Economic Democracy in Post-World War II Germany: Corporatist Crisis Response, 1945-1948

Abstract

In recent years much light has been shed on a period in the history of Germany that had long remained curiously dark: the brief but dynamic years from 1945 to 1948-49, between the collapse of Hitler's regime and the rise of the new, successful, second German Republic of Bonn.l It was a unique period in German history. It was not just a time of deep economic and political-moral crisis. Many of the typical' ingredients of historical Germany were missing. There was no central state. The powerful traditional agricultural elite had been destroyed. In the west, the industrial elite was eclipsed. Foreign occupation governments deeply critical of many of Germany's political, economic, educational, and general institutional traditions ruled the country. Not surprisingly, expectations of and desire for a fundamental renewal of the German political and social-economic order were in the air everywhere.: Slogans such as Stunde Null (zero hour) and Zeitwende (dawn of a new age), calling for a new beginning or even revolution, abounded. Por many years, the immediate postwar phase of German history was wholly overshadowed by the so-called economic miracle, which, as the allegedly purest model of American-style free enterprise in all of Europe, raised Germany from the depths of economic destruction and despair within a few years and initiated an extraordinarily long period of sustained