Christian Democracy in Europe since 1945

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE SINCE 1945 This is the companion volume to Political Catholicism in Europe 1918–1945. Chr...

Author: Michael Gehler

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CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE SINCE 1945 This is the companion volume to Political Catholicism in Europe 1918–1945. Christian democratic parties became the dominant political force in post-war Western Europe, and the European People’s party is currently the largest group in the European Parliament. CD parties and political leaders like Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi played a particularly important role in the evolution of the core Europe of the EEC/EC after 1945. This book, for the first time, reveals the roles of the CD parties in postwar Europe, systematically and from a pan-European perspective. All country chapters address the same questions about the parties’ membership and social organisation; their economic and social policies; and their European and international policies during the Cold War. Rather than simply covering Western Europe, it includes chapters on East-Central Europe in the first years after 1945 before their suppression. An introductory survey chapter, by eminent British historian Peter Pulzer reveals the international context for the development of European CD parties in the 20th century; and a comparative chapter—by Anton Pelinka—draws together the main results of the individual chapters from a pan-European perspective. Furthermore, two chapters on the much-neglected transitional cooperation of these parties and their influence on the process of European integration after 1945 complement the country chapters. This volume (and its companion volume) are research based and will be accessible to undergraduate and graduate students. As Christian democratic parties are the least researched compared with Socialist or Communist parties, and with no CD parties in the US or the UK, hardly any useful literature exists in English which can be used on 20th century and postwar European history courses, or more specialised history or country courses. This book therefore fills a significant gap in postwar European history, and will prove valuable to researchers and students of European Studies, politics and history. The Editors: Michael Gehler is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies, University of Portsmouth, and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium.

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE SINCE 1945 Volume 2 Editors

MICHAEL GEHLER AND WOLFRAM KAISER

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2004 Michael Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: Christian democracy in Europe since 1945 1. Christian democracy—Europe—History—20th century 2. Christian democratic parties—Europe—History—20th century 3. Europe—Politics and government—1945– I. Gehler, Michael 1962–II. Kaiser, Wolfram 324.2′182′094 ISBN 0-203-64623-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-69087-7 (OEB Format) ISBN 0-7146-5662-3 (Print Edition) (cloth) ISBN 0-7146-8567-4 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Christian democracy in Europe since 1945/editors, Michael Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7146-5662-3 (cloth)—ISBN 0-7146-8567-4 (pbk.) 1. Europe—Politics and government—1945–2. Democracy—Europe. 3. Democracy—Religious aspects. 4. Political parties—Europe. I. Gehler, Michael II. Kaiser, Wolfram, 1966– All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Contents Notes on Contributors

1 2

3 4 5

6

7 8

9

10 11

12 13

Introduction Nationalism and Internationalism in European Christian Democracy Peter Pulzer Between Concentration Movement and People’s Party: The Christian Democratic Union in Germany Ulrich Lappenküper Successful as a ‘Go-between’: The Conservative People’s Party in Switzerland Thomas Gees The Primacy of Domestic Politics: Christian Democracy in the Netherlands Jac Bosmans The Zenith of Christian Democracy: The Christelijke Volkspartij/Parti Social Chrétien in Belgium Emiel Lamberts Entry of the Catholics into the Republic: The Mouvement Républicain Populaire in France Bruno Béthouart Born for Government: The Democrazia Cristiana in Italy Carlo Masala In Conflict with the Communist State: The Catholic Church and Catholic Political Organizations in Poland Jan Żaryn ‘Rescuing the Christian Occident’ and ‘Europe in Us’: The People’s Party in Austria Dieter A.Binder Towards the One-party State: Nascent Christian Democracy in Hungary Jenő Gergely A Missed Opportunity to Oppose State Socialism? The People’s Party in Czechoslovakia Christiane Brenner European Christian Democracy in Comparison Anton Pelinka The Geneva Circle of West European Christian Democrats Michael Gehler

vii 1 8 21

33 47 59

74

88 103

121

135 151

169 181

14 Transnational Christian Democracy: From the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales to the European People’s Party Wolfram Kaiser Index

194

209

Notes on Contributors Bruno Béthouart is Professor of Modern History at the University of the Littoral in Boulogne. Dieter A.Binder is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Graz. Jac Bosmans is Professor of Modern History at the University of Nijmegen. Christiane Brenner is Research Fellow at the Collegium Carolinum in Munich. Thomas Gees is Research Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the European University Institute in Florence. Michael Gehler is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck and Permanent Senior Fellow of the Centre for European Integration Studies at the University of Bonn. Jenö Gergely is Professor of Modern History at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. Emiel Lamberts is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leuven and President of the Catholic Documentation and Research Centre KADOC. Ulrich Lappenküper is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Bonn. Carlo Masala is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Cologne. Anton Pelinka is Professor of Politics at the University of Innsbruck and Director of the Institute for Conflict Research in Vienna. Peter Pulzer is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Oxford University. Jan Zaryn is Senior Research Fellow in Contemporary History at the Institute of National Memory and at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences as well as Professor of Modern History at the Catholic University Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in Warsaw.

Introduction At one point in the late 1990s, eleven of 15 member states of the European Union (EU) were governed by social democratic parties—on their own, as in the United Kingdom, or as the largest party in coalitions with the greens, liberals or, in some cases, smaller Christian democratic parties. ‘New’ social democracy appeared to have successfully refuted Ralf Dahrendorf’s judgement of 1979–80 that ‘the Social Democratic century has come to an end’.1 Dahrendorf had argued that the working-class milieu and hence social democracy’s core electoral support was deteriorating rapidly while globalization and the new neo-liberal reform agenda of deregulation, privatization and cutbacks in excessive welfare state spending were entirely incompatible with traditional social democratic values and policies. The return of social democracy to government and the rhetorical hype of the ‘Third Way’ seemed to suggest otherwise, however. Perhaps social democratic emphasis on social justice was compatible with more drastic economic restructuring and welfare state reform after all, if social democracy took up communitarian ideas and replaced dependency on guaranteed social security with a new societal solidarity built on ‘empowering’ active citizens as ‘stakeholders’. If any ideological tendency was in terminal decline, it seemed to be Christian democracy and centre-right parties that were unable to develop a new societal vision for the age of globalization at a time when their religious milieus were deteriorating at least as fast. After all, the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) as the dominant Italian political party for more than forty years, had collapsed and fallen apart in the wake of corruption scandals in the early 1990s. The German Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) not only lost the chancellorship after 16 years in government in 1998, but also received the lowest vote in a national election since 1949, and the CDU became engulfed in 1999– 2000 in a scandal about illegal party funding during Helmut Kohl’s leadership. Those already pronounced dead seem to live longer, however, in a European party system characterized by deteriorating social and electoral milieus and ever growing voter volatility, when disappointed electoral expectations can quickly result in popular disenchantment and changes in government. The German Social Democrats, for example, managed to manoeuvre Germany into its gravest economic crisis after coming to power in 1998, reversing even the very modest labour market and pension reforms of the Kohl government. They were narrowly reelected in 2002, but with the help of their pacifist stance on Iraq and their successful management of a flood catastrophe during the summer of the election campaign. At the time of writing they had dramatically lost several more regional elections and plummeted to their lowest opinion poll ratings for a very long time, so that it looked highly unlikely that they could win another term in office. At the same time, several member parties of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) won stunning election victories at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the Netherlands, for example, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) became the largest party again in the elections of 2002 and 2003 and under the leadership of Prime Minister

Christian democracy in Europe since 1945

2

Jan Peter Balkenende formed coalition governments with the centre-right Liberals and the populist List Fortuyn in 2002 and with the centre-right and left Liberals in 2003. In Austria, the People’s Party under its leader Wolfgang Schüssel formed a coalition government with the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) after suffering new electoral losses in 1999, but then achieved its best election result since 1966 in the early national elections in 2002, continuing its coalition with an FPÖ reduced from 27 to 10 per cent of the vote. Nevertheless, it remains true that Christian democratic and centre-right parties suffer from certain structural weaknesses that have increased their electoral insecurity and internal diversity as well as their Europe-wide fragmentation. These parties are as affected as is social democracy by the decline of their traditional milieus, especially of the Catholic milieu in the case of the predominantly Catholic countries or multiconfessional countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, where inter-confessional Christian democratic parties have traditionally been over-represented among Catholic voters. Moreover, the end of the Cold War has robbed them of the political glue of anticommunism, which previously held together ideologically disparate sections of the parties and was also a prime electoral asset in post-war Europe. The more centrist Christian democrats in particular also have intra-party problems with welfare state reform, especially as the forces of globalization appear to undermine the consensusoriented neo-corporatist structures of societal organization and policy-making in countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria. These structures appear to be less able in an era of much more rapid technological and perpetual institutional change to cope with external economic adjustment pressures. In some countries, Christian democratic parties have also been less able to integrate nationalist and regionalist rightwing voters. While Christian democracy in Flanders managed very well after the war, for example, to represent Flemish cultural identity and desires for greater autonomy within Belgium, it fell below 20 per cent there for the first time in the elections in 2003 and is now only marginally stronger than the radically nationalist and populist Vlaams Block. Finally, the progressive reunification of Europe and the EU’s Eastern enlargement planned for 2004, while desired by West European Christian democratic and centre-right parties, also confronts them with the need to integrate the fragmented centre-right party spectrums in most accession countries, where traditions of political Catholicism, conservatism and liberalism have in many cases not been successfully combined in one single people’s party. In contrast to the turn of the century, continental European Christian democracy was much more homogenous after 1945 and also the dominant political force in the ‘core Europe’ of the European Coal and Steel Community founded in 1951–52 and of the European Economic Community founded in 1957–58. Even newly founded parties such as the French Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP), with its explicit aim of being a non-confessional party, could draw upon strong core electoral support from Catholic believers. After the war, 75 per cent of practising Catholics voted MRP.2 The equivalent figures for the Dutch Catholic People’s Party (KVP) and the Belgian Christian People’s Party/Christian Social Party (CVP/PSC) were initially in the region of 90 per cent. Although created with the aim of overcoming the confessional divide in centre-right politics, the German CDU/CSU was much stronger among Catholic compared to protestant voters and became significantly more interconfessional in terms of its

Introduction

3

membership, voters and leadership only from the 1960s onwards.3 That most Christian democratic parties (with the exception of the MRP) were so successful after 1945 in occupying the centre and centre-right of the political spectrum in democratic continental Western Europe (and initially seemed bound to occupy a similarly central political position in countries like Poland and Hungary) was not least due to the fact that the Catholic and nationalist anti-democratic right was totally discredited by its leading role in clerical and corporatist regimes in the 1930s as well as collaboration during the Second World War. The ambivalance of the Catholic Church towards parliamentary democracy and its initial support for fascism in Italy after 1922–25, for the Austrian Ständestaat after 1933–34 and for Franco in the Spanish Civil War during 1936–39 were seen in a much more critical light by many Catholic democrats after 1945. While they continued to rely on Church support and shared the Vatican’s aggressive anti-communism, the legacy of the 1930s allowed Christian democratic parties and their lay leadership to become independent from a less directly politically active Church. As becomes quite clear in the book on inter-war political Catholicism published in conjunction with this book,4 post-war Christian democracy could by no means draw on an unbroken democratic tradition in 1944–45. Yet the experience of totalitarian government in the 1930s and the Second World War brought about a greater commitment not only to parliamentary democracy as the only credible and desirable alternative to communism, but also to the capitalist market economy, albeit one regulated by a moderately interventionist and partially Europeanized welfare state. Shedding previous dreams of a new corporatist order organized around the professions, which had been quite influential in inter-war political Catholicism, the Christian Democrats opted for varieties of Ludwig Erhard’s ‘social market economy’ and the consensual neo-corporatism of Belgium and the Netherlands, where corporatist institutions remained constitutionally subordinate to Parliament, however. Despite the national variations in economic governance, the Christian Democrats essentially believed in the period of strong post-war economic expansion that a high degree of social security could well be combined with economic freedom and subsidiarity, and that their ‘third way’ model would be an attractive alternative not only to the Soviet centrally planned economy, but also to West European socialism. In addition to their new commitment to parliamentary democracy, which they helped secure against possible threats from the far Right after 1945, as well as their strong support for the mixed economy, the Christian democratic parties were also quite cohesive advocates of ‘core Europe’ integration in the ECSC/EEC. In fact, the current EU, its institutional structure and its continuous tendency to strengthen its ‘core’ after progressive enlargements—from the Schengen agreement on the abolition of border controls to monetary union and the introduction of the flexibility clause in the Amsterdam Treaty—is probably the most important legacy of Christian democratic postwar politics—and one that the EPP still draws on in its repeated references to the socalled ‘founding fathers’ such as Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide De Gasperi. For the Christian democrats, ‘core Europe’ integration organized Western Europe against the Soviet threat. At the same time, it made it somewhat less dependent (at least economically) on the United States and facilitated the co-ordinated economic recovery of Western Europe, if not the ‘rescue of the nation-state’, as Alan S.Milward has


