WI: Politics of a unified and demilitarised postwar Germany

Leaving aside the questions of how it comes to be, what would the politics of a postwar Germany that is demilitarised, democratic and undivided (possibly also including Austria either initially or later)?

As I understand it Eastern Germany was largely protestant, socially conservative and would also be full of displaced Germans from beyond the Oder-Neisse line. I imagine that, demographically, this would have some interesting consequences for German domestic politics, particularly with regard to the CDU who, whilst officially cross-denominational, were more Catholic oriented, the more Protestant-oriented Germany Party and the right-wing expellee-interest party GB/BHE.
 
First of all, I don't think there is any way Austria is going to be included. It was agreed by the Allies during the War that Austria would eventually resume its independence, and all-Austrian elections were held and a working all-Austrian government was established at a quite early stage.

Second, under the Weimar Republic, the future GDR was to the *left* of the future FRG, so I'm not quite sure where you get your "socially conservative" characterization. "Indeed, the territory which would eventually become the GDR had been a stronghold of left parties during the time of the Weimar Republic. Here, the SPD was supported by 36 percent of the vote during the Reichstag elections of 1928 compared to 27 percent of the vote in the territory of the future Federal Republic of Germany. Taking the results of the SPD and KPD (Communist Party of Germany) together, the left gained 49 percent of the voters (territory of the future Federal Republic of Germany [FRG]: 35 percent). This East- West gradient in favor of the left parties was maintained until the end of the Weimar Republic-even during the emergence of National Socialism. In fact, in the last Reichstag elections of March 1933, the SPD and KPD still won 38.1 percent of the vote in the future GDR territory, compared to only 25.8 percent in the future FRG territory." https://books.google.com/books?id=u9yvnYiD9YAC&pg=PA33

All this of course does not *necessarily* mean that what in OTL became the GDR would vote "left" in a post-war election--the SPD's hopes in this respect were to be frustrated in OTL in 1990. OTOH, that was many decades later, with the CDU's reputation in the East bolstered by prosperity in the West, which would not necessarily be true if reunification took place in the late 1940's or even the early 1950's. No doubt even a relatively brief Soviet occupation would hurt the KPD, but it is far less clear that it would hurt an SPD shorn of those leaders who had supported merger into the SED. (As for refugees from areas that had become part of Poland or the USSR or who had been expelled from Czechoslovakia, etc.-- fewer of them might flee to what became the FRG than in OTL, so whatever effect they might have in moving the politics of the East to the right might be offset by having fewer of them in the West to support the right parties there.)

No doubt the CDU would try to adjust to unification--Jakob Kaiser, who led the East Zone CDU until he had to flee for the West, might be more important than in OTL.
 
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I do think it matters *when* the reunification comes about. Molotov had proposed it in 1947--with a slightly modified Weimar Consitution. If the West had accepted the idea then, with West Germany still in dire economic straits, the vote in the East might be more left-wing [1] than if reunification were achieved during the Beria-Malenkov interregnum of March-June 1953 (which in retrospect seems the best chance for it).

[1] Though for the SPD, not the SED--one of the requirments of reunification would of course be that the SPD be re-legalized in the Soviet zone, and the Soviets hinted they might be agreeable to this in return for a Western agreement to reparations from current production and legalization of the SED in the West. The latter would be a minor issue; the SED in the West--and in free electionsn in the East as well--would hardly get more votes than the KPD did. It would in fact pretty much just be the KPD under another name, with a few left-wing former Social Democrats as window-dressing.
 
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Would this unified Germany be neutral and not occupied by the allies?
Possibly joint occupied (as Stalin initially wanted but was likely bluffing and the other powers disagreed with), but eventually demilitarised and used as a buffer state between the Communist Bloc and Western Europe.

First of all, I don't think there is any way Austria is going to be included. It was agreed by the Allies during the War that Austria would eventually resume its independence, and all-Austrian elections were held and a working all-Austrian government was established at a quite early stage.

Second, under the Weimar Republic, the future GDR was to the *left* of the future FRG, so I'm not quite sure where you get your "socially conservative" characterization. "Indeed, the territory which would eventually become the GDR had been a stronghold of left parties during the time of the Weimar Republic. Here, the SPD was supported by 36 percent of the vote during the Reichstag elections of 1928 compared to 27 percent of the vote in the territory of the future Federal Republic of Germany. Taking the results of the SPD and KPD (Communist Party of Germany) together, the left gained 49 percent of the voters (territory of the future Federal Republic of Germany [FRG]: 35 percent. This East- West gradient in favor of the left parties was maintained until the end of the Weimar Republic-even during the emergence of National Socialism. In fact, in the last Reichstag elections of March 1933, the SPD and KPD still won 38.1 percent of the vote in the future GDR territory, compared to only 25.8 percent in the future FRG territory." https://books.google.com/books?id=u9yvnYiD9YAC&pg=PA33

All this of course does not *necessarily* mean that what in OTL became the GDR would vote "left" in a post-war election--the SPD's hopes in this respect were to be frustrated in OTL in 1990. OTOH, that was many decades later, with the CDU's reputation in the East bolstered by prosperity in the West, which would not necessarily be true if reunification took place in the late 1940's or even the early 1950's. No doubt even a relatively brief Soviet occupation would hurt the KPD, but it is far less clear that it would hurt an SPD shorn of those leaders who had supported merger into the SED. (As for refugees from areas that had become part of Poland or the USSR or who had been expelled from Czechoslovakia, etc.-- fewer of them might flee to what became the FRG than in OTL, so whatever effect they might have in moving the politics of the East to the right might be offset by having fewer of them in the West to support the right parties there.)

