Back to the history of New York City! We have begun with the city’s origin before the founding of the United States and left off in the 1880s in the last post – when New York was undeniably the economic and cultural center of the United States. Today, we are covering New York in its most iconic form as a moloch of steel, concrete, and millions of people. A chronological narrative will not help us here. Instead, we adopt a thematic approach and look the economy, construction, infrastructure, and culture which made New York from the late 19^th to the mid-20^th century the model city of high modernity.

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Economy: Transformation

New York had been America’s most dynamic hub for trade and manufacturing for decades. Yet the city’s riches had been shared unequally, just like the risks in producing them. In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, New York’s working class grew more assertive and found more political support to improve their lives: For example, the three Tenement House Acts of 1867, 1879, and 1901 mandated such luxuries as windows in every apartment and toilets in every building.

The 1909/1910 textile worker strikes led to improved pay and shorter hours. Just one year later, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Lower Manhattan burned down and 146 garment workers died – many of them unable to escape through the staircase because management kept the doors locked during shifts. The fire catastrophe led to a public outcry against such practices and New York state introduced better workplace and fire safety regulations.

The garment workers were in some ways emblematic for the New York working class – most of them were young immigrants (especially Jewish and Italian). In another, they represented a shift – almost all of them were women, and their struggle for better working conditions mirrored the force of the American women’s movement in the political arena.

In one way, however, they represented New York’s present, but not its future: The industrialization of the 19^th century had turned New York into the largest manufacturing hub of the world. Yet manufacturing, the physical production of goods, ran out of steam when the improved productivity provided most people in the United States with most of their basic needs. Eager customers were thus not to be taken for granted anymore. Instead, they had to be wooed and their desires – for items of whose existence they had recently been still ignorant – awakened. New York became a hotbed for the growing advertisement industry (with which Madison Avenue is synonymous until today) as well as for shopping (here, Fifth Avenue is the symbolic street). Our age of trends, shopping as a leisure activity, and overconsumption cannot be imagined without New York.

In the 19^th century, foreign capital had funded the expansion into the American West, but now the capital flows reversed: American capital was instrumental in financing the Allies’ Great War effort. At the end of the Great War, America was for the first time a net creditor nation. Its role in the international financial system expanded after the war as American loans enabled defeated Germany to pay its reparations to the Allies (who, in turn, paid off their American war loans). At the same time as New York took London’s place as the premier finance hub in the world, America at large withdrew from the world under a renewed isolationism and the xenophobia which came with the Red Scare after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Political upheaval did not stop the investment craze of the 1920s: When a bomb exploded in Wall Street in 1920 and killed 30 people, stock trading resumed normally the next day – much in contrast to 1920 Wall Street (Perepau Llistosella, Looping Games), where the bombing marks the end of the game (and players hope to have made all their profits by then).

The New York-based financial system was robust enough to withstand such external shocks, but it collapsed under its own contradictions: The stock market boom of the 1920 led to ever more capital pouring into the New York Stock Exchange (at the expense of all other forms of investments, for example the American overseas loans on which the global financial system was now based). The spectacular gains fueled a debt-based speculation bubble which burst in October 1929. The inadequate response by central banks which did nothing to combat the contraction of the monetary supply led to an extended, global economic crisis – the Great Depression.

Unemployment and poverty plagued New York much like the rest of the world in the 1930s. The city bounced back through ambitious public works initiated by the energetic new mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (many of them funded by New Deal funds in a cross-party cooperation between the Republican LaGuardia and the Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt). Still, New York’s economy only recovered when demand for manufactured goods skyrocketed because of World War II: The industrial giant rose one last time. One example of New York’s awesome productive capacity may suffice: From 1941 to 1945, the New York Navy Yard built more warships than all of Japan combined. The United States won World War II because of their industrial productivity, and New York was the beating heart of it.

Construction: Upwards

New York had always grown. From the 1880s on, the city grew in a heretofore barely used dimension – upwards. The twin innovations of the elevator and steel frame construction allowed for building heights which had been considered impractical, if not impossible, before. While New York was not the pioneer of these technologies – that merit belongs to Chicago – they were accepted in Manhattan on a scale not known before. Ever more “skyscrapers”, as the tall buildings were soon to be known, sprang up between the Hudson and the East River, giving the city a characteristic look from far away. New York’s skyline has been continually changing, but since then, it has always been dominated by skyscrapers – as has been the image of the city in the public imagination.

Board games are no exception. No theme is as prevalent in games about New York as the construction of skyscrapers. Some are specific, like Flatiron (Isra C./Shei S., Ludonova) which has players build the eponymous Flatiron Building together, but many could be set in any city with tall buildings – but as they are about tall buildings, their designers and publishers think they fit best for a New York setting: Manhattan (Karl-Heinz Koch, Fagus) is a variant of Acquire (Sid Sackson, Avalon Hill) to which the third dimension is added. New York City (Stefan Feld, Queen Games) is a remake of Rialto (Stefan Feld, TMG) – just that the struggle for majorities in Venetian districts of the original, fought with councilmembers, has been replaced by a struggle for majorities in New York boroughs, fought with – you guessed it – skyscrapers.

The skyscrapers got ever taller: The first steel frame buildings in the 1880s and 1890s were well below 100 meters. In 1909, the Singer Building (187m) was the first structure in New York to exceed the height of Europe’s church spires – the first time that the world’s tallest building stood in New York. The city would retain that honor until the 1970s with a succession of ever taller skyscrapers.

The most iconic one was the Empire State Building whose construction was begun in October 1929 – just weeks before the stock market crash. It became the most visible sign of the economic crisis: Even five years after its completion in 1931, half of the Empire State Building’s office space remained empty. Like the rest of New York, it recovered by the 1940s. It would remain the world’s tallest building until it was overtaken by another New York icon in 1973 – the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Infrastructure: Transport and Leisure

New York did not only grow vertically. Originally, the city had been confined to Manhattan Island and gradually expanded into what became the Bronx. In 1898, New York merged with its neighbor Brooklyn (itself America’s third-largest city at the time) as well Queens county and Staten Island to become a massive metropolis of more than three million inhabitants.