4

provocatively put it,5 through the Europeanization of crucial policy areas such as agriculture. Moreover, a partially supranational institutional structure was entirely compatible with the Christian democratic concept of subsidiarity and what political scientists of the EU now routinely describe as ‘multi-level governance’. Even those Christian democratic parties that did not favour their country’s accession to the ECSC/EEC, such as the Austrian and Swiss parties, strongly supported the concept as such, and sought close cooperation with the emerging institutions. Again, Christian democratic policy on ‘core Europe’ by no means developed straight out of inter-war concepts of political Catholicism. In fact, those Christian democrats (mostly on the left of their parties) who supported a radically different approach from the economic fragmentation and nationalist conflicts in inter-war Europe, had been in a relatively small minority everywhere. Moreover, many socialists (with the initial exception of the German Social Democrats) and liberals also supported West European integration in the 1950s. In France, leading individual socialists such as André Philip even developed a more constructive approach to the ‘German question’ earlier than the MRP.6 Yet Christian democrats and socialists initially had fundamentally different views on the geographical scope of European integration and, linked to this, also on its ideological orientation. Most socialists insisted until well into the 1950s on the participation of Britain governed by the Labour Party between 1945 and 1951, and of the Scandinavian countries who had had social democratled governments since the 1930s. In contrast, the Christian democrats, having developed (with the exception of the two Dutch protestant parties and the partial exception of a section of the West German CDU/CSU) out of political Catholicism, had no partners in those countries, felt limited cultural affinity towards them and had few actual transnational links. As a result, they pushed much more rigorously for the creation of ‘core Europe’ institutions that, up to a point, they could dominate politically. This domination was reflected not only in their leading role in most national governments, especially in West Germany and Italy, but also in the composition of the ECSC Parliamentary Assembly after 1952 and of the European Parliament after 1958, where almost one-half of the members were Christian democrats. Although there were other significant issues and faultlines for Christian democracy in post-war Europe, the country chapters in this book analyse the parties’ membership and voters and their relationship with the Church; their attitudes to the emerging and in some cases (of East Central Europe) short-lived democracies; their socio-economic discourse, programmes and policies; and their foreign and European policies. The chapters concentrate on the period of Christian democratic dominance of the West European party system until the mid-1960s. At that time, most West European Christian democratic parties entered a period of relative decline as a result of the erosion of their traditional (Catholic) milieus, the increased electoral attractiveness of reformed socialist and social democratic parties and a new surge of liberal parties in countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, which were critical of the emerging corporatist welfare state consensus in those countries. In Belgium, for example, the CVP/PSC declined from 46.5 per cent of the vote in 1958 to just 31.7 per cent in 1968. In the Netherlands, the KVP still managed to secure 31.9 per cent of the vote in 1963, but was down to 17.7 per cent in 1972. The two protestant parties that merged with the KVP in 1980 to form the CDA did not fare much better. The electoral losses of the Italian DC were more limited. In all three

Introduction

5

countries, the Christian democrats retained their central role in government formation until well into the 1990s, however. Despite more limited electoral losses, the West German Christian Democrats lost power for the first time in 1969 and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) in 1970. In France, finally, the MRP had already suffered severe losses from the elections of the early 1950s onwards. Having formed the Centre Démocrate together with other centrist political forces in December 1966, it dissolved as an independent party in 1967. After the brief spell in the early post-war period, when the MRP was initially the largest French party, its later development was again characterized by the structural inability of political Catholicism in France since the Third Republic to unite the practising Catholics, who now often voted for the Gaullists, let alone to reach beyond their core support and to become a centre-right people’s party comparable to the CDU or the ÖVP. While the period of Christian democratic dominance, which can be analysed on the basis of archival sources that are now accessible for the period until the late 1960s, early 1970s, is the main focus of this book, all chapters also include a substantial overview up to the present. Thus they demonstrate the continuing structural weaknesses of Christian democracy in contemporary Europe, which has lost some of its core strengths, such as its anchorage in the previously cohesive Catholic milieu and its strong anti-communism, which was a vote-winner in the early post-war period of the Cold War, but also its continued vitality as people’s parties in many EU states. Moreover, the chapters on East Central European countries show the extent to which non-participation during the Cold War in West European integration with its socializing effects has left a continued gap in the organization and ideological profile between many of those parties and their West European sister parties. This gap may be overcome only as a result of these countries’ integration in the EU and the parties’ closer co-operation in the EPP and within and outwith the European Parliament, in a way comparable to the more recent Europeanization of the Spanish Partido Popolar. Research on Christian democracy in the post-war period has so far not really developed such a systematic European comparative perspective. When it has been attempted, as in the case of a book edited by Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway,7 the scope has been limited to Western Europe, including countries where political Catholicism (as in Ireland) was a unifying, not a divisive, factor of the national political culture and party system, and others (such as Portugal and Spain) where significant Catholic parties existed for only a short time in the 1920s and early 1930s before the establishment of dictatorships, but not in the early post-war period. While it offers a very useful and highly systematic comparative approach to different aspects from party structure to ideology, another book, edited by Emiel Lamberts, has an even more limited geographical scope.8 It concentrates exclusively on five of the six EEC founding member states—a ‘core Europe’ perspective that is more relevant to the 1950s than the entire post-war period and that tends to overemphasize the cohesion of Christian democracy, especially in its attitude to the European integration project. In fact, varying external circumstances and internal pressures allowed other policy choices than full participation in ‘core Europe’ integration, as in the case of Austria, where the ÖVP opted for national sovereignty at the price of perpetual neutrality in 1955, joining the European Free Trade Association in 1959–60 and advocating close relations short of membership and supranational integration from the 1960s through to


6

the application for full EC membership in 1989. Compared to these and some other publications,9 this book has a markedly different geographical scope. It has an all-European perspective, including the nascent Christian democracy in East Central Europe after 1945 (and again after 1989/90), which is much less well understood and about which very little has been published in English. In addition to Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy, this book includes chapters on Christian democratic parties in Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Anton Pelinka draws the experiences of these different countries together in his comparative chapter on Christian democracy in post-war Europe. Finally, the chapters by Michael Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser analyse for the first time, using archival sources, the transnational networks of Christian democratic parties and politicians in the context of the informal and secret meetings of the ‘Geneva Circle’ between 1947 and 1955 and of the Nouvelles Équipes Internationales founded in 1947, which were transformed into the European Union of Christian Democrats in 1965—a precursor to the EPP, founded in 1976, which currently forms (together with the British Conservatives) the largest political group in the European Parliament.10 The chapters in this book demonstrate, most of all, that there was no straightforward continuity from the inter-war Catholic parties to post-war Christian democracy—with respect to the prevailing attitudes to parliamentary democracy or the mixed economy, let alone a new policy of European reconciliation and integration. The historical experience of totalitarianism and the Second World War, as well as the prevailing domestic socioeconomic and political conditions and external circumstances of the Cold War, constituted ideal conditions under which Christian democracy in continental Europe could achieve its temporary political dominance after 1945. With the changing conditions in the 1960s, including the fragmentation of the previously cohesive Catholic milieu, new societal challenges and the increasingly dominant and very heavily interventionist Keynesian economic agenda, Christian democracy entered a period of decline and crisis. In the light of this, Martin Conway has argued that the 1960s marked the end of an era.11 The Christian democrats became, in many cases, more professionally organized parties with a more developed written party programme. Yet their attempts to appeal as people’s parties to varied segments of increasingly individualized and politically fragmented societies with greater party competition and political choice also resulted in less distinctive profiles and up to a point, their (temporary) ‘social democratization’. Yet the notion of a distinctive era that ended in the 1960s appears to underestimate the elements of continuity. Those Christian democratic parties that successfully transformed themselves into centre-right people’s parties after 1945 had always been quite flexible in their programmes and policies and capable of adjusting to changing circumstances in the interest of remaining in or regaining power, while at the same time retaining some deep core beliefs, such as the desirability of further European integration. Even in the much more heterogeneous EPP on the verge of another EU enlargement to include East Central European countries, many of these deep core beliefs in conjunction with the progressive institutionalization of party co-operation continue to exert convergence pressures towards a greater Europeanization of Christian democracy. At the same time, Christian democratic and Centre Right parties in many EU states have repeatedly demonstrated that they are resilient and adaptable political forces that cannot be easily written off as

Introduction

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condemned to terminal decline. Whose century the twenty-first will be in European politics remains to be seen. NOTES 1 Ralf Dahrendorf, Life Chances: Approaches to Social and Political Theory (London 1980). 2 Cf. Pierre Letamendia, Le Mouvement Républicain Populaire. Histoire d’un grand parti français (Paris 1995). 3 See also Frank Bösch, Die Adenauer-CDU. Gründung, Aufstieg und Krise einer Erfolgspartei 1945–1969 (Stuttgart 2001). 4 Wolfram Kaiser and Helmut Wohnout (eds), Political Catholicism in Europe 1918– 1945 (London, 2004). 5 Alan S.Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London 1992). 6 Wilfried Loth, ‘André Philip und das Projekt eines sozialistischen Europas’, in Martin Greschat and Wilfried Loth (eds), Die Christen und die Entstehung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft (Stuttgart 1994), pp. 189–202; idem, Sozialismus und Internationalismus. Die französischen Sozialisten und die Nachkriegsordnung Europas 1940–1950 (Stuttgart 1977). 7 Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway (eds), Political Catholicism in Europe 1918– 1965 (Oxford 1996). 8 Emiel Lamberts (ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union [1945/1995] (Leuven 1997). 9 Very heterogeneous, but with some interesting contributions, Thomas Kselman and Joseph A.Buttigieg (eds), European Christian Democracy. Historical Legacies and Comparative Perspectives (Notre Dame/Ind. 2003); from an inter-disciplinary perspective, but also not well structured, Dean Hanley (ed.), Christian Democracy in Europe. A Comparative Perspective (London 1994). See also in a long-term comparative perspective (although weak on post-war Christian Democracy) Ellen Lovell Evans, The Cross and the Ballot: Catholic Political Parties in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, 1785–1985 (Boston 1999). 10 See also in much greater detail and with some 220 documents, Michael Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser (eds), Transnationale Parteienkooperation europäischer Christdemokraten 1945–1965 (Munich 2004). 11 Martin Conway, ‘Introduction’, in Buchanan and idem, Political Catholicism, pp. 1–33; idem, ‘The Age of Christian Democracy: The Frontiers of Success and Failure’, in Kselman and Buttigieg, European Christian Democracy, pp. 43–67.

1 Nationalism and Internationalism in European Christian Democracy Peter Pulzer

Much of this book is devoted to the individual Christian democratic movements of the various European states in their domestic developments after 1945. That is both inevitable and understandable. The parties we are talking about were founded at different times, in different places, to meet domestic needs or challenges. They depended for their success on their ability to satisfy mass electorates that were more concerned with day-today problems than with the future of Western civilization. Even the founders and leaders of the different parties were probably concerned with short-term as much as long-term problems, and if with the longer term, then in the context of Church-state relations, the control of education or the maintenance of the social structure, rather than the reshaping of Europe. The purpose of this chapter is to concentrate on two main themes. The first is the parties’ attitude to the idea of the nation-state, so as to illustrate their actual—or at least potential—vision of Europe. The second has to do with time-scale. It is impossible to understand the international context for post-1945 Christian democracy without reference to nineteenth-century and inter-war Europe, necessitating a more long-term treatment of Christian democratic attitudes to nationalism and internationalism. To illustrate this perspective, one could ask a rhetorical question. Who would have forecast in, say, 1870 that Christian democracy would be one of the most significant ideologies and political movements of the twentieth century, at least in Europe, and that for a substantial part of that century Christian democracy would be the dominant political force, so that at one time or another between 1945 and the 1980s the majority of Western European states would have Christian democratic heads of government? One could take 1870 not as a random year, but as a year of great significance in the politico-religious history of Europe. It was the year in which Protestant Prussia defeated Catholic France, having defeated Catholic Austria four years earlier; the year in which the political unification of Italy was completed, depriving the papacy of the last of its territorial possessions; and the year of the Vatican Council, which, in proclaiming the doctrine of papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals, was one of the great polarizing events in the intellectual life of the century. In many ways the last third of the nineteenth century saw a low point in the fortunes of the Catholic Church: the repudiation of the Concordat in both parts of what was now the dual monarchy of the Habsburgs, for example, the Kulturkampf in the new German Empire, which subordinated affairs of the Church to the interests of the state, and the separation of Church and state in France in 1905 in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair.

