Maintaining the FRG

What was significant about the Marshall Aid?

• monetary value only fraction of G's GDP

• provided vital raw materials, machinery, + confidence needed to spark the Wirtschaftswunder 50s.

• By including West Germany as equal partner in aid, US helped reintegrate state into international democracy

How much money was given to the FRG under the Marshall Aid?

$1.4 billion

When was the Oil Crisis?

1973

What did OPEC announce that caused the oil crisis? Why?

70% increase in oil price + 5% decrease in output

300% increase in wheat price from West + West supported Israel in Yom Kippur War

What was the impact of the Oil Crisis?

• increased public expenditure

• decreased revenues from taxation

• increase tax

• car free sundays

• banned employment of guest workers

What did the price of an oil barrel go from and to?

$3 → $12

How much did the FRG have to pay for imports due to the oil crisis?

DM17 billion payed

Who were the DKP?

replaced KPD

communist party

How many members did they have? Any bundestag representative?

60k

0, didn’t meet 5% threshold

When were the FRG’s emergency laws established?

30 May 1968

What were the FRG emergency laws?

• intercept mail

• tap telephones

• house searches

• needed approval of bundestag and state gov

What was significant about the FRG emergency laws?

• Emergency laws final condition set by Allies to completely end occupation statute + grant FRG full national sovereignty

• triggered massive public panic + student protests

• Critics argue measures too closely mirrored AH enabling act/A48 + could be used to legally destroy democracy again

• A joint parliamentary committee created to oversee emergency powers, ensuring laws protected democratic state rather than destroying it

What did Kiesinger say about the 1960’S student protests?

shameful crowds of long haired dropouts who needed a bath and someone to discipline them

When did students protest against hospitality for the Shah of Iran?

tyrant in his own country thus Germany should not show him any hospitality

What was the result of the students protest against hospitality for the Shah of Iran?

1 student died

What caused the student protests in 1960s?

• Grand Coalition making amendments to the Basic Law

• lack of parliment opps to stap Grand Coalition

What was significance about the student protests of the 1960s?

• Students broke decades of silence, want to know what their parents' gen did to stop AH

• ask why former Nazis still held high-ranking jobs in FRG gov

• peaked against laws allowing state to restrict civil liberties during a crisis

• students feared was a return to AH rule

• "68ers" permanently liberalized advanced women's rights, democratic openness + mandatory Holocaust education

• movement's collapse drove small minority of extremists to abandon peaceful protest and form RAF

What was the Red Army Faction?

• far-left terrorist group

• Led by Andreas Baader + Ulrike Meinhof

What did the RAF do?

• tactics of sabotage and arson

• After Baader’s arrest for bombing a department store changed to assassinations and worse arsornry

When was the German Autumn?

1977

What happened in the German Autumn?

intense RAF activity killed 27 people

What % of the West German population sympathized with the terror?

15%

How was the RAF dealt with?

1973 = arrested + tighter visiting rights + longer periods of solitary confinement

Law Banning Contract = between terrorist inmates + defence lawyers

What were the key beliefs about the Green Party?

life shouldn’t be threatened by a declining environment socially and politically

What was the Count me Out movement of the 1950s?

A massive, spontaneous pacifist protest movement against nuclear weaponry on FRG soil

How many workers went on strike?

100k

What was significant about the Green Party?

first party to align itself with protesters

What did E. Papadakis say about the Green Party?

“ideas about how life could be fundamentally threatened by determination of the environment, the destruction of community life and the continuous nuclear arms race“

What were the three key aims about the Green Party listed by Democracy and its Discontents?

• Non-violence

• ecological activism

• unilateral disarmament

• social transformation

What was significant about the Count me Out movement of the 1950s?

• just years after WWII, proved West German public deeply traumatized by Nazism + strongly rejected any return to militarism

• united trad opposing groups ex. including communists, TU’s, church leaders, + youth—FRG's first major post-war grassroots protest

• failed to stop rearmament = intense public backlash forced FRG to permanently enshrine legal right to conscientious objection in Basic Law, allowing citizens to refuse military service based on moral beliefs.

What was A109 of the Basic Laws?

• Added by the Grand Coalition

• increasing gov control tax

• undermining decentralisation

How was Erhad described in Democracy and its discontents?

“master of improvisation“

What did Kloss say about Erhad?

“Lacked the ability to make decisions and to stand firm in the face of attack“

By 1966 what % was inflation at? What did Erhad suggest?

4% per annum

• 10% cut in gov spending

• increasing interest rates

• work extra hour a week

When did the FDP ministers resign?

27th October 1966

What happened to Erhad’s government following the resignation of the FDP ministers?

10 days later Bundestag held vote of no confidence