This sprawling moloch, however, was initially still centered on Manhattan, as most people worked there and thus couldn’t live too far away: In 1900, more than half of New Yorkers lived in Manhattan. That changed with the construction of the New York subway from 1900 on. New York was late to embark on such a project (London had started in the 1860s), but it was undertaken with the characteristic boldness of the city and soon became the largest in the world.

Thus, the geography of the city changed: New Yorkers could work in Manhattan, but commute every day from one of the other boroughs. As land there was a lot cheaper, a residential construction boom set in, and by the 1920s, Brooklyn had become the most populous borough of New York.

The growth of the city required its transport and leisure infrastructure to keep up. One man would become synonymous with it from the 1920s on: Robert Moses, starting out on the Long Island State Park Commission in 1924, became responsible for all kinds of parks, beaches, roads, bridges, and tunnels for both the state and the city of New York over the next decades.

These projects shaped the face of New York: The parks, both in the center and on the outskirts, provided very real benefits in one of the largest, most densely settled cities in the world. And the transport projects took inspiration from the new trend of motorized individual transport – and reinforced it.

Large-scale engineering projects like these go beyond the mere technical aspects. Moses’s creations were shaped by his ideas about how society should look like. For example, already his very first project – Jones Beach State Park on Long Island – outlined his ideal: It provided New Yorkers with a beautifully designed leisure park on the seashore. They arrived there after a pleasurable drive on the new parkways through lush greenery – by car, as no train or subway station was built in Jones Beach, and the bridges crossing the parkway were too low for buses to pass through. This lack of public transport meant that Jones Beach was exclusively accessible for the middle classes.

An even more striking example is Riverside Park in Manhattan along the Hudson River. Around a third of the park is in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Harlem, two thirds in the predominantly White Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side. These southern two thirds were liberally sprinkled with dozens and dozens of playgrounds, the third in Harlem only received one – and here, the iron lattice at the toilets was “decorated” with little ape sculptures.

As you can see, Robert Moses was not quite a nice guy. We’ll see more of him in the next post in this series!

Culture: Roaring Twenties

America’s new, more assertive role in the world after World War I also increased global interest in the country’s cultural output. American literature developed a new confidence, and American jazz became the hottest new music around the world. New York as America’s cultural center both attracted established artists (like the jazz musicians Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong who both made the city their home in 1923) and produced its own original creations (like the Harlem Renaissance, which marked the first time that a movement of Black American writers and visual artists left their imprint on the wider American cultural consciousness).

One of the institutions of the 1920s New York cultural scene has gotten its own board game: 1923 Cotton Club (Pau Carles, Looping Games). The historical Cotton Club was founded in Harlem in 1923 and soon became the venue to see many of the finest jazz musicians – an attraction not only for regular New Yorkers, but also for the celebrities of the time. That, in turn, made the club even more attractive… well, not for everyone. While the performers on stage were Black, the club would not admit Black patrons (except for the rare Black celebrity). That is not explicitly addressed by the board game, but attentive players will notice that the almost all of the artists which can perform at the players’ clubs are Black, almost all of the celebrities which may attend the club (and are the chief source of points) are White – as are the gangsters.

“Gangsters?” you may ask. “In a game about running a nightclub?” Yes, as we are in the age of the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. This fleeting episode (1920 to 1933), and the massive expansion of organized crime which came with it, is almost as irresistible to board game designers as the construction of skyscrapers. Sometimes, it is only the corollary to another activity (like in 1923 Cotton Club).

At other occasions, it takes center stage: Speakeasy (Vital Lacerda, Eagle-Gryphon Games) is all about building a crime empire in Manhattan based on the distribution of illegal alcohol. Frankly, there is a mafia game set in New York for all kinds of gaming tastes: Speakeasy caters to heavy euro gamer, The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire (Eric M. Lang, CMON) to those who love miniatures.

Blood Feud in New York (Kyle Weinandy, Eagle-Gryphon Games) is for combat-oriented gamers, and Nutty Business (Alain Rivollet, Studio H) for those who don’t want to take their game so seriously: Gangs of squirrels try to dominate the nut-smuggling business in Central Park, 1925.

Of course, all these mafia games could be set elsewhere. After all, alcohol was prohibited everywhere in the United States. New York, however, is irresistible as the biggest city, where presumably also the biggest crimes are committed. It is no coincidence that both Superman and Batman, those heroes of the Golden Age of Comics, fight their mastermind criminal enemies in fictionalized versions of New York (Metropolis and Gotham, respectively). Apropos: Age of Comics: The Golden Years (Giacomo Cimini/Sónia Gonçalves, Lirius Games) allows players to run a comic book publisher, develop ideas, print, and sell comic books… and of course, they do so in New York.  

New York’s status as leading America in culture and crime will feature in our next (and last) instalment of this series. Watch this space!

Games Referenced

Fifth Avenue (Wilko Manz, Ravensburger)

1920 Wall Street (Perepau Llistosella, Looping Games)

Flatiron (Isra C./Shei S., Ludonova)

Manhattan (Karl-Heinz Koch, Fagus)

Acquire (Sid Sackson, Avalon Hill)

New York City (Stefan Feld, Queen Games)

Rialto (Stefan Feld, TMG)

Ticket to Ride: New York (Alan R. Moon, Days of Wonder)

1923 Cotton Club (Pau Carles, Looping Games)

Speakeasy (Vital Lacerda, Eagle-Gryphon Games)

The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire (Eric M. Lang, CMON)

Blood Feud in New York (Kyle Weinandy, Eagle-Gryphon Games)

Nutty Business (Alain Rivollet, Studio H)

Age of Comics: The Golden Years (Giacomo Cimini/Sónia Gonçalves, Lirius Games)

Further Reading

For a concise introduction, especially focused on local politics, see Lankevich, George J.: New York City. A Short History, New York University Press, New York City, NY/London 1998.

If you want a treatment which is both more in-depth and more journalistic (and lavishly illustrated) and don’t mind its history practically ending around 1970, see the book version of the 17-hour PBS documentary from 1999: Burns, Ric/Sanders, James/Ades, Lisa: New York. An Illustrated History, Knopf, New York City, NY 2001.