Nationalism and internationalism in European christian democracy

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The reason for beginning in this fairly distant past is not merely to show that the world is dominated by the unexpected (which it is), but to put what we know about the post1945 world into perspective. It will therefore be necessary to look at the inter-war period, when some Christian democrats played interesting roles in both nationalist and internationalist political movements. It will also be important, however, to go back even more to seek the roots of Christian democratic Europeanism in the years before the First World War. To do this, one has to define Christian democracy very broadly and to include any party or movement that claimed to base its programme on Christian, or at least Catholic, principles and sought to mobilize a mass following in order to participate in competitive electoral politics. Many of the candidates are therefore quite different from the rather tame Christian democracy of post-1945 Europe, whose components have been ready to form coalitions with almost all other parties and have taken considerable care not to be too distinguishable from other mass-based political parties. The category shall include any party or movement dedicated to defending—or, where necessary, recapturing—the traditional claims of the Church and any party or movement that proclaimed a social programme based on Christian principles. Not all of these movements were necessarily reconciled to parliamentary constitutionalism or to religious pluralism; some were more or less emphatically anti-liberal, some were more or less vehemently anti-Semitic. A figure such as the Austrian social reformer Karl von Vogelsang did not believe in parliamentary government, or in religious pluralism, was vehemently anti-liberal and certainly fanatically anti-Semitic. All such movements should nevertheless be included in this survey if we want to know what Christian democrats, or proto-Christian democrats, thought about the nation-state. One ought also to bear in mind that although most of the movements that we know as Christian democratic were Catholic in inspiration and composition, there are also analogous Protestant movements. The greater component of Dutch Christian democracy was from the start Protestant; there have been, and are, Lutheran-based Christian democratic parties in various Nordic countries; and present-day Christian democracy in Germany and the Netherlands is inter-denominational. All these factors mean that in their attitudes to the nation-state, nationalism and internationalism there is considerable variety within the Christian democratic family. It is necessary to include the various ‘undemocratic’ Christian democratic movements, because without looking at the ancestors of present-day Christian democracy, without examining their approaches to the phenomenon of the nation-state before 1945, before 1933 and even before 1914, we shall lack certain essential guideposts. We need to ask at each stage how far the political decisions that are taken, and how far the directions at which the programmes point, are a reaction to the contingencies of the moment and how far they are determined by continuity of personnel, by collective memory or even by the ideological inertia of the leading programme-makers in the movements concerned. These factors are best illustrated by looking at the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of Christian democracy in 1945—figures such as Alcide de Gasperi, who had been a member of the Austrian Reichsrat before 1918, or Konrad Adenauer, who was mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933, or Robert Schuman, a French deputy whose parents had emigrated to Luxembourg in order to escape the German occupation of Lorraine. They personify not just the pre1933, but the pre-1914 roots of the Christian democratic movement that played its part in


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shaping the Europe we now live in. If we look at Christian democracy before the First World War, we can see that it had twin objectives: to innovate and to protect. It was innovatory in that it advocated popular participation in the political process, which had not been part of the Christian political message in the preceding centuries except among Calvinist sects. It was also innovatory in promoting measures of social protection, which the Churches may well have pursued in the past on a philanthropic or charitable basis, but not by involving the state. It was there to protect the interests of the Church (or Churches), but also of traditional social strata against the onslaught of both the liberal state and the revolutionary socialist movement. In other words, we cannot imagine the Christian democratic movement of the nineteenth century without the French Revolution, which first put the doctrine of mass political participation on the agenda of Europe, or without the Industrial Revolution, which created the social question with which it tried to wrestle. Therefore those who were the forerunners of Christian democracy used language that implied that they were both opposed to these developments and trying to adapt to them. When the French theologian and philosopher Hugues-Félicité-Robert Lamennais talked of ‘baptizing the revolution’ and the Italian journalist-priest David Albertario of ‘sanctifying democracy’, one can see how they were trying to turn a paradox into a synthesis. How did these Christian democratic and proto-Christian democratic movements respond not just to domestic revolutionary events, or the transformation of economies and societies that they were living through, but to what was in many respects the dominant political project of the years we are talking about, namely, the ideology that we associate with the name of Giusepppe Mazzini: ‘every nation a state and only one state for the entire nation’? How did they cope with the view, shared by most contemporary liberals, that the modern nation-state was the most enlightened, the most advanced, the most modern, the most desirable and the most legitimate form of government, nothing less than the reinvention in modern terms of the Greek polis. Here are two views from Britain of this phenomenon. The first reads as follows: One hardly knows what any division of the human race should be free to do, if not to determine with which of the various collective bodies of human beings they choose to associate themselves. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist… It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.1 The second presents a rather different view of the Mazzinian doctrine: The nation is here an ideal unit founded on the race, in defiance of the modifying action of external causes, of tradition, and of existing rights. It overrules the rights and wishes of the inhabitants, absorbing their divergent interests in a fictitious unity; sacrifices their several inclinations and duties to the higher claim of nationality, and crushes all natural rights and all established liberties for the purpose of vindicating itself. Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety or


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the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute.2 The first is from John Stuart Mill, from his ‘Considerations on Representative Government’ published in 1861, proclaiming the conventional wisdom of European and above all British liberalism, which, confident that it would not have to solve these problems at home, was all the more enthusiastic for solving them elsewhere. Hence the overwhelming sympathy of British liberals for Greek independence, Italian independence, Polish independence, Hungarian independence, Bulgarian independence, and so forth. The second comes from a less typical figure, Lord Acton, whose essay ‘Nationality’ was published one year after Mill’s, in 1862. He was an extremely liberal Catholic, a personal friend of the Liberal prime minister, William Gladstone, who disapproved of the conclusions of the Vatican Council and supported Ignaz Döllinger in his criticism of them and in the schism that he brought about. Acton believed, as a Catholic might be expected to do, that: ‘If we take the establishment of liberty for the realization of moral duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those states are substantially the most perfect which, like the British and Austrian Empires, include various distinct nationalities without oppressing them.’3 For this view he claimed ecclesiastical support: ‘The Church has…discouraged wherever she could the isolation of nations.’4 What we have in the writings of Mill and Acton, in the vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon political discourse, is a summary of the conflicting nineteenth-century views on the merits of the nation-state, on its legitimacy, its desirability and above all its capacity to satisfy human aspirations to happiness and good government. In Mill we recognize the faith that nothing could achieve these objectives better than redrawing the map of Europe, so that the boundaries of states should coincide with the boundaries of languages and cultures; in Acton, the suspicion that within the emancipatory language of nationalism there are seeds of totalitarianism. In their scepticism towards the ideal of the nation-state, Catholics of this period, whether democratic or not, were encouraged by statements of Catholic dogma on forms of the state. The encyclical Immortale Dei of 1885 stressed that ‘the right to rule is not necessarily bound up with any special mode of government. It may take this or that form, provided only that it be of a nature to insure the general welfare.’ As for popular sovereignty, the encyclical Diuturnum of 1881 had stated categorically that ‘to make [political power] depend on the will of the people is, first, to commit an error of principle and, further, to set authority upon a foundation both fragile and inconsistent’. This is the point at which to stress that there is no single, straight line from the emerging Christian popular movements of the nineteenth century to Christian democracy in the second half of the twentieth. All such movements had their origins in local stimuli and ordered their agenda accordingly. Foreign policy occupied a low place on these agendas. Those movements that specifically called themselves ‘Christian democratic’, of which the Belgian variant associated with the Daens brothers was the earliest, occupied a self-consciously minority position within the existing mainstream parties and were concerned exclusively with domestic social and political reform. And yet the indifference towards the claims of the nation-state remained ready to emerge when this question rose higher in the political agenda after 1945.


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This point shall be illustrated in a little more detail by looking first at the period before 1914 and then at the inter-war period. What was the attitude of these proto-Christian democrats to the state as they found it? Here a distinction should be made that was more important before 1945 than after: between patriotism and nationalism. The early ‘Christian democrats’ were patriots. They were so out of traditional instincts, derived from the Church’s teaching that it was the duty of the Christian subject to obey the authority into which he or she was born. Alternative Christian teachings, for instance those justifying tyrannicide, had faded from the main body of doctrine and possessed, at this stage, little relevance. They were also patriots for pragmatic reasons, because Catholics were subject to the suspicion, especially after the Vatican Council of 1869–70, of being politically unreliable, of being ultramontanists, with a higher loyalty to Rome than to Paris, Berlin or Vienna. But patriotism of this kind was different from being nationalist in the Mazzinian sense. They had no difficulty in distinguishing between the duty of constitutional loyalty and programmes of territorial reorganization. This remained valid even during the short-lived attempt at a ralliement between the Church and the Third French Republic in the late 1880s, or after the reconciliation of the German Zentrum with the Kaiserreich from about 1890 onwards. If one had asked a member or leader of the Zentrum after that date whether he regarded himself as a nationalist rather than a patriot, whether he would apply the label deutschnational to himself, he would have replied ‘no’ to both questions. Deutschnational remained associated with either militant liberalism or völkisch racialism. This patriotism led the Zentrum to endorse Tirpitz’s naval programme, to express doubts about colonial expansion only on very specific grounds that had to do with the rights of missionaries, and to be as enthusiastic in their support for German participation in the war of 1914 as their Protestant fellowcitizens. The distinction becomes even more relevant when we look at the Austrian Christian Social Party. Once it had spread from its original base in Vienna and Lower Austria and once it had become, thanks to universal male suffrage, the largest party in the Reichsrat, it styled itself a Reichspartei. It could not ignore the ethnic basis of Austrian party politics; in its leadership and electoral following it was germanophone and it could not afford to ignore the claims of its linguistically defined constituency. But it was not, in the way many other Austrian parties were, nationalist, and neither were the Christian social parties of the other nationalities. What Christian democrats of the pre-1914 period did support—and this was quite consistent with traditional Catholic beliefs and teaching—was cultural nationalism. It was consistent with Catholic support for local autonomies and for associational life separate from that of the state. It was further evidence of the dissension with the modern, secular centralizing state, which sought to impose cultural homogeneity as a condition of citizenship and—for instance, in France and Italy—tried to suppress the regional dialects of remote provinces with a uniform literary language, so that one was threatened with second-class citizenship if one continued to speak in the Sardinian or Provençal dialect or even, in Belgium, if one did not speak the sole official language, which was nevertheless the first language of only a minority of the population. This defence of cultural minorities was not only consistent with the traditions that Christian democracy inherited, but an integral part of its programme. It arose from


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suspicion of the contemporary nation-state, with its subversive, Jacobin origins, its antireligious character and, in at least some cases, pagan overtones. One sees this most obviously in Italy, where the entire national unification movement was based on antagonism to the Catholic Church and where the creation of the Italian state was achieved by making the Pope a prisoner in his own city. One sees this only slightly less obviously in France where, once the initial Conservative dominance of the Third Republic was swept aside, Léon Gambetta’s war cry ‘clericalism, there is the enemy’ inspired the establishment of the lay schools system in 1882 and, ultimately, the separation of Church and state. One sees this also in the German Empire, whose constitution of 1871 made no mention of religious rights and duties, although Catholic spokesmen had pressed for this, and where the Kulturkampf of 1873–74 drove the Catholic population into a cultural ghetto from which it took them nearly a century to emerge. So great was the dissonance between Catholicism and nationalism that there were difficulties within the Church and within popular movements even when faced with the state-creating nationalisms of nations that were predominantly Catholic or whose defining characteristic was their Catholicism, especially nineteenth-century Ireland and Poland. As the century wore on, the definition of adherence to Irish nationality was adherence to Catholicism, even if this was only nominal. It is worth remembering that until the second half of the nineteenth century church attendance in Ireland was rather low, and that the Irish Church only revived thanks to its belated association with the nationalist movement. Earlier Irish nationalism at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was inter-denominational—Protestant as well as Catholic—and Jacobin, seeking its inspiration in the French Revolution. Indeed, for the next two generations the leaders of Irish nationalism, from Wolfe Tone in the 1790s to Charles Stewart Parnell in the 1880s, were Protestants, as was William Hyde, the founder of the Gaelic League, which was dedicated to the preservation and revival of the Irish language and therefore the main vehicle of cultural nationalism. For all these reasons there was for a long time a disjunction between the Irish nationalist movement and the Church. When, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church recovered its position in Irish society by joining the nationalist bandwagon, it did this so successfully that the 1922 constitution of the Irish Free State, and even more so the 1937 version, were almost carbon copies of Rerum Novarum. It could be described as the perfect ‘Christian democratic’ constitution, as the following excerpts will show: Preamble: In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and states must be referred, We, the people of Eire Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial… Do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution… Article 6(1) All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people, whose right it is to designate the rulers of the states… Article 29(2) Ireland affirms its adherence to the principle of the pacific settlement of international dispute by international arbitration or judicial determination… Article 43(1) The State acknowledges that man, in virtue of his rational being,


