The Making of the German Post-War Economy: Political Communication and Public Reception of the Social Market Economy After World War Two by Christian Glosser (review)

Reviewed by: The Making of the German Post-War Economy: Political Communication and Public Reception of the Social Market Economy After World War Two by Christian Glosser Roland Spickermann The Making of the German Post-War Economy: Political Communication and Public Reception of the Social Market Economy After World War Two. By Christian Glosser. London: Tauris, 2010. Pp. xxi + 289. Cloth £59.50. ISBN 978-1848852648. Though the historiography of the postwar occupation of Germany has moved from economic and political history to more intensive discussion of its social and cultural aspects, the former approaches are by no means exhausted. Moreover, they have long made it impossible to see the founding or economic policies of the Federal Republic simply as Allied creations. Research has demonstrated the prewar roots of policies, such as Ludwig Erhard's economic plans and ideas, while describing more deeply the interactions and negotiations between German policymakers and occupation authorities. Christian Glosser's work—a history of the formulation of the "Social Market Economy" as policy, and its subsequent propagation—weaves many of these strands together. Because media were essential to consolidating a political party and to promoting its positions to the larger public, Glossner begins with the founding—and the Allies' careful licensing—of new politically affiliated publishers and periodicals. But the bulk of Glossner's work concerns the formulation of policies by academic groups and their adoption by the new political parties. Neither the liberal austerity of late Weimar nor the crude statism of Nazism were either attractive or viable after 1945; the postwar German public was not, in any case, receptive to ideology more generally. But what combination of market economics and socialist idealism to adopt, and how to package this, remained open questions for the major political parties. Many of the details in this work will be familiar to scholars of the period. Just as the advocates of new schools of thought were looking for ways to promote their programs, the new political parties were groping toward new identities. Especially familiar in this respect are the battles within the CDU and the CSU between Christian Socialists and those advocating more market-oriented approaches; this was embodied [End Page 469] in the rivalry between Jakob Kaiser and Konrad Adenauer. The rise of the "Freiburg School" of economic liberalism and the development of Ludwig Erhard's "Social Market Economy" doctrine are well known, as is the story of Erhard's own initial nonalignment with any single political party. Glossner documents how the ideas of the Freiburg school specifically aided Adenauer's antisocialist position in a West German political environment still receptive to a high degree of state planning and ownership. The SPD's hesitant position on the "Social Market" will also be familiar, but is presented here in a different perspective. The SPD's historical continuity with its anticommunist and anticapitalist past meant that it had less need to formulate a new identity or new policies, leading it to stress the need for more planning and industrial nationalization. Glossner stresses the ways in which the SPD came to terms with a permanently unfavorable political environment. It finally came to occupy the role of loyal opposition under Kurt Schumacher, not accepting the "social market" initially, but nonetheless pledging cooperation with the Economic Council in charge of implementing it. As Glossner shows, this position became unviable as prosperity returned, and it led ultimately to the SPD itself adopting a variant of the "Social Market Economy" at the Bad Godesberg conference in 1959. By that time, the idea had come to enjoy a national consensus. Though much of Glossner's work on the Federal Republic's early political and economic development will be familiar to many readers, his book's usefulness stems from the additional depth he gives to this period by juxtaposing these various aspects. Glossner's use of personal and internal records shows the extent to which the formulation of programs, their adoption and implementation by the political parties, and their eventual popular acceptance were not isolated processes, but rather part of a long interactive continuity on several levels: between think-tanks and parties on the one hand, and parties and the electorate on the other...