Two weeks ago, we’ve looked at the first period of Soviet liberalization under Nikita Khrushchev from the 1950s on. While these reforms ended the era of Stalinist totalitarianism, they petered out when Khrushchev lost interest in them and was eventually overthrown and replaced by the more conservative Leonid Brezhnev. It would take another generation until a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, would undertake another broad reform program. These reforms – like last time, in the realms of domestic, foreign, and economic policy – are the subject of this article. Of course, you’ll also find a few board games in it!

Freer Press, Freer Elections

The Soviet Union’s political landscape had ossified under Brezhnev. This stagnation (or, if you want to phrase it more positively, hyperstability) also ruled out any experiments after Brezhnev’s death in 1982, and so the Politburo selected his loyal lieutenant Yuri Andropov. Unfortunately, Andropov was already 68 and severely ill then. He died in 1984, to be succeeded by another Brezhnevite stalwart, Konstantin Chernenko, who was similarly afflicted and even older (72 at his accession). Chernenko died in 1985. The rapid succession of aging Soviet leaders is poignantly captured in the contemporary joke: Margaret Thatcher calls Ronald Reagan: “It’s a pity you didn’t come to the funeral of the Soviet general secretary. Marvelous. A great spectacle. I’m totally going again next year.”

Another quasi-contemporary (1986) satirical take on the Soviet gerontocracy is Kremlin (Urs Hostettler, Fata Morgana): Players support the various Politburo members in the hopes of advancing those they have influence with to the top jobs, but many a hopeful candidate will die of stress and old age before realizing their ambitions.

After Chernenko’s death, even the most conservative Politburo members saw the need for a different tack: They elected Mikhail Gorbachev as their new leader in 1985, a real baby at age 54. Gorbachev’s reformist leanings were well-known, but he proceeded cautiously in his first year. As with Khrushchev, the big programmatic changes were first announced at a Party Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev’s first slogan for his reforms was glasnost (openness). That included sweeping changes to Soviet citizens’ freedom of expression: Gorbachev encouraged the Soviet press to scrutinize politics instead of simply parroting the party line. Dissidents were released from prison. Even non-state-sponsored demonstrations were allowed – a powerful tool to express malcontent with the government. Of course, these reforms undermined the power base of the Communist Party – but Gorbachev hoped that he could steer the ship of state in the new environment and might even benefit from a freer populace.

Even more radical were Gorbachev’s institutional reforms, usually referred to as perestroika (restructuring): The Communist Party’s monopoly on power was cut off by establishing the Congress of People’s Deputies as an independent parliament, and while the first elections in 1989 were not fully free, it was the first time that Soviet citizens could select from several candidates in a contested election. Gorbachev himself chose to base his power no longer on his role as General Secretary of the Communist Party, and instead was elected President of the Soviet Union by the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1990.

This nascent democratization drive – eventually rather envisioned than enacted – makes for the most powerful card in the last phase (1985—1991) of the Cold-War-in-a-nutshell which is Twilight Squabble (David J. Mortimer, AEG): It’s a bit of speculation on the internal and external legitimacy and attractiveness a more democratic Soviet Union could have enjoyed.

Détente, Arms Control, and Sinatra

Speaking of external legitimacy and attractiveness: Gorbachev’s policies (and he himself) would prove immensely popular in the West… after he had weathered the initial suspicion. Gorbachev began to advocate for a return to détente soon after he assumed office, but US president Ronald Reagan assumed this to be a Soviet ploy. Only after Gorbachev had met Reagan at the 1986 Reykjavík summit did the president believe Gorbachev’s intentions to be genuine.

In the following years, the two of them agreed on far-reaching mutual disarmament, most notably the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Gorbachev’s immutable advocacy for arms reduction is reflected in Wir sind das Volk! – 2+2 (Richard Sivel/Peer Sylvester, Histogame) as his event card cannot be used for the arms race.

Besides the lofty realms of nuclear arms reduction, Gorbachev also had more grounded problems to deal with: The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up the failing pro-Soviet government there and had been embroiled since then in a costly and futile counter-insurgency. As the Soviet military could not present Gorbachev with a convincing roadmap on how to win the war, he decided to pull the Soviet forces out in 1988. By that time, the unsuccessful war had undermined the Soviet government’s legitimacy which had rested on its status as a military superpower, exacerbated by the new avenues of political expression open to disaffected citizens – the mothers of Soviet soldiers who fought (or had died) in Afghanistan were among the first to form associations, to pressure the government, and to protest.

In that sense, it is surprising that the withdrawal from Afghanistan can still net the Communist player points in 1989 (Jason Matthews/Ted Torgerson, GMT Games) – but the general principle holds true: The later the Soviets withdraw, the more their failure in Afghanistan becomes an asset to the opponents of Communist power.

Finally, Soviet power was the rock on which the Communist governments in Eastern Europe rested. Whenever they had been challenged – most importantly in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 – Soviet tanks had quashed the dissent. This limited sovereignty within the Eastern bloc had been the central tenet of Soviet foreign policy, after 1968 named the Brezhnev Doctrine. Gorbachev adopted a new approach: He would not militarily intervene in Eastern Europe anymore. Instead, the countries of the Warsaw Pact were free to “do it their way” – thus humorously called the Sinatra Doctrine.

Disruptive New Impulses for the Economy

Finally, Gorbachev’s reform agenda of perestroika also aimed to transform the Soviet economy. All Soviet leaders had engaged in some kind of economic reforms, so Gorbachev’s activity did not seem very surprising… until observers inside and outside of the Soviet Union realized how radically it would change the tenets of the Soviet economy, traditionally based on central planning, large state-owned companies, and very limited contacts with the outside world.

First, Gorbachev gave the state-owned companies much more leeway over what to produce and how to set prices. These market incentives were supposed to improve efficiency, but clashed with the existing structures.

Undeterred, Gorbachev went a step further and loosened the restriction on private enterprises. More Soviet citizens could start their own store or workshop and offer goods and services at their own responsibility.

Then, Gorbachev allowed for joint ventures with Western companies (provided the Soviet part owned a majority share), and even let them set up dependencies in the Soviet Union – the famous first McDonald’s restaurant in the Soviet Union opened in January 1990.

The End of the Cold War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Gorbachev’s daring move to end hostilities with the West was an unqualified success. In late 1989, he and US president George H.W. Bush could merrily declare together that the Cold War was over.