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has the natural right, antecedent to positive law, to the private ownership of external goods. (2) The State recognizes, however, that the exercise of the rights mentioned in the foregoing provision of this Article ought, in civil society, to be regulated by the principles of social justice… Article 45(1) The State shall promote the welfare of the whole people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice and charity shall inform all the institutions of the national life.5 It is, in fact, only in Poland that there has been a complete conjunction between the Church and the national movement and that the Church has, at crucial times, been the main vehicle of national sentiment and the main repository of national identity. Historically this has been due to the dual oppressors Poland faced: Protestant Prussia on the one hand and the Orthodox Tsarist Empire, followed by the atheist Soviet Union, on the other. In contrast to the difficulties Christian democracy faced in the often revolutionary and secular state-building nationalisms, it found it easier to ally itself with, and even foster, what can be called sub-state nationalisms. Examples of these are numerous. There was Breton nationalism or separatism, a counter-movement against the centralizing Republic and the intellectual dictatorship of the Académie Française. There was Basque nationalism in Spain, first articulated by the Partido Nacional Vasco (PNV) in the 1890s, an almost perfect example of Christian democracy. Above all, within the Habsburg monarchy there was, in addition to the Christian Social Party, a Czech Christian Social Party, an Italian Catholic Party, and a Slovene People’s Party, which, by representing almost the whole of the Slovene-speaking population, was in many ways the ideal-type Habsburg Christian democratic party. All these parties, by advocating cultural autonomy and political devolution rather than the multiplication of sovereign states, were at any rate within one Christian tradition, that of defending subordinate social groups from total control by the centralized state. They would have had considerable difficulty in understanding Ernest Renan’s question, why the Netherlands were a nation and not Hanover or the Grand-Duchy of Parma.6 At any time up to 1918, therefore, we have a situation in which some Western and Central European states had strong Christian democratic movements, some weak ones and some none at all; Christian- or Catholic-based movements of which some were predominantly democratic and others in which the democratic element was in a minority; and a generally growing body of Christian democracy which was concerned, for most of the time, with domestic political and social reform rather than international relations. The predominant acceptance by Christian democrats of the existing state structure of Europe therefore meant different things in different states: in Germany, for example, it meant loyalty to the nationality-based Empire, though not to the increasingly fashionable völkisch ultra-nationalism; in Austria it meant loyalty to the multinational monarchy. The Great War upset this agenda. Though the principle of national self-determination had not been the aim of any of the belligerents at the out-break of the war, it had become one of the Allies’ proclaimed objectives by 1918 and above all that of the United States under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson. The map of Europe was changed in the years 1918–20 in the name of this principle, though not in all cases very satisfactorily or


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successfully. Not all the states that gave themselves parliamentary constitutions in those years managed to sustain these and at least some of the movements in them that called themselves Christian democratic, or something like it, had only very dubiously democratic credentials. The general trend of the 1920s and 1930s was towards regarding the nation-state as the norm to which state-builders should aspire. There were, however, significant figures within Christian democracy who kept themselves at some distance from the dominant nationalist consensus and who shall be mentioned here, not in order to establish some internationalist genealogy, but in order to show that there was some internationalist intellectual capital at the disposal of those who wanted to start again in 1945 where they, or their predecessors, had been obliged to leave off in the 1930s. This can be illustrated by discussing a quartet who did not have all that much in common with each other: Matthias Erzberger and Konrad Adenauer of Germany, Marc Sangnier of France and Luigi Sturzo of Italy. Erzberger was a prominent, though not all that orthodox, member of the Zentrum. He was a leading representative of the Christian Democratic Left in his party, whether on economic, constitutional or foreign policy. What is of interest here is his advocacy of a League of Nations, in a book that he published just before the end of the war, by which time he had become a state secretary in the government of Prince Max of Baden. But it is of further interest not only for the end towards which it was directed but for the nature of the argument. Almost certainly unintentionally the book illustrated the ideological dilemma of the modern Christian democrat: was his movement an anti-revolutionary force, dedicated to rebuffing the challenge of 1789, or was it dedicated, in Lamennais’ words, to ‘baptizing the revolution’? Partly to guard himself against the charge of advancing an agenda that had its origins mainly in the Entente states and the USA, he stressed the links of the League idea with Christian teaching and above all with the peace policies of recent popes, especially Benedict XV.7 His own list of preconditions for world peace derive largely from Western liberalism: an open world trading order and freedom of the seas: ‘A future international order has to build on the principle of equality in the world economy, that is, the principle of the Open Door.’8 So, too, he saw democracy as the best safeguard against militarism: ‘The strength of US politics lies in the predominance of the democratic idea which is incompatible with excessive militarism.’9 There could be ‘no such international community…without the shedding of State egoism. The Christian Community ideal is present again throughout the world. The future belongs to Christian Democracy.’10 Erzberger’s assassination in 1921 showed how premature the prophecy was. Adenauer, mayor of Cologne since 1917, laid less stress on an ecumenical world order but was dedicated, as Erzberger had been before 1914, to mending fences with France, that axis that has proved to be the guarantor of peace in Western Europe since 1945 and that Adenauer did so much to construct as chancellor during 1949–63. That was one of the main motives for his support of the break-up of Prussia after 1918 and the creation of a Rhineland republic within Germany. Such a territorial reorganization would be ‘the most secure foundation of European peace’, he declared in February 1919, because ‘Prussia, justifiably feared, would no longer exist after the formation of a West German Republic’.11 His plans, however, went further than this. Speaking in Cologne, ‘the western-most major city in Germany’ at the inaugural ceremony of its refounded


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university, he evoked the Rhine ‘where in the next decades German culture will meet that of the Western democracies’: If their reconciliation does not succeed, if the peoples of Europe do not learn to cultivate what they have in common, even while justifiably safeguarding their peculiarities, if it is not possible once more to unite the peoples through cultural rapprochement, if in this way a new war between the peoples of Europe cannot be prevented, then Europe’s predominance in the world will be permanently lost.12 There was an impressive consistency about Adenauer’s views that not all other Christian democrats shared and that he expressed once more on assuming the Chancellorship of the Federal Republic: We have overcome the nationalist ideas of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. From then originated the nationalism that led to a fragmentation of European life. If we wish to retrace the origins of our common European culture originating from Christendom, we must aim at re-creating the unity of European life in all areas.13 In contrast to Germany, the anti-revolutionary and anti-Republican character of French Catholicism made the development of a genuinely Christian democratic movement much more difficult. The most significant development was that of Marc Sangnier, who used the periodical Le Sillon as his platform and in the inter-war period founded Jeune République as his political party. Within French Catholicism Sangnier remained a marginal figure and his relations with the Vatican were difficult. Jeune République never became a major electoral force, but he was also instrumental in setting up the Democratic International, which organized Franco-German encounters from 1921 onwards, and the youth movement Volontaires de la Paix in 1928. He was not an unconditional pacifist, as his reaction to the threats posed by the Nazi regime showed, but he was highly critical of what he saw as the standard Catholic attitudes to the questions of war and peace and nationalism: ‘In many countries Catholics remain too attached to a malicious chauvinism.’14 Like Sturzo he was a strong supporter of the Locarno Treaty of 1925, which settled the question of Germany’s western frontier. The Pope’s blessing for this treaty also eased Sangnier’s relations with the Holy See. Unlike the other three inter-war figures the founder of the Partito Popolare Italiano, Luigi Sturzo, had to spend most of his political career in exile, yet he was at the time the most significant of the internationally oriented European Christian democrats. His was the inspiration behind the Secrétariat des Partis Démocratiques d’Inspiration Chrétienne, which began work in 1925 and gained the participation at one time or another of twelve related parties.15 Sturzo in particular followed in Erzberger’s footsteps in strong support of the League of Nations, especially for its emphasis on social questions through the International Labour Office. All these efforts in the years between the two world wars need to be seen in perspective. As before 1914, most Christian democratic politicians were concerned with domestic issues, since that is where their electoral advantage and their followers’


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priorities lay. In so far as they had to concern themselves with foreign policy they were more often than not under pressure to look after national interests rather than pursue eirenic Utopias. The predominant view among observant Christians in inter-war Europe was that bolshevism was a greater threat than fascism, and not a few remained convinced that democracy itself spelt secularism and moral anarchy. Those who did devote time and energy to international co-operation were drawn predominantly from the left wings of their respective movements and particularly from Christian trade unions. In all these efforts at cross-frontier collaboration, the sovereignty of national parties was taken for granted; there were no plans for anything resembling European political integration or supra-national union. The only prominent advocate of such a programme, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, though no doubt inspired by his Catholic background, cannot be categorized as a Christian democrat. With all these qualifications we should nevertheless recognize the extent to which the idea of political action beyond the boundaries of the nation-state was alive in those decades and how many of those who realized the European idea after 1945 served their political apprenticeship then. Thus Christian democracy and Europeanism as we know them today were not just a reaction to the experiences of the war, although they were undoubtedly that as well; not only a reaction against the hypertrophied, pagan, racially based and aggressive nationstate, although they were unquestionably that, too; but also reached back to ideas and ideals that were current before 1939, before 1933 and even before 1914, though with a greater emphasis now on the internationalist and democratic elements and a downgrading, even a sweeping under the carpet, of the less democratic and the explicitly illiberal and intolerant aspects of these traditions. But even for the post-war years the association of Christian democracy with the European idea needs qualifying for two reasons. The first is that Christian democracy had no monopoly in its advocacy. Jean Monnet, the French official and first president of the High Authority of the Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), and Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian foreign minister and organizing force behind the negotiations leading to the signing of the Rome Treaties in March 1957, were socialists, as is the more recent figure of Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission who reinvigorated the integration process in the 1980s; the Italian foreign minister in the crucial period when the formation of the European Economic Community (EEC) was being negotiated, Gaetano Martino, was a liberal. The second is that, initially at least, Christian democracy itself was not unanimous on the European question. In Germany there was a significant faction, identified with Jakob Kaiser, who feared that Western integration would lead to the division of Germany, as indeed it did; in Italy, as in Germany, there was a neutralist faction whose influence survived into the 1950s; in Belgium and the Netherlands there was in the early years more faith in Atlantic integration via the United States and NATO than in the European route; and French Christian democrats, now united in the Mouvement Républicain Populaire, were suspicious of the re-creation of a German state, let alone equal status for it. In spite of these qualifications we can recognize why it was easier for Christian democrats to become the pioneers of European integration than for their political rivals. For European liberals and conservatives the sovereign nation-state had always been the ideal: for liberals on grounds on self-determination, for conservatives because it provided


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a focus for patriotism. Although many liberals had also preached international cooperation on Wilsonian lines, that was generally on an inter-governmental, not a supranational level. Social democrats had admittedly always been internationalist and had indeed sailed under the flag of the unity of the proletarians of all lands. But this was a universal internationalism, not restricted to Europe, which is why many of the Left were suspicious of the EEC, when it was founded, as a rich man’s club. Moreover, for all their no doubt sincere internationalist rhetoric, many social democratic movements found it more attractive to realize their aims within the democratic sovereign state. The typical post-1945 welfare programmes, with their emphasis on tax-funded or state-directed services, whether in health, education, social insurance or pensions, which required the state to act as fiscal redistributor or as demand manager to create full employment, gave the nation-state a new legitimacy. In more than one West European state the achievement of a welfare-based polity became the biggest single source of national pride and the greatest factor in transforming national identity. The different priorities of liberals and traditional conservatives on the one hand and social democrats on the other gave Christian democrats a competitive advantage in advancing the project of European integration, once they were agreed that that was what they ought to be doing. In addition, there was, as before, a defensive as well as an innovative element in the Christian democratic agenda. European unity—or at least West European unity—was a response not only to the nationalist excesses of the 1930s, but to the communist threat. The anti-communist message was an easy way of integrating into the post-1945 Christian democratic project people who would not otherwise have adhered to it or thought it attractive. There was also in at least some of the rhetoric about defending European civilization an air of superiority, as if anything outside Europe were not quite civilized, that persons otherwise favourable to international co-operation found distasteful. There was finally one other respect in which the Christian democratic view of Europe was divisive and generated suspicion as well as support. Although the biggest of the Christian democratic parties, that of the German Federal Republic, was now interdenominational, the odour of incense clung to the movement. At the heart of the new enterprise was the Europe of Charlemagne; it was not at all clear to everyone whether they were witnessing the birth of a United States of Europe or the resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. In some parts of Europe at least the Catholic predominance in the Europe of the Six caused distrust of this project. This was certainly one of the reasons why Norway voted against membership in a referendum in 1972 and again in 1994. At the time of British adhesions to the European Communities in 1973, no less a figure than the Reverend Ian Paisley, thinking himself in this, as in other respects, a second Luther, travelled to Rome to protest against this new association with ‘Old Mr Redsocks’. Given who were the godparents of the post-1945 European idea, one can see why militant protestants on the one hand and left-wing anti-clericals on the other might be tempted to see in this enterprise a renewed Counter-Reformation, an attempt to resurrect an enemy they thought they had defeated in the second half of the nineteenth century and to ask themselves, in the terms of the rhetorical question at the beginning of this chapter, whether the occupation of the Vatican State in 1870 had been all in vain. There have been many themes in European politics in the last two centuries, but the