No doubt the CDU would try to adjust to unification--Jakob Kaiser, who led the East Zone CDU until he had to flee for the West, might be more important than in OTL.
My mistake I thought that the East was relatively more conservative although I might have been thinking of East Prussia and Kaiserreich-era politics.
 
We're presuming a unified Germany is formed as an act of cooperation between the United States and the Soviets, but there's another way of looking at the OP's question. Would it be any different in a world where WWIII breaks out immediately after the Second World War, or at least within a few years of it, and the Western Allies roll through at least East Germany, and incorporate it into their portion?
 
So the Stalin Note is successful?

Tha't s not the most likely POD. As I stated in soc.history.what-if:

"That the most celebrated earlier Soviet
offer on German unity--Stalin's March 1952 note--was neither intended nor
desired by Stalin to be accepted but was simply meant as a propaganda tool
is strongly argued by John Lewis Gaddis in *We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War
History* (Oxford UP 1997) where he notes that "Soviet diplomat Vladimir
Semyonov recalled Stalin asking: Is it *certain* the Americans would turn the
note down? Only when assured that it was did the Soviet leader give his
approval, but with the warning that there would be grave consequences for
Semyonov if this did not prove to be the case." p. 127. With Beria and
Malenkov, however--and perhaps even with their colleagues in 1953, even if
some of them later changed their minds--the West may have passed up a real
chance for a deal."

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Z-eAjLyqJZg/XRJrrtbDsUwJ

1947 was another possibility. As I wrote here:

***
Molotov in 1947 proposed that with a few amendments--like restricting the president's powers--the Weimar Constitution should be used as the constitution for a united Germany. Just how serious the Soviets were about unification in 1947 is debatable but at least some historians (like Carolyn Woods Eisenberg) think they were serious--*provided* they got reparations from current production. https://books.google.com/books?id=JlRZM_VKzrMC&pg=PA487 Marc Trachtenberg, who is very skeptical that the "Stalin Note" of 1952 was intended seriously, thinks there is a much more plausible case for 1947 as a lost opportunity: "Ulam refers specifically to the 1947 Moscow conference and the Stalin Note business in 1952. Of these two, I personally think the 1947 affair is more puzzling. There is a vast, mostly German language, literature on the 1952 episode, and there is a good deal of evidence bearing on this issue in U.S., British and French archives. Many of the documents to be found in those western sources are quite suggestive, but the piece of evidence that struck me as decisive came from a Soviet source. This new evidence was cited on p. 127 of John Gaddis's WE NOW KNOW: "Soviet diplomat Vladimir Semyonov," Gaddis writes, "recalled Stalin asking: was it certain the Americans would turn the note down? Only when assured that it was did the Soviet leader give his approval, but with the warning that there would be grave consequences for Semyonov if this did not prove to be the case." (Gaddis's source for this is an unpublished 1994 paper by Alexei Filitov.) This, I thought--and if I'm wrong, I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me why--was as close to a smoking gun as we ever get in historical work.

"There are other reasons for not taking the Stalin Note affair too seriously, but the 1947 business is another matter entirely. The puzzle here is that when you read the records of the Moscow conference, Soviet policy does not seem the least bit intransigent. But the Americans, and especially Secretary of State Marshall, had exactly the opposite impression..." http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment8.htm

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...titution-to-present-day.346321/#post-10426994
 
First of all, I don't think there is any way Austria is going to be included. It was agreed by the Allies during the War that Austria would eventually resume its independence, and all-Austrian elections were held and a working all-Austrian government was established at a quite early stage.
True, although that doesn't necessarily mean it would stay separate. I could see Adenauer pushing for it as a condition of reunification on the grounds that Austria was strongly Catholic and had a strong Christian Democratic party which would go some way to alleviating his concerns that a reunified Germany would critically undermine the CDU.
 
True, although that doesn't necessarily mean it would stay separate. I could see Adenauer pushing for it as a condition of reunification on the grounds that Austria was strongly Catholic and had a strong Christian Democratic party which would go some way to alleviating his concerns that a reunified Germany would critically undermine the CDU.

Stalin is just not going to agree to this. He might under some circumstances agree to a non-Communist unified Germany, but he would certainly not want to enlarge it. And the western Allies did not want it, either. The 1938 *Anschluss* had discredited any sort of German-Austrian unity. And finally, Austrian politicians would not want it, since it would diminish their own power. The idea is just a non-starter.
 
How might a reunified Germany affect the leadership of the SPD?

OTL the postwar leader of the West German SPD was Kurt Schumacher. Despite his staunch anti-Communist credentials the allies distrusted him, not wanting a socialist government in postwar Germany, and groomed and supported Adenauer as the next leader of Germany. With the SPD in a much stronger position to win the elections, due to East Germany being a left-wing leaning area and socialism not taking a popularity blow due to the establishment of the GDR, how would this affect his dynamic with the allies? One possible consequence is that Germany could have a more centralised constitution, which Schumacher wanted but the allies were opposed.

His counterpart in the Soviet Zone was Otto Grotewohl who wanted the SPD and KPD to unite into a united Socialist Party and would eventually become Prime Minister of the GDR and co-chairman of the SED. Having him become the leader of the re-established SPD could have some interesting consequences for German foreign policy. Even if he isn't made the leader at the beginning, I think its likely that the SPD would want to distance themselves from the Communists for a number of reasons and would likely choose someone like Schumacher to lead them, it is worth noting that Schumacher died in 1952 which opens up all manner of possibilities for who succeeds him.
 
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