The consequences of Gorbachev’s foreign policy reverberated through the Eastern Bloc: The allied Communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe were swept away in 1989.

The Perestroika and Glasnost event in Wir sind das Volk! – 2+2 neatly shows the way in which Gorbachev’s reforms put stress on the system: On the one hand, it increases Soviet dominance and makes socialism more attractive (lower two icons). However, it also increases unrest in East Germany (fist icons).

Within the Soviet Union, the political freedoms granted allowed citizens to demand more freedoms. These centrifugal effects became particularly visible as most of the non-Russian republics soon had nationalist independence movements which began to eat away the Soviet Union from its ethnic fringes. Gorbachev responded by proposing a looser federation between the Soviet Republics.

The political reforms also had negative interaction with the economic reforms: On the one hand, the flurry of changes created new inefficiencies; on the other, the increased freedom of the press highlighted economic problems no matter if they were new or had existed for centuries. As Soviet economic performance thus both objectively worsened and also became more obvious to the average citizen, Gorbachev’s legitimacy eroded.

Hardliners within the Communist Party couped against Gorbachev in August 1991 to prevent the loose federation between the Soviet Republics. A coup might also spell the end for the player in the solo game Gorbachev: The Fall of Communism (R. Ben Madison, White Dog Games). It’s a States of Siege game with a twist: Whenever the marker on any of the five paths (four of which refer to various ethno-national groups in the Soviet Union, the fifth represents the Communist Party) reaches the center, the game is not lost immediately, but a coup is staged: If Gorbachev has enough elite support to weather it, he goes on to fight another day.

In history, that was not the case: While the coup failed, it made Gorbachev a lame duck. The supporters of reforms turned away from him and toward his erstwhile ally Boris Yeltsin (who had cut a much more dashing figure during the coup), and away from the Soviet Union and toward their respective ethno-national identities. Gorbachev resigned as president and the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991.

Games Referenced

Kremlin (Urs Hostettler, Fata Morgana)

Twilight Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games)

Twilight Squabble (David J. Mortimer, AEG)

Wir sind das Volk! – 2+2 (Richard Sivel/Peer Sylvester, Histogame)

1989 (Jason Matthews/Ted Torgerson, GMT Games)

Gorbachev: The Fall of Communism (R. Ben Madison, White Dog Games)

Further Reading

The most influential work on Gorbachev’s time in office and his policies remains Brown, Archie: The Gorbachev Factor, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996.

A magisterial mosaic of Soviet social, economic, and cultural life is Schlögel, Karl: The Soviet Century. Archaeology of a Lost World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2023.

For the age of hyperstability before Gorbachev (and the discussion if it was an age of stability or stagnation), see the essays (in German, but with English abstracts) in: Belge, Boris/Deuerlein, Martin (eds.): Goldenes Zeitalter der Stagnation? Perspektiven auf die sowjetische Ordnung der Brežnev-Ära, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014.

On the transformative last third of the 20^th century in Russian history, see Kotkin, Stephen: Armageddon Averted. The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001.

On the end of the Cold War, see Dockrill, Saki Ruth: The End of the Cold War Era. The Transformation of the Global Security Order, Hodder, London 2005.

For the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, see Braithwaite, Rodric: Afgantsy. The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979—1989, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011.

You know the drill: We’re assessing a (democratic) leader, illustrated with a single board game! Today’s subject is another German chancellor – Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. And which game could be more appropriate for him than Wir sind das Volk! (Richard Sivél/Peer Sylvester, Histogame) plus the 2+2 expansion?

After an introduction to the rating system, we’ll survey Adenauer’s life – from his early years over his tenure as mayor of Cologne to his election as chancellor, and, of course, what he did in office – the foreign policy successes, the domestic agenda, and the decline of his later years – before coming to the rating. Let’s go!

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The chancellors will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as chancellor, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)chancellors).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A chancellor can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the chancellor is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the chancellor increase German influence in the world and the security of Germans at home? Did the chancellor wield German power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of German power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the chancellor increase the liberty of Germans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the chancellor promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the chancellor facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Germans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the chancellor’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the chancellor have an idea of what Germany and Europe (the latter counting for more in times of German influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the chancellor’s policies steer Germany (and, if applicable, Europe) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the chancellor succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the chancellor manage the support from parliament, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the chancellor understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the chancellor respect the boundaries of the office?

Note: If you have read my UK prime minister or US president ratings, you will remember that I rated them on the global impacts of their vision as well. As the rating system is only really applicable to democratic leaders and no democratic German leader ever had the chance to conduct a truly global policy, I only assess their vision on national and European grounds.

Adenauer’s Life

Early Years

Konrad Adenauer was born on January 5, 1876, in a Rhenish bourgeois family. He and his brothers were the first in the family to attend a university. After a few years working in public service and at a law firm, Adenauer turned to local politics. As he had a foot in both confessional/political camps (his own family was devoutly Catholic, his wife came from one of the old liberal Protestant families), Adenauer secured a broad majority for his election as Deputy Mayor of Cologne in 1906.

Adenauer rose quickly in municipal administration, both by his diligent, energetic service and his family connections – his wife’s uncle Ludwig Wallraf had been elected Lord Mayor in 1907.  When Wallraf was called to serve in the Reich administration in 1917, Adenauer was elected Lord Mayor of Cologne.

Lord Mayor of Cologne

His years at the helm of the city were turbulent. Just a year after his election, the double quake of Germany’s defeat in World War I and the German Revolution of 1918/19 sent shockwaves through the country. Adenauer himself put out tentative feelers to France, if the west of Germany could become an independent country (giving the French a buffer state to Germany). The Allies, however, forged a different agreement in their negotiations at Versailles. During the crisis year of 1923, Adenauer made another attempt at Rhenish separatism, which faltered as the crises were resolved by Gustav Stresemann’s government.

Adenauer was an energetic Lord Mayor whose legacy can still be seen and felt in Cologne – the “green belt” of parks around the city center (formerly a ring of fortifications), the university, and one of the bridges over the Rhine are his creations. He used a pragmatic government style, adding to his own power base of the Catholic Zentrum (Center) party whichever other factions would give him a majority for his projects – Liberals, Social Democrats, and in the case of the bridge even the Communists.