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rise and fall of the ideal of the nation-state has been a prominent and omnipresent one. As an ideal it never enjoyed universal support. Against those who saw it as an instrument of emancipation, there were always those who detected in it the potential for intolerance and oppression. The apogee of the idea of national self-determination came with the peace settlement of 1919. The disappointments to which that settlement led, as well as the excesses of the principle of nationality associated with fascism, led many liberals to revise their views of its merits. At any rate in Germany anti-nationalism became almost a distinguishing feature of left-liberal opinion. As a result of these re-evaluations a kind of equilibrium emerged after 1945 between the attractions of the European idea and those of the nation. Few Europeans of today would describe themselves as nationalists, but most would claim to have a national identity that is stronger than any European identity. Outand-out opponents of any kind of European integration are now few, as are extreme advocates of European federalism. Even the euro as a common currency will not change that. Christian democracy, which is in any case less influential at the turn of the century than it was in the 1950s and 1960s, has adapted itself to this new equilibrium. If there is a consensus in the Europe of 2000, including the Europe of the former Soviet bloc, it is in favour of the liberty of the citizen and the protection of these liberties against any threats, whether they come from inside or outside the nation-state. For a formulation of this consensus one could return to the proto-Christian democrat, Lord Acton, who saw salvation in the theory which represents nationality as an essential, but not a supreme element in determining the forms of the State. It is distinguished from the other because it tends to diversity and not to uniformity, to harmony and not to unity; because it aims not at an arbitrary change, but at careful respect for the existing conditions of life, because it obeys the laws and results of history, not the aspirations of an ideal future. While the theory of unity makes the nation a source of despotism and revolution, the theory of liberty regards it as the bulwark of self-government.16 NOTES 1 John Stuart Mill, ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, in Liberty, Utilitarianism and Representative Government (London 1910 [1861]), pp. 175–393, here pp. 361–62. 2 Lord Acton, ‘Nationality’, in Essays on Freedom and Power (London 1956 [1862]), pp. 141–70, here p. 159. 3 Ibid., p. 168. 4 Ibid., p. 162. 5 T.E.Utley and J.Stuart Maclure (eds), Documents of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge 1957), pp. 231–6. 6 Ernest Renan, ‘Qu’est-ce que une Nation?’, in Hélène Psichiari (ed.), Oeuvres Complètes, Vol. 1 (Paris 1947 [1882]), pp. 887–906, here p. 893. 7 Matthias Erzberger, Der Völkerbund. Der Weg zum Weltfrieden (Berlin 1918), pp.


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13–14 and 39–50. 8 Ibid., pp. 103–8, 114, 141. 9 Ibid., p. 12. 10 Ibid., p. 147. 11 Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Adenauer in der Rheinlandpolitik nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart 1966), p. 222. 12 Quoted in Hans-Peter Schwarz (ed.), Konrad Adenauer. Reden 1917–1967 (Stuttgart 1975), p. 39. 13 Quoted in Konrad Adenauer, Erinnerungen 1945–1953 (Stuttgart 1963), p. 235. 14 Peter Farrugia, ‘French Religious Opposition to War 1919–1939: The Contributions of Henri Roser and Marc Sangnier’, French History, vol. 6 (1992), pp. 279–302, here p. 292. 15 See also the chapter by Guido Müller in this book. 16 Acton, ‘Nationality’, p. 159.

2 Between Concentration Movement and People’s Party: The Christian Democratic Union in Germany Ulrich Lappenküper SOCIETAL BASIS AND THE RELATIONSHIP TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The German Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU) is nowadays regarded as a ‘prototype’ of a people’s party.1 It came into existence after the Second World War on a regional level, uniting political Catholicism and protestant liberals and conservatives. It can be seen as one of the few really new parties to have been founded in Germany.2 It was not easy for the CDU in the early days. After a narrow victory in the first parliamentary elections in 1949 the party had to cope with an enormous loss of support in the regions and a rapid drop in membership of 400,000.3 The Federal Republic’s ‘founding crisis’4 greatly affected the party, which lost important regional elections and many members. The downward trend was stopped in 1953 by the ‘consolidation and concentration processes’5 in the party system resulting from the introduction of the 5 per cent clause. In 1954 the CDU had 215,000 members, in 1956 the number had risen to 245,000.6 One year later, it achieved an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections for the first time in a coalition with the Bavarian Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU). In 1961, the CDU, which had in the meantime come to see itself as a ‘state party’,7 suffered a slight loss of support but remained in power. Four years later in 1965, support increased once again and the CDU, under the leadership of Ludwig Erhard, achieved their second best result ever. Despite the break-up of the coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) a year later, the CDU/CSU managed to retain its leading position in 1969. As the Liberals entered into coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), however, the Christian Democrats in Parliament found themselves in opposition for the first time since 1949.8 The CDU initially had the characteristics of a ‘concentration movement’9 with a strongly decentralized organization and a not very efficient party apparatus, which appeared to dissolve the old social, political and confessional contradictions. It was forged from diverse ideological and regional party traditions as well as the spirit of opposition to the National Socialist dictatorship. In the relationship with the government and the parliamentary party the party had ‘hardly any independent political role’10 for quite some time. It operated rather in the shadow of the chancellor and party leader Konrad Adenauer, who became the figurehead of the party. Only after the establishment of the post of secretary-general in 1967 did the party establish itself as a ‘federal party capable of independent action’.11


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In its own self-image, the CDU was a people’s party.12 In the 1950s, however, the social structure of the party was characterized by an under-representation of workers and the dominance of self-employed people and the so-called old middle class. Only at the start of the 1960s did the CDU begin to move towards being a ‘membership party’.13 There was also an imbalance in its confessional structure. It saw itself as being interconfessional, but had far more Catholic members. Leading Christian Democrats tried to break out of the ‘confessional ghetto’14 by gaining support from protestant laymen and clerics. Their efforts met with some success, even if some protestants kept their distance from the CDU in protest against Adenauer’s policy of Western integration.15 For the Catholics, the confessional aspect of politics counted far more than the national one. The Catholic Church, despite early scepticism, helped the party enormously.16 When at the end of the 1950s the importance of the Christian dimension disappeared in the CDU programme and politics, a ‘dogmatic debate’ about the Christian foundation of the party flared up among the Catholics.17 Adenauer, although a practising Catholic, had stressed the importance of the separation of politics and religion.18 The confessional divide deepened in 1963 with the election of Erhard as chancellor, a man who was a ‘frightful figure of the first degree’19 for the Catholic Church, and with the appointment of other protestant ministers such as Kai-Uwe von Hassel and Gerhard Schröder. Representatives of the Catholic camp under the leadership of Rainer Barzel initiated a debate about the role of the ‘C’ or the Christian dimension of the CDU, and in so doing hoped to reformulate what Christian politics was about. Their ideas were opposed by many Catholics, however, as the CDU was not a Gesinnungspartei in their eyes, but a Christian, social, conservative and liberal people’s party.20 The discussion about the ‘capital C’ in the party ceased for a while when the party passed the Berlin Programme in 1968. It continued to base itself on Christian values, while remaining open to non-Christians.21 The confessional divide was also reflected in the party’s structure. Membership after years of stagnation rose to 280,000 after 1963 and—after another phase of stagnation—to 300,000 in 1969.22 Protestant under-representation decreased after the end of the 1950s; their proportion rose to 36.7 per cent in 1963.23 The predominance of Catholics among the CDU voters was even less pronounced, so that by the mid-1960s the CDU had achieved a degree of inter-confessionalism it had never had before. This was soon to disappear again, however.24 CHRISTIAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIETAL ORDER After the Second World War, the Christian Democrats carried on the old German political Catholicism tradition of operating without ‘far-reaching theorems’.25 Characteristic of their programme was its basis in Christian values and flexibility on concrete policy issues. Central to the new beginning was the condemnation of National Socialism and the abandoning of nationalism and centralism. Christian democracy was seen to be strongly rooted in the belief in the dignity and inalienable rights of the individual.26 With respect to economic and social policy, the party first aimed at the middle ground between liberal individualism and Christian socialism,27 as in the 1947

Between concentration movement and people's party

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Ahlen Programme of the North Rhine-Westfalian CDU.28 In 1948, however, there was a turnabout under the influence of the Frankfurt Economic Council and Ludwig Erhard towards the so-called social market economy which strove to combine classical liberalism with social responsibility.29 After controversial debate the change of course in 1949 led to the Düsseldorfer Leitsätze, which defined the new direction as ‘the socially responsible version of the market economy’. While the plea for social fairness and social security for the economically weak remained valid in the Ahlener Programm, the socialization tendencies and the plea for a corporatist economic order were largely abandoned.30 In October 1950, at the first West German federal party congress in Goslar, the CDU defined its ‘historic mission’ as cultural, European and social. It emphasized ‘the God-given right to a homeland’, the aim of overcoming the division of Germany, the need to eradicate social suffering and ‘Europe’ both as an idea and as a political and economic force.31 At the beginning of the 1960s, the party entered a new phase of domestic, societal and economic programmatic development against the background of radical political changes. Responding to the challenges of the time, Chancellor Erhard combined the ‘tried and tested’ with the completely new. With his ‘politics of the centre’32 he reverted to his 1957 motto, ‘prosperity for all’,33 warning, however, against escalating materialism. At the CDU congress in March 1965, he announced his idea of an ‘organized society’ (formierte Gesellschaft) making the demands of organized interests compatible with the economically viable and stemming the power of interest groups, which he blamed for the deficiencies of pluralistically organized democracy. Conceived as a further development of the social market economy, it was designed as a new vision for modern industrial society that would fend off the destructive force of pluralism and avoid ideological and interest group-based fragmentation. The aims were a long-term budgetary policy, the activation of parliamentary work, the paring down of the influence of interest groups and the redirection of social policy.34 The diffuse plan, which reflected the party’s antipluralistic prejudices,35 did not get beyond the planning stage, however, due to the republic’s economic and foreign policy issues fully absorbing the chancellor’s attention. After the collapse of his government in autumn 1966, the CDU quickly distanced itself from Erhard’s visions and took on the long overdue task of giving the party a new basis, relevant to the time. After years of little programmatic debate, the party drafted a plan of action which they passed in Berlin in 1968. In economic and fiscal policy, it distanced itself from the basic premises of Erhard’s economic philosophy and aligned itself to the ideas of the SPD, with which it had entered into coalition in December 1966. Convinced that the complexities of modern economies demanded careful planning of economic and budget development, the CDU now supported an active structural, cyclical and fiscal policy for the state.36 The magic catchphrases, ‘global control’ (Globalsteuerung), ‘medium-term budgetary planning’, and ‘concerted action’, helped to chase away the shadow of the recession.37 THE IDEA OF EUROPE AND PRACTICAL EUROPEAN POLITICS At the end of the 1960s, a similar alignment of the CDU with social democracy can be


24

observed in European policy. From 1945 to 1969, this policy, which can be divided into six phases: the ‘Rhenish’ phase of 1945–50, dominated by Adenauer and strongly directed to the Federal Republic’s West European neighbours; the European federalist phase of 1950–54 with the aim of a politically united Europe; the French period of 1955– 58 in which economic integration was continued in close co-operation with France; the ‘Gaullist’ epoch, which lasted until 1963, in which Konrad Adenauer viewed the FrancoGerman alliance as the nucleus of a West European federation; the transatlantic phase of 1963–66, in which Erhard and Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder endeavoured to create a European partnership with the USA and the phase of the avoided foreign policy options of 1966–69, in which Erhard’s successor Kurt Georg Kiesinger tried to mediate loyally between Washington and Paris.38 These ideas were often challenged in the CDU, which gave itself the image of a ‘European party’ in West Germany.39 In the first years after the Second World War, the focus of the conflict was whether to opt for integration with the West European powers. While some Christian Democrats, such as Jakob Kaiser, allotted Germany the function of a bridge between East and West,40 Adenauer wanted the Federal Republic to be accepted as ‘a member of the European federation, with the same rights and the same obligations’.41 Europe had to rally together to overcome nationalism and as a ‘third world power’ it should neither become totally dependent on the new world powers, nor fall victim to the threats coming from the East.42 He saw no contradiction to the imperative for re-unification in the basic law constitution as the unity of the state was, in his opinion, attainable only in the context of a unified Europe. When in 1950 the idea of European integration began to take off with the plans for the Coal and Steel Community and common defence, dissent broke out in the CDU on another level. Alongside the conflict about the relationship between reunification and Western integration, came the liberal free trade internationalism advocated by Erhard.43 Even the minister of economics saw Europe as a unit bound spiritually and in its customs and traditions; the exclusive emphasis on economic collaboration was not enough, even for him. His European concept was, however, fundamentally different from that of Adenauer. Erhard had, first of all, a completely different attitude to power that seemed only ‘brutal and silly’ to him.44 Furthermore, he saw economics, not politics, as being decisive for Western cohesion, and the solution of global problems in the realization of free world trade. In 1952, the CDU (with the exception of some parliamentary party rebels), approved of the Western treaties concerning the European Defence Community (EDC) and West German sovereignty. Their hopes for an integrated Europe, though, were destroyed with the failure of the EDC in 1954. They soon turned their attention once again to European politics, however, and the old arguments about the direction of European policy flared up again with renewed vigour. While Erhard pushed for a functional integration concept, Adenauer was on the side of the ‘institutionalists’ led by new Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano and State Secretary Walter Hallstein, who strove towards an institutionally secured fusion of national economies.45 In view of the ‘impotence of Europe’,46 which was becoming evident in the Suez crisis, the new integration project which now comprised a European common market and atomic energy authority took on an increasingly global dimension for the party leader. The continent of Europe had to hold


