ABSTRACT
In the early post-war years the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) retained its pre-1933 identity: a class party, in which ideology, electorate and organization were rooted in what Losche has called the working-class solidarity community. Electorally successful, the SPD exercised government responsibility, first as junior party in a Grand Coalition with the Christian Democratic Union /Christian Social Union, then a dominant party in the Social-Liberal coalition with the Freie Demokratische Partei. The organizational structures of the post-war SPD were those of the Weimar party, as was the composition of the party elite. The reconstruction of the SPD took place in an ideological vacuum, occupied by default by the ossified neo-Marxism characteristic of the Weimar party. In view of the success of the government’s economic and foreign policies, Kurt Schumacher’s opposition strategy left the SPD politically isolated and in an electoral ghetto. The electoral renaissance of the SPD provided a platform from which to enter government.