Adenauer’s many expensive projects put Cologne in a financial squeeze when the Great Depression reduced revenue and cut off access to international credit. He applied himself to bettering the city’s financial situation with mixed success.

When the Nazis took power in 1933, they removed him from his post. Adenauer, now aged 57, entered private life. For the next twelve years, he would distance himself both from the Nazis and the anti-Nazi resistance.

The Path to the Chancellorship

In 1945, the Allies had need of men like Adenauer – experienced in government, not a Nazi, and a reliable proponent of democracy and market economy. He was reinstated as Lord Mayor of Cologne. His tenure, however, was cut short, when the British authorities (in whose occupation zone Cologne lay) found out about his contacts with the French on the matter of – once more – establishing a separate Rhenish state.

Letting go of the mayorship was not too hard for Adenauer. It freed him up for the work of establishing a new party which was to shed the confessional limitations of the old Zentrum in favor of an all-Christian approach – the CDU (Christlich-Demokratische Union, Christian Democratic Union). Adenauer also was tapped to head the Parliamentary Council working on the Basic Law, a quasi-constitution for the new German state to be founded. Adenauer, never much of a conceptual thinker, was barely involved in the drafting, yet his political acumen was instrumental in forging the compromises behind the Basic Law.

When the Soviet Union lifted the Berlin Blockade in May 1949, the path for a German state made out of the three western occupation zones was free. The first free elections in the new Federal Republic of Germany gave no one a clear majority, but Adenauer’s CDU (plus its Bavarian allies, the CSU [Christlich-Soziale Union, Christian Social Union] came in first. In a tactically masterful campaign, Adenauer convinced his party (and then its partners) not to form a “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats, and instead govern with several smaller bourgeois parties (the liberal FDP [Freie Demokratische Partei, Free Democratic Party] as well as the nationalist DP [Deutsche Partei, German Party]). Adenauer himself was elected Chancellor on September 15, 1949.

Foreign Policy Successes

Adenauer’s first task as Chancellor was the re-integration of (West) Germany into the international community. As a first step, he negotiated the Petersberg Agreement (1949) with the Allied High Commissioners which granted the new West German state limited sovereignty. His further negotiations with the Allies were crowned by the General Treaty (1955) which made West Germany a sovereign country for most intents and purposes – special rights for the four Allied powers (Soviet Union, United States, United Kingdom, France) notwithstanding. Consequently, West Germany would have an army again, and become a member of NATO.

Adenauer’s approach of integration through giving up control did not only work for regaining sovereignty, but also in European affairs: France’s anxiety about the German heavy industry (and the French desire to gain access to more coal and steel) resulted in the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community which placed the heavy industry of the two countries (plus Italy and the Benelux countries) under supranational control – the first international agreement of that kind, and the first step toward the European Union.

While Adenauer used the opportunities presented to him, he also recognized the traps: Thus, when Stalin offered German reunification as a neutral country (with only the vaguest allusions to the nature of such a unified Germany) in 1952, Adenauer refused to take the bait and dismissed the note in concert with the Western Allies.

All this time, Adenauer had to contend with the opposition of the nationalist Germans and the SPD who felt that the Chancellor had become an instrument of the Western Allies, both of them grossly misjudging Germany’s negotiation position. Adenauer’s shrewd realism prevailed.

Adenauer was skilled at fusing values and interests in negotiations. While he was personally committed to German reparations to the newly-founded state of Israel for Nazi Germany’s persecution and murder of the European Jews, he did not just announce them. Instead, he had the negotiations on them run in parallel to those on Germany’s foreign debt (mostly from Marshall Plan loans, but also still from the reparations after World War I). The moral impetus of the negotiations with Israel carried over to the debt negotiations, as only an economically strong Germany could give meaningful support to the Jewish state, and so a large part of the debt repayments were postponed or cancelled altogether.

Stepping out of the shadow of the war was not only a question of reparations. Millions of Germans had been taken prisoner by the Allies. Most of them were released in the years immediately after the war, but the Soviet Union kept several thousand in camps  until Adenauer negotiated their release in 1955. While he did not encounter much resistance from Soviet leader Khrushchev, the “Return of the Ten Thousand”, as the contemporary writers called it (borrowing from Xenophon) was often cited as Adenauer’s prime achievement by the Germans who lived through his administration – a symbolic end to the war.

The Domestic Agenda

Millions of Germans had lost their homes and livelihoods in the war – be that by destruction or when they were expelled from the German East. If and how these losses should be compensated was the subject of intense public debate. Adenauer opted for a tax of fifty percent of the value of property of owners who had not suffered any losses, payable in instalments over thirty years (Lastenausgleich [Burden Equalization]). The funds raised were paid out in various programs to those who had suffered material losses. While there was intense resentment on the part of property owners from the relatively untouched German West, the scheme helped integrate the millions of refugees while preserving the pre-war social order.

In the meantime, the West German economy had taken off – fuelled by the European integration as well as the increased demand for German consumer goods as the outbreak of the Korean War oriented the American economy towards war materiel, but also because the economic course of Adenauer’s administration proved successful: A generally liberal market economy was tempered by sporadic government intervention (soziale Marktwirtschaft [social market economy]).

Adenauer’s second large social project concerned retirement pensions. Retirees, already not particularly well off on the whole, had not partaken in the dynamic wage growth of the 1950s. They remained poor in an ever-wealthier society. Adenauer (against the position of the cabinet majority) pushed for pensions to be paid out of the premiums of the currently-employed (instead of those the retirees had paid themselves). When the reform was implemented in 1957, pensions were significantly increased and old-age poverty all but eliminated.

The chancellor’s willingness to atone for the crimes of his country’s past in foreign policy contrasted with his selection of staff and ministers at home: Hans Globke, whose work at the Ministry of the Interior’s Office of Jewish Affairs during Nazi times had seen him actively involved in the legal discrimination and persecution of Jews, continued his career as Chief of Staff at Adenauer’s chancellery. Adenauer’s Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims, Theodor Oberländer, had even participated in Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 and had later advocated for the ethnic cleansing of Poland. Both selections were controversial, but Adenauer kept faith with them – Oberländer had to resign under public pressure in 1960, Globke stayed on until Adenauer’s own resignation.