25

its own against the world powers, necessitating greater internal cohesion. To achieve such cohesion, Adenauer mutated into a protagonist of intergovernmental collaboration. As new French President Charles de Gaulle backed him up in the Berlin crisis since 1958, and supported European integration in a ‘Europe of states’, Adenauer agreed to de Gaulle’s idea for Europe in July 1960, which amounted to a ‘return’ to a ‘more or less nation-state centred politics of the European nations’.47 When in 1962 the Fouchet Plan, which had been heavily criticized within the CDU, broke down because of the opposition of the Benelux states, the chancellor concentrated on an exclusive alliance with France out of mistrust of the USA and Britain. This brought polarization within the CDU to a head. The majority of the CDU, by passing an ‘Atlantic’ preamble to the Franco-German friendship treaty signed in January 1963, effectively torpedoed Adenauer’s policy and undermined his authority.48 Adenauer resigned from the chancellorship in mid-October and passed the baton on to Erhard, whom he had unsuccessfully tried to prevent from succeeding him. The struggle to find a direction for the party’s foreign policy continued in the same vein. In his foreign policy, the new chancellor combined a desire for continuity with the courage to set his own accents. He stressed the security partnership with the USA, extolled France as the irreplaceable partner for German European policy and committed himself to achieving progress in European integration. His tactic was to ‘buy’ support through unilateral concessions to France on issues related to the development of the Common Agricultural Policy. As the chasm between his concept of a ‘Europe of free and equals’49 and de Gaulle’s ‘European Europe’50 did not diminish, open disputes broke out within the CDU. Adenauer, who was still party leader, and the ‘Adenauer wing’51 in the CDU pressurized the government in the summer of 1964 to become more proactive over Europe. Yet Erhard rejected the bilateral alliance that the French proposed as the nucleus of a later federation. He also did not rise to the bait of German participation in the French nuclear force de frappe.52 Although Erhard’s power to determine general policy direction was from this point on questioned, Erhard persisted in his course and resisted de Gaulle’s attempts to Europeanize the German question.53 His hope of winning over the general to his concept for Europe with politically motivated agricultural concessions was not fulfilled. At the end of 1965, de Gaulle played his trump card against the backdrop of an initiative on the part of the EEC commission for political integration and ended his French co-operation with the EEC institutions. The so-called ‘empty chair crisis’ came at a most inconvenient time for the CDU, which was in the throes of the parliamentary election campaign. While the ‘Atlanticists’ demanded a hard line, the ‘Gaullists’ called for restraint. Despite the triumphal election victory in September, Erhard could not strengthen his position within the party, even after controversy between the EEC states had been resolved in January 1966 and he was elected party leader in March.54 In ostensible awareness of his mission, the ‘people’s chancellor’ with ‘charisma without authority’55 had believed that he could combine the cultivation of the GermanAmerican friendship with the intensification of relations with France. In actual fact, relations with the USA and France reached a dangerous low. The well-meant slogan, ‘Europe of the free and the equal’, turned out to be utopian. At the end of November 1966, when the Federal Republic was in danger of becoming more and more isolated, the


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CDU withdrew its confidence in the chancellor.56 Convinced that West Germany’s security was dependent on NATO, Franco-German relations and the European Community, the new chancellor, Kiesinger, energetically began to work at improving the worn-down relationship with Paris and Washington. As he saw the Federal Republic as being in a ‘triangular relationship’ with respect to its loyalties to these most important alliance partners,57 he was careful to commit himself entirely neither to the ‘Atlanticist’ nor the ‘Gaullist’ option. A return to the one-sided emphasis on the relationship with France as had been supported by Adenauer, was just as out of the question as Erhard’s fixation with the USA. Kiesinger succeeded, together with SPD Foreign Minister Willy Brandt, in patching up the worn-down relationship with the Western alliance partners. He was not able to really advance European integration, however, because of the rivalry between France and Britain.58 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY The unexpected loss of power after the end of the Great Coalition in 1969 forced the CDU to address urgent questions regarding intra-party reform. It had to reduce its ‘deficit of modernity in questions of domestic and societal politics’59 and improve the efficiency of the party organization. From an organizational point of view the party achieved its aims to a great extent. Membership numbers rose remarkably, peaking in 1983 at 735,000. Its social and confessional composition also changed without entirely mirroring the structure of the population.60 The party, lamed by the ‘shock of opposition’,61 came to terms with its new role only with some difficulty. The intra-party dispute about the Eastern treaties, the defeat of the new party leader Rainer Barzel in the constructive vote of no confidence against Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1972, the unfulfilled wish of Helmut Kohl, who was party leader from 1973, to achieve a political turnaround at the 1976 elections, Franz Josef Strauss’s attempts to establish the CSU on a national level, and his overwhelming defeat as candidate for chancellor of the CDU/CSU at the elections in 1980, made this all the more clear. The Christian Democrats were forced to develop long-term political concepts. The CDU gave itself, for the first time in its history, a comprehensive base for its political values and philosophy with its programme of 1978. After having shifted the emphasis since the end of the 1960s from its earlier profile as a Christian integration party to a pluralistic people’s party,62 the new programme marked a return to its Christian social roots, without giving Christian politics an exclusive character. The CDU described itself as a people’s party with social, liberal and conservative elements and laid emphasis on family policy, the further development of the social market economy and European integration.63 When, in October 1982, the Christian Democrats took over power after 13 years in opposition to the Liberals, a return to neo-conservative policy seemed to be in the offing. The party leader and Chancellor Kohl took up office with the ambition of achieving a Wende, or ‘intellectual and moral turning point’. This ambition was not realized, however. Kohl concentrated much more on continuity in economic, social and foreign policy, without closing himself off from the search for answers to the new challenges of


27

the time, for example in environmental policy.64 German citizens honoured his achievements, especially in reuniting Germany in 1990, by re-electing him as chancellor four times. In 1998, however, the tables were turned and the Christian Democrats suffered the worst defeat in their history. The Kohl era had ended. There was once again a call within the party for fundamental programmatic renewal, but before the discussion could really get off the ground it died out. After a new generation took over the party leadership in November 1998, with Wolfgang Schäuble as party leader and Angela Merkel as secretary-general, the CDU experienced an amazing surge in support in 1999. Facilitated by the poor start of the ‘red-green’ coalition under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and the spectacular resignation of Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine, the CDU/CSU achieved outstanding results in various regional, local and European elections. These successes appeared to lessen the need for reform, and intraparty debate on programmatic issues languished.65 After months of being on an unrealistic high, the CDU unexpectedly got into great difficulties at the end of 1999. After the revelations about former Treasurer Walter Leisler Kiep’s illegal dealings with donations to the party, Helmut Kohl had also to publicly admit to not having properly accounted for many millions of deutsch-marks. As he refused to name the anonymous donors, he was suspected of having been influenced by them in crucial political decisions during the period of his chancellorship. When the CDU in Hessen had to admit to the existence of undeclared funds in banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein that it pretended were donations from Jewish emigrants, the scandal threatened to turn into an existential crisis.66 The new party leader promised unreserved explanation, but it was slow and rather lame. This was especially true as Kohl put his ‘dishonest word of honour’67 above the rule of law and hindered the investigations. In a newspaper article, Angela Merkel demanded that the party distance itself from the honorary party leader Kohl.68 Although her attack was at first taken badly by sections of the party leadership and membership, it was decisive in allowing Merkel to come out of the crisis with shining colours. While she gained in stature from her uncompromising stance, Wolfgang Schäuble sank even deeper into the bog of the donation scandal. He resigned from office as party leader in midFebruary 2000 after he was implicated in a 100,000 deutschmark donation scandal, ‘an intra-party intrigue…with criminal elements’69 according to Schäuble, which had apparently been launched by Helmut Kohl. The search for a new leader soon focused on the question of whether the CDU should appoint a provisional leader from the ranks of the senior former Christian Democratic minister presidents or rather one from the younger generation. In mid-April Angela Merkel was chosen at the party congress in Essen. After Kohl’s 25 years as leader and the interim period under Schäuble, the Christian Democrats chose what was a novelty in German history—a protestant woman in her mid-forties with no strong regional support in the party, a natural scientist and newcomer from the former East Germany—and thus broke with the previous months of disorientation. Nevertheless, the CDU/CSU nominated the Bavarian CSU leader and Minister President Stoiber for the chancellorship in 2002, but narrowly lost the general election despite having been in front in opinion polls until shortly before September. Schröder’s government was apparently saved by the threat of war in Iraq and the flood disaster in August. The Social Democrats suffered disastrous defeats in subsequent


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regional elections, however, and the CDU won Schröder’s home state of Lower Saxony and with it also a majority of the Bundesrat, the Second Chamber, in February 2003. After the Second World War, the party had put forward old ideas that looked new: the breaching of the gap between Catholics and protestants; a’third way’ between capitalism and socialism and the abandoning of national sovereignty in the context of European integration. If, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the party wants to disprove those who predict the ‘end of the Christian Democratic age’,70 then it must once again find creative answers. It must find answers to the erosion of the middle-class and Christian Democratic milieus, falling membership numbers and the decreasing binding force of Christianity. It must also address the ‘threatening social divisions in postindustrial knowledge-based society’ in which the market economy loses its middle-class character, and likewise the future of European integration and the nation-state.71 NOTES 1 Peter Haungs, ‘Die CDU: Prototyp einer Volkspartei’, in Alf Mintzel and Heinrich Oberreuter (eds), Parteien in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn 1990), pp. 158–98, here p. 158. 2 Winfried Becker, CDU und CSU 1945–1950, Vorläufer. Gründung und regionale Entwicklung bis zum Entstehen der CDU-Bundespartei (Mainz 1987); Günter Buchstab and Klaus Gotto (eds), Die Gründung der Union. Traditionen, Entstehung und Repräsentanten (Munich 1981). 3 Hans-Günter Hockerts, ‘Integration der Gesellschaft: Gründungskrise und Sozialpolitik in der frühen Bundesrepublik’, Zeitschrift für Sozialreform, vol. 32 (1986), pp. 25–41, here p. 25. 4 Hans-Otto Kleinmann, Geschichte der CDU 1945–1982 (Stuttgart 1993), p. 135. 5 Rudolf Morsey, Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Entstehung und Entwicklung bis 1969, 4th edn (Munich 2000), p. 53. 6 See Haungs, CDU, p. 159; Kleinmann, CDU, pp. 136, 202, 268 and 495. 7 Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der Ära Adenauer. Auβenpolitik und innere Entwicklung 1949–1963, 2nd edn (Darmstadt 1988), p. 148. 8 See the election results in Kleinmann, CDU, pp. 496–7. 9 Ibid., p. 15. 10 Haungs, CDU, p. 160. See also Helge Heidemeyer, ‘Einleitung’, in idem, Die CDU/CSU-Fraktion im Deutschen Bundestag, Sitzungsprotokolle 1949–1953 (Düsseldorf 1998), pp. xiii–cii, lxxxi–lxxxiv. 11 Wulf Schönbohm, Die CDU wird moderne Volkspartei. Selbstverständnis, Mitglieder, Organisation und Apparat 1950–1980 (Stuttgart 1985), p. 68, and Haungs, CDU, pp. 160–1. 12 Kleinmann, Geschichte, pp. 95–6, Schönbohm, CDU, p. 17. 13 Kleinmann, Geschichte, p. 258. 14 Geoffrey Pridham, Christian Democracy in Western Germany. The CDU/CSU in Government and Opposition, 1945–1976 (London 1977), p. 27. 15 See Andreas Meier, Hermann Ehlers, Leben in Kirche und Politik (Bonn 1991);


