ABSTRACT
Perhaps even more than in Italy or the Netherlands, ‘integration’ is the key for understanding the history of Christian democracy in Germany in the immediate post-war phase. The centre-right components of German politics reorganised via Christian democratic power mobilisation. German fascism and the war had thoroughly revolutionised traditional political attachments. The Weimar parties had had their day, particularly right-wing liberalism and conservative Protestantism (Heidenheimer 1960:31). In fact, it is crucial to understand that ‘Christian democracy has been the vehicle through which German conservatives have come to accept liberal democracy’ (Irving 1979:163, original emphasis). This fact already may clarify a conservative disposition of German Christian democracy. Since only the pre-war Zentrum to a certain extent had been able to resist the ideological decomposition of German politics (Heidenheimer 1960:40), the leading role of Catholics in the foundation of Christian democracy was conspicuous, in spite of the fact that the Zentrum, too, had voted in favour of the ‘Enabling Act’ that had brought the Nazis to power in 1933.