Adenauer masterfully parlayed his domestic and foreign policy successes into ever-larger electoral victories in 1953 (when CDU and CSU had the majority together with the DP, but joined with the FDP in addition as well) and 1957 (when CDU and CSU won a one-party majority for the first and only time in the history of German democracy). Both times, Adenauer’s skill and ruthlessness as a campaigner were instrumental in the victories.

The Decline

After 1957, Adenauer seemed to lose his touch. His negotiations ensuring German re-armament had been masterful, but there was a gaping hole between the ambitious plans for the German army and the haphazard way in which a much more modest force was established. At the same time, Adenauer kept calling for Germany’s nuclear armament, a demand which was sure to be rejected by the Western Allies and exploited by the Soviets as a sign of the return of aggressive German militarism. Adenauer’s casual, sometimes careless treatment of the subject (he referred to tactical nuclear weapons as nothing more than an “advancement in artillery”) also increased the fear of a new, even more devastating, war within the German population.

At the same time, Adenauer’s erstwhile foreign policy acumen – and willingness to confront the Soviets – seemed to have withered. When Khrushchev threatened West Berlin again from 1958, Adenauer was half disinterested, half willing to give in. Only French, and later American firmness on the matter prevented West Berlin being turned into a neutral “free city.” Adenauer’s detached behavior – most evident after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 – contrasted starkly with the principled stand of Willy Brandt, Mayor of West Berlin, and Adenauer’s Social Democratic challenger in the 1961 elections.

It was somewhat surprising that Adenauer even stood for reelection in 1961 – after all, he was alreadyy 85 at the time. Two years before, he had toyed with abandoning the chancellorship and succeeding Theodor Heuss as Federal President – an office which had been designed to be largely ceremonial in the constitution, but which Adenauer wanted to turn into the political center of gravity (following de Gaulle’s example) of Germany. After Adenauer’s ambitions had damaged the office of the president, the plan was dashed by his own party, which was increasingly less willing to put up with everything Adenauer decreed.

Once more, Adenauer’s CDU/CSU won the elections, but the significant losses at the ballot box meant Adenauer had to form a coalition with the FDP again – and to promise that he would step down during the term. Before that came to happen, Adenauer and the ebullient civil society of the German democracy had their starkest clash: When news magazine Der Spiegel (The Mirror) reported on the botched rearmament, Adenauer authorized his minister of defense Franz-Josef Strauß (CSU) to push for charges of treason against the editor and journalists of the magazine. The newsroom was searched for evidence and several journalists arrested – a gross violation of the freedom of the press. Unsurprisingly, the charges had to be dropped.

Adenauer’s last initiative was an improvement of the relationship with Germany’s western neighbor France. Since the founding of the German nation-state less than a century before, the two countries had fought three devastating wars (plus countless wars between France and the German principalities before Germany’s national unification). If there was someone to bridge this “inherited enmity”, it was Adenauer – after all, he had sounded out the French about founding a French-aligned separate Rhenish state no less than three times before he took over national office, and he had cultivated a good relationship with French president Charles de Gaulle since 1958 (based on both men’s instinctive feeling that they did not receive everything that was due to them from their Anglo-American allies). Adenauer and de Gaulle concluded the Élysée Treaty in January 1963, proclaiming the friendship between the two countries (which has since taken root in a plethora of local initiatives and city twinnings). De Gaulle’s and Adenauer’s goal to challenge Anglo-American leadership of the West with the Franco-German alliance, however, failed, as Adenauer’s party only accepted the treaty once it was couched in a preamble stressing the importance of the transatlantic relationship and support for the United Kingdom joining the budding integrated Europe.

At this point, Adenauer had lost his party. While he tried to maneuver for a succession to his liking, the party’s parliamentary group was not willing anymore to accept his authority. Of the four men considered chancellor material, they selected the one least to Adenauer’s liking – Minister of the Economy Ludwig Erhard. Adenauer resigned on October 15, 1963.

While retired from the chancellorship, he remained party chairman of the CDU. He spent his last years writing his memoirs and – behind the curtain as well as publicly – undermining his unloved successor, whose resignation in 1966 he still lived to see. Konrad Adenauer died on April 19, 1967, aged 91.

The Rating

Foreign policy

Foreign policy was always Adenauer’s focus – he even acted as his own Foreign Secretary from 1951 to 1955. The immense successes of the early years – Germany’s shedding of its pariah status, its firm integration into the West, and the foundations for European integration – are arguably the most impressive feat in the history of German foreign policy. Yet Adenauer’s later foreign policy seemed fickle and his resolve weakened. The chaotic nature of the rearmament process also wasted potential for increased security. Even his last success – the Élysée Treaty – was a mirage, as the personal (instead of institutional) framework of the agreement was quickly dashed by his successor.

Domestic policy

Konrad Adenauer was the first chancellor of the newly democratic Germany. Yet his own position to democratic values was distanced, at times tactical. The reappearance of former Nazi officials in high government positions and his unwillingness to confront the Nazi crimes domestically meant that wrongs continued to go unchecked – for example in the law courts, which, supported by Adenauer’s government, quickly re-established their old personnel. Adenauer saw personal liberties as subject to the state’s (or the government’s interests) – most clearly evidenced in the Spiegel scandal. The societal climate of Adenauer’s Germany fell behind the more liberal Weimar Republic decades before.

Economic policy

The best economic course was subject to intense debate in the mid-20^th century: Adenauer’s own party adopted a platform of nationalizing banks and heavy industry in 1946; most of the cabinet members (including the pro-business FDP and Minister for the Economy Ludwig Erhard) favored a pure private-business market economy. Adenauer steered a middle course against tough opposition, establishing a dynamic market economy tempered by comprehensive social reforms. This admirably successful model has since shown weaknesses of its own (especially due to the demographic development), but none that could have been apparent at the time of its creation.

Vision

Adenauer was a tactician rather than a strategist, seizing opportunities as they arose. Yet in 1949 he was the right man for the time whose unorthodox thinking was just right for the situation. Thus, he was able to establish many of the fundamental tenets of the new state which persist until today – from integration into the West and a particularly close relationship with France to the commitment to Israel. He also shaped the way in which politics are conducted in Germany – then as now focused on the chancellor.