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Frederic Spotts, Kirchen und Politik in Deutschland (Stuttgart 1976), pp. 205–31; Johanna Vogel, Kirche und Wiederbewaffnung. Die Haltung der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland in den Auseinandersetzungen um die Wiederbewaffnung der Bundesrepublik 1948–1956 (Göttingen 1978). 16 See Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Katholizismus und Wiederbewaffnung. Die Haltung der deutschen Katholiken gegenüber der Wehrfrage 1948–1955 (Mainz 1981); Spotts, Kirchen, pp. 205–31. 17 See Dorothee Buchhaas, Die Volkspartei. Programmatische Entwicklung der CDU 1950–1973 (Düsseldorf 1981), pp. 235–42; Spotts, Kirchen, pp. 171–2. 18 See Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, ‘Rheinischer Katholik im Kalten Krieg. Das “christliche Europa” in der Weltsicht Konrad Adenauers’, in Martin Greschat and Wilfried Loth (eds), Die Christen und die Entstehung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft (Stuttgart, Berlin, and Cologne 1994), pp. 237–46, here pp. 237–8; Heinz Hürten, ‘Der Beitrag Christlicher Demokraten zum geistigen und politischen Wiederaufbau und zur europäischen Integration nach 1945: Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Winfried Becker and Rudolf Morsey (eds), Christliche Demokratie in Europa. Grundlagen und Entwicklungen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne and Vienna 1988), pp. 213–23, here p. 214. 19 Spotts, Kirchen, p. 273. 20 See Buchhaas, Volkspartei, pp. 298–303; Schönbohm, Volkspartei, pp. 70–5. 21 See Kleinmann, CDU, pp. 271–2. 22 Ibid., pp. 202 and 268. 23 Ibid., pp. 137 and 246. 24 See Spotts, Kirchen, pp. 275–6. 25 Hürten, Beitrag, p. 213. 26 See Adenauer’s speech given at Cologne University, 24 March 1946, in Hans-Peter Schwarz (ed.), Konrad Adenauer. Reden 1917–1967 (Stuttgart 1975), pp. 82–106. 27 See Rudolf Uertz, Christentum und Sozialismus in der frühen CDU. Grundlagen und Wirkungen der christlich-sozialen Ideen in der Union 1945–1949 (Stuttgart 1981); see also Werner Conze, Jakob Kaiser. Politik zwischen Ost und West 1945– 1949 (Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne and Mainz 1969), pp. 29–41. 28 ‘Ahlener Programm’, 3 February 1947, in Christliche Demokratie in Deutschland. Analysen und Dokumente zur Geschichte und Programmatik der Christlich Demokratischen Union Deutschlands und der Jungen Union Deutschlands (Melle 1978), pp. 732–40. 29 See Volkhard Laitenberger, Ludwig Erhard. Der Nationalökonom als Politiker (Göttingen and Zurich 1986), pp. 62–76; Andreas Metz, Die ungleichen Gründerväter. Adenauers und Erhards langer Weg an die Spitze der Bundesrepublik (Konstanz 1998), pp. 95–100 and 109–41. 30 ‘Düsseldorfer Leitsätze’, 15 July 1949, in Christliche Demokratie in Deutschland, pp. 742–61, here p. 742: see also Uertz, Christentum, pp. 185–204. 31 ‘Resolution des CDU—Bundesparteitags’, 22 October 1950, in ChristlichDemokratische Union Deutschlands. Erster Parteitag der CDU, Goslar, 20.–22. Oktober 1950 (Bonn 1950), pp. 147–9; ‘Statut der gesamtdeutschen CDU’, in ibid., pp. 174–6.


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32 ‘Regierungserklärung Erhards’, 18 October 1963, in Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, Stenographische Berichte, 4. Wahlperiode, vol. 53 (Bonn 1963), pp. 4192–208, here p. 4192. 33 Ludwig Erhard, Wohlstand für alle (Düsseldorf 1957). 34 ‘Rede Erhards auf dem 13. Bundesparteitag der CDU’, 31 March 1965, in Christlich-Demokratische Union Deutschlands, 13. Bundesparteitag, Düsseldorf, 28.–31. März 1965 (Bonn 1965), pp. 700–21. 35 Buchhaas, Volkspartei, p. 304. 36 See ‘Berliner Programm’, November 1968, in Christliche Demokratie in Deutschland, pp. 778–96; Kleinmann, CDU, pp. 269–73; Schönbohm, Volkspartei, pp. 77–84. 37 See Klaus Hildebrand, Von Erhard zur Grossen Koalition 1963–1969 (StuttgartWiesbaden 1984), pp. 283–301; Reinhard Schmoeck and Bruno Kaiser, Die vergessene Regierung—Die groβe Koalition 1966 bis 1969 und ihre langfristigen Wirkungen (Bonn 1991), pp. 289–327. 38 See Winfried Baumgart, ‘Adenauer’s Europapolitik 1945–1963’, in Günter Rinsche (ed.), Frei und geeint. Europa in der Politik der Unionsparteien. Darstellungen und Dokumente zum 40. Jahrestag der Unterzeichnung der Römischen Verträge (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna 1997), pp. 13–16; Ulrich Lappenküper, ‘Die Europapolitik Ludwig Erhard’s’, in ibid., pp. 37–45; idem, Die Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Frankreich 1949–1963. Von der ‘Erbfeindschaft’ zur ‘Entente élémentaire’ (Munich 2001); idem, ‘“Ich bin wirklich ein guter Europäer.” Ludwig Erhard’s Europapolitik 1949–66’, Francia, vol. 19 (1992), pp. 85–121; Schmoeckel and Kaiser, Regierung, pp. 203–30; Hans-Peter Schwarz, ‘Adenauer und Europa’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 27 (1979), pp. 471–523; idem, ‘Das aussenpolitische Konzept Konrad Adenauers’, in Rudolf Morsey and Konrad Repgen (eds), Adenauer Studien I (Mainz 1971), pp. 71–108. 39 Kleinmann, CDU, p. 481. 40 See Hans-Peter Schwarz, Vom Reich zur Bundesrepublik. Deutschland im Widerstreit der aussenpolitischen Konzeptionen in den Jahren der Besatzungsherrschaft 1945–1949 (Stuttgart 1980), pp. 297–344. 41 Adenauer to Helene Wessel, 27 August 1949, in Hans-Peter Mensing (ed.), Adenauer, Briefe 1949–1951 (Berlin 1985), p. 97. 42 ‘Rede Adenauers in der Zonenausschusssitzung der CDU der britischen Zone’, 19 October 1948, in Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (ed.), Konrad Adenauer und die CDU der britischen Besatzungszone 1946–1949. Dokumente zur Gründungsgeschichte der CDU Deutschlands (Bonn 1975), pp. 492–9, here p. 499. 43 See Hanns Jürgen Küsters, ‘Der Streit um Kompetenzen und Konzeptionen deutscher Europapolitik’, in Ludolf Herbst, Werner Bührer and Hanno Sowade (eds), Vom Marshallplan zur EWG. Die Eingliederung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in die westliche Welt (Munich 1990), pp. 335–70. 44 ‘Rede Erhards vor der 14. Handelshochschule St. Gallen’, 15 January 1962 in idem, Wirken und Reden (Ludwigsburg 1966), pp. 166–85, here p. 179. 45 See Hanns Jürgen Küsters, ‘Walter Hallstein und die Verhandlungen über die


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Römischen Verträge 1955–1957’, in Wilfried Loth, William Wallace and Wolfgang Wessels (eds), Walter Hallstein—Der υergessene Europäer? (Bonn 1995), pp. 81– 105. 46 Unterredung zwischen Adenauer und Guy Mollet vom 29 September 1956, Aufzeichnung, 1 October 1956, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes Berlin, Abgabeliste Ministerbüro, vol. 155. 47 Berthold Martin an von Brentano, 10 August 1960, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Nachlass zu Guttenberg, vol. 177, excerpt in Horst Möller and Klaus Hildebrand (eds), Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Frankreich: Dokumente 1949–1963, vol. 3 (Munich 1997), pp. 636–9, here p. 636. 48 Lappenküper, ‘Beziehungen’, pp. 1558–619 and pp. 1723–1840; Reiner Marcowitz, Option für Paris? Unionsparteien, SPD und Charles de Gaulle 1958 bis 1969 (Munich 1996), pp. 49–85, 109–31 and 146–64. 49 ‘Rede Erhards vor der Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik und der Österreichischen Industriellen-Vereinigung in Wien, 8 February 1961’, in idem, Deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik. Der Weg der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft (Düsseldorf, Vienna and Frankfurt/Main 1962), pp. 543–58, here pp. 554–5. 50 Press conference de Gaulle, 23 July 1964, in idem, Discours et Messages, vol. 4 (Paris 1970), pp. 222–37, here p. 228. 51 Hans-Peter Schwarz, Adenauer. Der Staatsmann 1952–1967 (Stuttgart 1991), p. 886. 52 Volker Hentschel, Ludwig Erhard. Ein Politikerleben (Munich and Landsberg am Lech 1996), pp. 498–507. 53 See press conference de Gaulle, 4 February 1965, in idem, Discours, vol. 4, pp. 325–42, here p. 338; Knud Linsel, Charles de Gaulle und Deutschland 1914–1969 (Sigmaringen 1998), pp. 236–40. 54 See Horst Osterheld, Die Aussenpolitik unter Bundeskanzler Ludwig Erhard 1963– 1966 (Düsseldorf 1992), pp. 238–54; Hentschel, Ludwig Erhard, pp. 579–88; Marcowitz, Option, pp. 202–20. 55 Pridham, Christian Democracy, p. 145. 56 See Hentschel, Ludwig Erhard, pp. 613–49; Hildebrand, Von Erhard zur Grossen Koalition, pp. 202–31. 57 Karl Schiller at the SPD Party Council, 30 June 1967, quoted in Hildebrand, Von Erhard zur Grossen Koalition, p. 317. 58 See ibid., pp. 301–23; Schmoeckel and Kaiser, Regierung, pp. 203–30. 59 Schönbohm, Volkspartei, p. 99. 60 See Wolfgang Falke, Die Mitglieder der CDU. Eine empirische Studie zum Verhältnis von Mitglieder- und Organisationsstruktur der CDU 1971–1977 (Berlin 1982); Haungs, CDU, pp. 176–7; Schönbohm, Volkspartei, pp. 160–253. 61 Ibid., p. 99. 62 Ibid., p. 94. 63 See ‘Grundsatzprogramm der CDU’, October 1978, in Christliche Demokratie in Deutschland, pp. 992–1031. 64 See Haungs, CDU, pp. 170–5. 65 See Frank Bösch, ‘Kontinuität im Umbruch. Die CDU/CSU auf dem Weg ins neue


32

Jahrhundert’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 5 (2000), pp. 12–21, here pp. 18–19; see also Heiner Geissler, Zeit, das Visier zu öffnen (Cologne 1998); Roland Koch, Vision 21. Ein Gegenmodell zur rot-grünen Republik (Frankfurt/Main 1998); Horst Poller, Rechts oder Links? Niedergang und Erneuerung der CDU (Munich 1998); Joachim Rogosch, Wie christlich ist die CDU? Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (Leipzig 1999); Jürgen Rüttgers, Zeitenwende—Wendezeiten. Das Jahr 2000Projekt: Die Wissensgesellschaft (Berlin 1999). 66 See Karl-Heinz Nassmacher, Parteienfinanzierung in der Bewährung’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 16 (2000), pp. 15–22; Erwin K.Scheuch and Ute Scheuch, Die Spendenkrise—Parteien ausser Kontrolle (Reinbek bei Hamburg 2000), pp. 55– 134; Friedbert Pflüger, Ehrenwort. Das System Kohl und der Neubeginn (Stuttgart 2000). 67 Friedbert Pflüger, ‘Den Staatsmann Kohl ehren—das System Kohl überwinden. Wie die CDU ihre Glaubwürdigkeit wiedergewinnen kann’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 April 2000. 68 Angela Merkel, ‘Die von Helmut Kohl eingeräumten Vorgänge haben der Partei Schaden zugefügt’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 December 1999. 69 Schäuble in an interview with the television station Phoenix, 6 April 2000. For an excerpt see General—Anzeiger, 4 April 2000. See also Volker Zastrow,’ “Ich bin gnadenlos hereingelegt worden”. Die 100.000-Mark Geschichte lässt den CDU— Vorsitzenden Schäuble nicht los’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 February 2000. 70 Franz Walter and Frank Bösch, ‘Das Ende des christdemokratischen Zeitalters? Zur Zukunft eines Erfolgsmodells’, in Tobias Dürr and Rüdiger Soldt (eds), Die CDU nach Kohl (Frankfurt/Main 1998), pp. 46–58. 71 Warnfried Dettling, ‘Das Ende der Grabesruhe. Was heisst heute konservativ? In der Opposition muss sich die CDU als Volkspartei neu erfinden’, Die Zeit, 1 October 1998.

