoids to alienate everbody else long enough to become cancellor of an Great Coalition. He seriously hurts Germanys economic recovery through failed attempts to enforce a socialist politic. He alienates the Western Allies through his extreme nationalism. Till 1951 he is either replaced by a centre-right goverment through a non-confident vote or he dies in office. (He died IOTL 1952)
 
Last edited:
I see two possibilities:

1) Exchanging their fates

Schumacher was an inmate of various concentration camps of the Nazis.

Quote from wiki: Schumacher was arrested in July and was severely beaten in prison. He spent the next ten years in concentration camps at Heuberg, Kuhberg, Flossenbürg and Dachau.[1] The camp at Dachau was intended for people whom the Nazis wanted to keep alive, and the fact that he was a disabled ex-service man gained Schumacher some leniency, but he risked his life through repeated defiance and hunger strikes.
In 1943, when Schumacher was near death, his brother-in-law succeeded in persuading a Nazi official to have him released into his custody. He was arrested again in late 1944, and he was in Neuengamme concentration camp when the British arrived in April 1945.[1]

Adenauer was in a camp in 1944 but not as long as Schumacher.

Quote wiki: Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his civic projects, the building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer concluded that Adenauer's political views and principles made it impossible for him to play any role in Nazi Germany.

Why not make the Nazis more suspicious of Adenauer and imprison him like Schumacher while at the same time Schumacher is forced to go into exile in Switzerland?

Adenauer dies before the election because of the suffering and Schumacher is elected.

2) Quote wiki: And on 29 June 1933, i.e., several months after Hitler was made Chancellor and the Nazis were given full police power over Germany, and while the Nazis were still busy terrorizing and murdering Communists, Social Democrats, and Labor Union officials, Adenauer wrote in a letter: "In my opinion the only salvation is a monarch, a Hohenzollern[...], even Hitler in my opinion, a lifetime Reichpresident [...]“.[10]

This episode destroys Adenauers credibility in the eyes of the Western Allies and he is barred from public office.
 
Schumacher avoids being the best helper for the CDU in the 1949 election campaine, so the SPD becomes strongest party. He avoids to alienate everbody else long enough to become cancellor of an Great Coalition. He seriously hurts Germanys economic recovery through failed attempts to enforce a socialist politic. He alienates the Western Allies through his extreme nationalism. Till 1951 he is either replaced by a centre-right goverment through a non-confident vote or he dies in office. (He died IOTL 1952)

Kurt Schumacher was a patriot and a member of anti-nazi resistance, who paid for being a resistant and a democrat with his health and ultimately with his live. He does not deserve to be called "extreme nationalist", by someone who calls himself "freivolk" and should know better.
(freivolk = free people, which was what Kurt Schumacher believed and died for).

Regarding Konrad Adenauer, which whom I have my disagreements, because I think he was an opportunist, might have been the better politician.
I don't know if what Adenauer did was the best outcome possible at that situation, but Schumacher was clearly the better man.

Regarding Socialism, although I'm clearly not a leftist, when you read the quite socialist "Ahlener Programm" even the later (Adenauer) social market economist "Hamburg program" of the (then) conservative CDU, I think, compared to now, there are many good things, that we have forgotten in the meantime.
 
Last edited:

ingemann

Banned
Schmacher avoids being the best helper for the CDU in the 1949 election campaine, so the SPD becomes strongest party. He avoids to alienate everbody else long enough to become cancellor of an Great Coalition. He seriously hurts Germanys economic recovery through failed attempts to enforce a socialist politic. He alienates the Western Allies through his extreme nationalism. Till 1951 he is either replaced by a centre-right goverment through a non-confident vote or he dies in office. (He died IOTL 1952)

His extreme nationalism was that he wanted Germany to keep it Transoder territories, and he wasn't affraid to say so.
 
Top