Pragmatism

When Adenauer’s name was mentioned as a potential first chancellor and his fellow CDU members wondered if he was not too old at 73, Adenauer told them that his doctor had assured him he would still be fit for office for “another two or three years”. In the end, he ruled Germany for 14. During that time, he dominated the political process in the country in an almost-continuous loop of parlaying political success into electoral victories and electoral victories into domination over issues and allies alike. Only in his very last years did his grip over party and electorate wane – as evidenced by his weaker electoral performance in 1961 and his party choosing the successor he liked the least.

Integrity

Adenauer’s electoral success was not only due to his eager adoption of the new methods of polling and his deft use of electoral promises – he was not beneath regularly smearing his opponents, from personal attacks (like mentioning Willy Brandt’s birth out of wedlock) over absurd exaggerations (“All Paths of Marxism Lead to Moscow,” a dig at the (strictly anti-communist!) Social Democrats) to outright inventions (Adenauer was fond of alleging that SPD candidates had accepted bribes from East Germany). At the same time, he used the German intelligence service to spy on the SPD leadership. At one point, he even funneled government money into a campaign (at the referendum for the future of the Saar). Still, in the politically fluid years of the early Federal Republic of Germany he never attempted to outright undermine democracy.

Summary

Adenauer combines stunning successes with great political and personal flaws. If Adenauer had stepped down from the chancellorship in 1957, he would go down as one of the greatest democratic leaders in history. His lackluster last years in office tarnished the greatness exhibited before, and so he places slightly behind the very top.

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Wilhelm Marx 17/30
12. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
13. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Adenauer? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

For short overview essays on all German chancellors from Bismarck on, see Sternburg, Wilhelm von: Die deutschen Kanzler. Von Bismarck bis Merkel [The German Chancellors. From Bismarck to Merkel], Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006 (in German).

For a classic, albeit somewhat hagiographic biography, see Schwarz, Hans-Peter: Adenauer (two volumes), DVA, Stuttgart 1986/1991 (in German).

The combative counter-point to Schwarz, depicting Adenauer as a shrewd tactician rather than a visionary saint, is Köhler, Henning: Adenauer. Eine politische Biographie [Adenauer. A Political Biography], Propyläen, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin 1994 (in German).

For the context of Germany’s tumultuous history, see Herbert, Ulrich: A History of Twentieth-Century Germany, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019.

Last year, I have inaugurated a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, I’m branching out! After our first US president earlier this year, we now do a German chancellor – Ludwig Erhard, nicknamed “The Father of the Economic Miracle”. After a quick introduction to the rating system and an overview of Erhard’s life, we go straight into the rating. The accompanying game will be Wir sind das Volk! (Richard Sivél/Peer Sylvester, Histogame).

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The chancellors will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as chancellor, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)chancellors).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A chancellor can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the chancellor is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the chancellor increase German influence in the world and the security of Germans at home? Did the chancellor wield German power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of German power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the chancellor increase the liberty of Germans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the chancellor promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the chancellor facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Germans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the chancellor’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the chancellor have an idea of what Germany and Europe (the latter counting for more in times of German influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the chancellor’s policies steer Germany (and, if applicable, Europe) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the chancellor succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the chancellor manage the support from parliament, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the chancellor understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the chancellor respect the boundaries of the office?

Note: If you have read my UK prime minister or US president ratings, you will remember that I rated them on the global impacts of their vision as well. As the rating system is only really applicable to democratic leaders and no democratic German leader ever had the chance to conduct a truly global policy, I only assess their vision on national and European grounds.

Erhard’s Life

Ludwig Erhard was born on February 4, 1897. His parents owned a clothing store in Fürth, a city in the south of Germany. Erhard was initially destined to follow them in the business, but came back from World War I badly wounded and unable to stand for an extended period of time (as we would have had to as a store owner). He thus turned to academia and studied business. After graduating, he managed his parents’ store for a short time before it went bankrupt in 1928. Erhard then succeeded in following his academic aspirations and worked at various institutes and universities. Erhard was no supporter of the Nazi regime which took power in 1933, but conducted advisory research for them. In 1942, he failed in a bid to head his university’s institute for economics (losing to a member of the Nazi party) and was soon after forced out of the institute. He then set up his own one-man think tank, writing on how to re-build Germany’s economy after the war.

These studies – and Erhard’s relative distance from the Nazi regime – recommended him to the post-war authorities. After quick stints on the local and regional level, he was appointed Head of the Special Office for Money and Credit (and soon after Director of Economics) of the Anglo-American occupation zone in Germany. When he was informed by the Allied authorities of their decision to introduce a new currency (the Deutsche Mark) in the three western occupation zones, Erhard went ahead and also announced the lifting of price-fixing and production controls for most goods.

Economically speaking, the monetary reform and abolition of state control over the economy were not an immediate success. Prices shot up (while wages were still fixed) and unemployed quadrupled to 12%, thus, unrest (leading to a general strike) spread in West Germany. However, the abolition of price-fixing all but abolished the previously ubiquitous black markets. Erhard’s reputation thus was stellar, and the newly formed big-tent center-right party CDU (Christlich-Demokratische Union, Christian Democratic Union) invited Erhard to join forces with them. Erhard, who personally was more of a classical liberal than a conservative, joined with the intent of committing a large party to his ideas of free markets, and successfully ran for parliament on the CDU ticket in West Germany’s first national elections in 1949. Erhard then became Minister for the Economy in the new administration, a post he would hold for the next fourteen years.

Early in Erhard’s tenure, economic success blossomed: The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 re-committed the American economy to war production – and West Germany seized the opportunity to produce the civilian goods not made in America anymore. The West German economy boomed. Unemployment fell. Wages rose. Exports grew manifold. And Erhard, who steadfastly (but not always successfully) defended his liberal economic principles against any attempts to introduce more state intervention, became the lucky charm of the German “economic miracle”.

