ABSTRACT
This chapter is focuses on the role of the chancellor in providing political leadership in the Federal Republic of Germany. The analysis of the relationship between the chancellor and his party makes clear the resources the chancellor has for providing political leadership. One of Willy Brandt's principal weaknesses was to listen rather too much to the Social Democratic Party and to take his cue too often from arguments proceeding within it. Traube was an atomic physicist whose home had been bugged by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution with the agreement of the Interior Minister, Werner Maihofer. Helmut Schmidt critics, in a permanent minority of the Party Executive and scarcely represented in the Presidium, placed their faith in changing the Chancellors policy in the Social-Democratic-Party (SPD) conference. The major issues at the Berlin Party Conference were those of energy policy and security.