Erhard’s corresponding popularity made him a natural contender for the succession of West Germany’s first chancellor Konrad Adenauer. When Adenauer finally resigned in 1963 (aged 87), the CDU and its allies in government elected Erhard as the new chancellor. Erhard, never a politician’s politician, refrained from domestic initiatives. His foreign policy was based on the attempt to align West Germany closer with the United States and Great Britain at the expense of the cordial Franco-German relationship his predecessor had built. Erhard won a resounding electoral victory in 1965, but his relationship with his own party remained frail. When a mild recession hit West Germany and the budget was threatened by Erhard’s earlier commitment to payments to the United States and Britain to make up for the spending of their troops stationed in Germany (the “offset arrangement”), his government broke down (1966). Erhard was forced to resign. The new government which was based on the CDU and the long-time oppositional Social Democrats elected Kurt Georg Kiesinger as his successor. Erhard retired to a quiet life, but remained a member of parliament until his death on May 5, 1977.

The Rating

Foreign policy:

Erhard’s only field of ambition during his chancellorship – and also the area of his most obvious failure. His pivot away from France damaged the Franco-German relationship and European integration (which he, against his general economic principles, did not seek anyway). On the other hand, Erhard could not make good on his aim to improve German-American relationships – his professed dislike for France took any kind of lever out his hand, and his willingness to accede to American demands (like promising full payment in the offset arrangement) did not result in any favors in return from the United States (the key prize would have been if America had continued to seek a Multilateral Force with nuclear weapons – which would have resulted in Germany’s nuclear sharing).

Domestic policy:

Erhard did not start any domestic policy initiatives and ignored the growing societal pressures beyond his favorite topic of the economy. In the rare cases that such topics were forced onto him, Erhard, to his credit, deviated from the previous course of German policy which had been to largely ignore the Nazi crimes: When he found out that his Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims had been an active Nazi party functionary, Erhard forced his resignation (in a striking difference to his predecessor Adenauer, who kept his Chief of Staff for ten years despite the man’s well-known involvement in drafting the Nazis’ laws prosecuting German Jews).

As German law knew a statute of limitation preventing criminal prosecution after twenty years, all Nazi crimes would have gone unpunished from 1965 on. Erhard was in the minority of government members who wanted to extend the period of prosecution. Parliament passed an extension with a mixed-party majority – Erhard, however, had nor been able to convince his own government colleagues and was not instrumental in securing this majority.

Economic policy:

Another policy field of Erhard inaction – this time, however, by design. Erhard’s liberal economic credo kept him from intervening in the economy. That was defensible in the narrow view – economic activity in the short term – but defective otherwise: Erhard knew (more than a year before the budgetary crisis of 1966) that the economic downswing lowered public revenue while his promises concerning the offset arrangement would raise expenses. Erhard thus brought the budgetary crisis, over which he’d fall, onto himself. In the longer term, Erhard’s torpedoing of European integration denied the German economy export markets and delayed the innovation stimulus of increased competition.

Vision:

Erhard’s overarching vision in life was to allow free individuals to pursue their ambitions in a market economy – but when he entered office, he felt the preconditions for that were already achieved (a debatable claim). Thus, his policy mostly consisted of staying the course. He did pitch a foreign policy plan to refuse the Soviet Union loans and then “buy” German reunification when the Soviet economy collapsed, but was met with (justified) bewilderment by both his domestic and foreign interlocutors. Domestically, his only contribution which went beyond the immediate needs was his idea of a “Formed-Up Society” in which both egoism and pluralism would be overcome – an idea that he brought up during the 1965 election campaign and did not return to afterward.

Pragmatism:

Likely Erhard’s weakest suit. While he did not attempt much, what he attempted usually fell flat because Erhard was unable to secure support for it (or because he wavered and dropped it in the face of resistance). He had lost his own party’s support for his foreign policy within his first year in office. Their support for his domestic activities (or, rather, the lack thereof) withered soon after. Particularly instructive is the aftermath of Erhard’s 1965 electoral victory: Erhard squandered this testament of his popularity with the voters within weeks. He had intended to downsize the cabinet (and thus to get rid of ministers appointed by his predecessor and unfriendly to him) but waited too long to begin that process. In the end, the parliamentary parties of the coalition partners CDU, its Bavarian sister party CSU, and the pro-business FDP prevailed in securing all the posts for ministers they wanted. Erhard was forced to accept a virtually unchanged cabinet. Only one year after his electoral victory, the remainder of his political capital was spent and he resigned.

Integrity:

Erhard came into office planning to abolish his predecessor’s “democracy of favors” which was based on securing the support of powerful interest groups like the churches, the farmers’ associations, the employers’ associations, or the trade unions by passing legislation and channeling government funding in their favor. While Erhard was not above combatting European economic integration (against his liberal credo of open markets and the benefits of competition) to protect the German farmers from their French competitors, he doled out distinctly fewer favors than his predecessor. He also confined himself to the limits the constitution spelled out and did not attempt to shape the state offices to his liking (as Adenauer had done when he tried to move from the chancellorship into the presidency – but, of course, turning the presidency into the more important office). Finally, Erhard’s more collegial government style confirmed that Germany had moved beyond authoritarianism.

Erhard is the rare case of a politician not defined by the highest office he attained: He took the decisive action of his life as Director of Economics for the Bizone. He is best remembered by the public as Minister for the Economy. Looking at his chancellorship, it’s easy to see why: During this short period in office, Erhard did not attempt much, and what he attempted usually failed. His successors were left to respond to pressures resulting from the changing civil society and to repair the damage done to Franco-German relations (only achieved around ten years later). Erhard positions himself on the lower rungs of the leaders rated.

Full ratings so far:

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Wilhelm Marx 17/30
12. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
13. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Erhard? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

For short overview essays on all German chancellors from Bismarck on, see Sternburg, Wilhelm von: Die deutschen Kanzler. Von Bismarck bis Merkel [The German Chancellors. From Bismarck to Merkel], Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006 (in German).

For a recent English-language biography (or, rather, a hagiography), see Mierzejewski, Alfred C.: Ludwig Erhard. A Biography, University of North Carolina press, Chapel Hill, NC 2005.

The standard, primary-source based, scholarly biography (which is a bit vitriolic, but generally sound in its judgment) is Hentschel, Volker: Ludwig Erhard. Ein Politikerleben [Ludwig Erhard. A Politician’s Life], Olzog, Munich 1996 (in German).