3 Successful as a ‘Go-between’: The Conservative People’s Party in Switzerland Thomas Gees

The Second World War was not a turning-point in the history of the Swiss Conservative People’s Party (SKVP/KCVP/CVP). The year 1945 is not particularly relevant to its history, or to its programme. In the autumn of 1943, regular parliamentary elections took place in Switzerland. With the exception of the extreme right-wing National Front and the Communist Party, which the government had banned in 1940, the political day-to-day business went on as ever in a Switzerland spared from war. The government’s responsibilities had been extended by Parliament during the world economic crisis so that special government powers were already in place before the start of war in 1939. This dominance of the executive, which was independent of Parliament, existed up until the end of the 1940s, so that the years of war between 1939 and 1945 are actually less important for the history of the politics, constitution and institutions in Switzerland than the longer-lasting period of the so-called Vollmachtenregime, a regime of special executive powers.1 Parties are in a weak position in Switzerland’s political system.2 The reasons for this lie in the strongly cantonal organizational structure of most parties and in their weak constitutional position in relation to economic interest groups. Despite a low degree of organization, the large parties in Switzerland were uniquely stable during the post-war as well as the inter-war period. This stability became an important positive factor for institutional and economic competition, and was greatly valued by the governmental parties as well as the opposition. With the inclusion of the Social Democrats in the government during the Second World War, the near century-long dominance of the victorious Liberals of the Civil War of 1847–48 in the seven-member government, or Bundesrat, came to an end. With the proportional representation of the four largest parliamentary parties in the Bundesrat in 1959, the ‘all-party government’3 tradition strengthened the consensus orientation of the Swiss constitutional system. A great coalition was formed between the Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party, the SKVP (with two members of the Bundesrat each) and what is now the Swiss People’s Party (SVP). On a national level, they were able to unite 85 per cent of the electorate.4 The SKVP could continually win over 40 seats of a total of 200 in the First Chamber, the Nationalrat, up until 1987. This consistency was even more evident in the Second Chamber, the Ständerat.5 This chapter examines the social basis of the SKVP and its relationship to the Catholic Church, as well as the party’s reform debates in the 1960s and its ideas for the economy and for society. Its European policy will also be analysed, and in the concluding part of


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the chapter developments since the 1970s. The 1950s and 1960s was a phase marked by the influence of Martin Rosenberg, who was SKVP secretary-general on a part-time basis for 28 years from 1941 to 1968 and was subsequently vice-president of the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD) up until 1971,6 representing the Swiss Christian Democrats. The SKVP was exclusively a men’s party up until the belated introduction of the right to vote for women in 1971. SOCIAL BASIS AND RELATIONSHIP TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The SKVP’s members were not individuals but the cantonal parties. That is why the national party did not have a central membership register, so that up until the 1970s it was not possible to identify and count its members. When Rosenberg was the secretarygeneral of the party in the 1940s and 1950s, it was a badly paid part-time post. During his time in office, he also worked for the conservative daily newspaper Vaterland in Lucerne as a reporter from Parliament and the government. The SKVP secretariat got a full-time typist only in 1943. The secretariats of the other parties were also weakly institutionalized, but in Rosenberg’s opinion they had like-minded economic interest groups on whose political know-how and administrative resources they could draw, that is, trade and industry associations, trade unions and farmers’ organizations.7 Rosenberg tried time and again to draw the attention of the party leadership to the fact that additional people had to be employed, but any attempts to increase personnel were thwarted by lack of finances.8 The low degree of party centralization also manifested itself in the set-up of the party organs. All cantonal party leaders were represented in the Central Committee, which consisted of 105 members after 1957 and assembled at least twice a year. The Central Committee’s make-up reflected the SKVP’s regional and social composition. Along with the cantonal parties’ delegates and the parliamentary party, the Central Committee comprised seven delegates each from the Christian Social group within the party, the Swiss Catholic Farmers’ Organization and the Association of Medium-Sized Business. Five delegates each came from the party’s youth wing and the Association of Swiss Catholic journalists, as well as the presidents of permanent study committees and the Berne correspondents of Catholic newspapers.9 The growing strength of the Christian social movement, which was reflected in the increase in membership in the Christian-National Trade Union (CNG), led in the 1950s to the strengthening of the Christian social wing at cantonal level. The active CNG politicians were all members of cantonal Christian social or conservative parties.10 In 1955, the Christian social party groups joined forces to form a national interest group under the roof of the SKVP.11 The SKVP feared that the different party wings would drift apart. After the left-wing Christian social groups across the nation had joined forces, it reacted with a revision of party statutes and a change of name, whereby the formation of associations and working groups within the national party was expressly approved of in the statutes. From that point on, the party was known as the Conservative Christian Social People’s Party of Switzerland. As the Conservatives had their strongholds mainly in rural areas, the party tried to keep the Catholic farmers from joining the SVP. The Swiss Catholic Farmers’ organization,

Successful as a 'go-between'

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formed in 1942, was thus also represented in the SKVP party leadership. Those farmers defined neither politically or economically, but rather by confession, were integrated in the Catholic associations representing farmers’ interests at cantonal level.12 The Catholic Association of Medium-Sized Business, an organization for the selfemployed formed in 1944, was organized quite differently. Erich Gruner describes it as a kind of post-box that the representatives of business interests could use to forward their wishes to the party leadership.13 The party leadership greeted the creation of this working group as the ‘third pillar of organized Swiss Catholicism’, alongside the Catholic workers and farmers.14 Unlike the other two, however, it remained an institution of functionaries without a mass membership. The Catholic confession continued to bind these societal groups of the SKVP in the post-war period, despite the non-confessional rhetoric from the party leadership.15 The party statutes of 1957 spoke officially about a party open to Swiss citizens of all confessions who supported a ‘Christian, democratic, federalist and social Switzerland’.16 De facto, however, ‘Christian’ meant Catholic. The revision of the statutes in 1957 did not mark the dawn of a new era. It was rather an attempt to keep the Catholic milieu together in supporting the party. The SKVP and its successor parties are, from a historical perspective, relics of the nineteenth-century conflicts regarding the Church and the constitution.17 In contrast to the inter-war period, when party and Church worked closely together, the Church withdrew after 1945 and concerned itself with purely Church and social matters. The party was also concerned in the 1950s to get away from its Catholic image. It wanted to get across the inter-confessional element, just as its European sister parties did.18 Priests who were still active in cantonal parliaments and as leading journalists in the inter-war period made way for academically educated laymen in the post-war period. Those clerics who left the party leadership were not replaced. Three theologians were still part of the SKVP’s central committee up until 1947. In 1943 a cleric, Josef Meier, was elected into the party’s leading committee as representative of the Catholic Volksverein. From 1952 onwards, he no longer belonged to this committee of 16 members.19 After Meier’s death in 1960, there were no more clerics in the central committee of the party. In the period just after the end of the war, the Swiss bishops still spoke out about questions of social policy in the resolutions of the bishops’ conferences and they openly supported the insertion of an article for the protection of the family in the constitution, initiated by the SKVP.20 The Church supported the financially weak national party well into the 1960s, as can be seen from the annual accounts and budget-planning of the party secretariat. The party collected money for its work, targeting certain social groups and individuals for donations, such as academics in the Catholic student organization, senior civil servants in national administration, members of government, businessmen and clerics. The campaign for funds brought in over half of the party’s budget in the 1960s.21 Otherwise it had only the contributions of the party’s national deputies to the parliamentary party and the annual contributions of the cantonal sections at its disposal. Donations to the party coming from the Church milieu indicate that the active Catholic circles within the SKVP considered the party to be the political representative of Catholic interests and that the Catholic milieu was still intact in the 1960s.22


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SOCIETAL CHANGE, PARTY DEBATES AND ATTEMPTS AT REFORM In the 1950s, the party wanted to reduce its Catholic profile somewhat and open itself up to protestant voters without giving up the claim to comprehensively represent all Catholics. In the 1960s, the Swiss parties in government, especially the renamed KCVP, came under pressure. The four large parties, which had negotiated compromises among themselves in order to secure majorities, ‘de-ideologized’ their party politics and became closer in the process. The Social Democrats buried their programme of a socialist reorganization of the economy and society in favour of a state-controlled competitive economy.23 From then on, the bourgeois parties merely drew up rhetorical boundaries between themselves and the Social Democrats at party congresses, addressing ordinary party members and the public by way of the media. From the mid-1960s on, new oppositional groups established themselves from the political periphery. James Schwarzenbach, a Catholic convert, gathered together in the right-wing Nationale Aktion gegen Überfremdung von Volk und Heimat the lower middle class and workers who felt uneasy about the changes in society such as growth of the economy, immigration of foreign workers, urbanization and environmental damage. His populist anti-foreigner slogans were ‘the selling-out of our country’ and ‘too many foreigners in Switzerland’. A crisis in government resulting from the acquisition of a French fighter plane, the Mirage Affair, in 1964, and the immigration agreement with Italy in 1965 allowing families to follow those who had already emigrated, weighed down heavily on the government coalition and triggered off protest movements on the left as well as the right. In the 1967 parliamentary elections, the voters’ distrust of the government cartel became apparent for the first time and all the parties in government lost deputies. The KCVP lost three seats, which was equivalent to an electoral loss of 1.3 per cent. It performed especially badly in the three cantons with the highest populations—Berne, Zurich and Waadt—and in the urban centres of central Switzerland.24 This alarmed the party because, in the 1950s and 1960s, those Catholic voters who had moved out of Catholic cantons because of their work no longer automatically voted for the SKVP/KCVP in their new places of residence in the urban centres. In the traditionally Catholic rural areas, the Conservatives were, however, able to assert themselves successfully in the 1967 elections. The party was thus faced with the alternatives of either diversifying in order to address the urban voters or retreating into the traditionally Catholic rural areas and safeguarding the interests of the regions with a lot of agriculture and small businesses on a national level from there. After the 1967 elections, which led to critical discussions within the party, the party leadership began a reform process. This was a liberating stroke in that the party decided on the ‘modern’ option in order to win the next elections in the urban, traditionally nonCatholic centres.25 In 1968, the party elected a new leader and secretary-general.26 In his parting speech, Rosenberg, despite growing divergence in Catholic society, called for ‘a retention of our common ideological basis’. The Catholic milieu slowly began to dissolve in the 1960s. As the other parties did not propagate ‘un-Christian’ policies after all, the party was forced to find a new direction. The party, which had in the meantime renamed itself the CVP, now described itself as the ‘dynamic centre’. The word ‘dynamic’ replaced the word ‘conservative’ and was supposed to raise new electoral hopes. The


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party had actually held its position in the centre since 1957, though and it did not promise anything really new. It would not, however, be correct to draw parallels between the crisis in the Swiss party at the end of the 1960s, and the crisis that the German CDU/CSU experienced, just because both parties lost a section of their voters in the same period.27 In the Swiss case, the 1967 elections seem rather to indicate a certain weariness of voters with the government parties geared to the status quo. The other government parties were likewise hit by the loss of a total of six seats to protest parties of the right and the left. A young generation of academics with a new style, working together in a new commission set up in 1969, subsequently developed a new socio-political image. The main aim was to open up the party confessionally. In 1972, a study showed that 84 per cent of the CVP voters were Catholic.28 The proportion of protestant voters was less than 10 per cent. The CVP remained a distinctly Catholic party even after the reform in terms of its electorate.29 In 1971, it could still secure a very high proportion of the vote in Catholic regions such as the cantons Wallis (61.6 per cent), Lucerne (48.9 per cent) and Fribourg (48.9 per cent). Although the party appealed to voters under a new name, the CVP could not break free from its marginal position in the large protestant cantons with high populations, despite its new image.30 The number of protestants registered as CVP members in the 1970s was very low, estimated at 2–3 per cent.31 The history of the SKVP/KCVP is on the one hand a history of failure, as the CVP and its predecessors had not succeeded in ‘breaking out of the confessional ghetto’ since the nineteenth century.32 On the other hand, it represents a significant success story in that the party was supported by a stable group of voters over decades, without ever needing to commit itself too much in its programme. The decrease in the proportion of the vote it won in 1967 was less dramatic than the party leadership thought, as the other parties in government also lost votes. More recently, the party’s proportion of the vote has sunk to below 20 per cent, however. ECONOMIC AND SOCIETAL PROGRAMME An explicit aim of the SKVP before and also after the Second World War, one that affected almost all policy areas, was the strong emphasis it placed on the decentralization of the state—or, as we would say today, the pursuit of the principle of subsidiarity. The SKVP found the centralization tendencies of the post-war period in the tax, social and economic politics problematic. They took care that the cantons forming the Swiss state did not lose too many of their extensive competences. The post-war period was marked by various economic reform projects, which had their origins in the inter-war period but were postponed because of the war or were only provisionally enacted by the special powers of the executive. After the people and the cantons had agreed in 1947 to the new pension system, as well as to some new economic policies at national level, debates about a lasting solution to the question of the financing of the state budget began, and were to continue for years. After the Second World War the SKVP took up, at least rhetorically, a position in the political centre and pursued societal politics somewhere between liberalism and socialism. The party was ideologically based in Christian social thought and supported


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social policies in which the family was placed firmly in the centre. The protection of the family took precedence over women’s rights. The Thesen zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik of 1959 argued: ‘the needs of the family, especially those with many children, are to be taken into consideration in all sectors of economic policy, in tax and price policy amongst others’.33 The SKVP had already prompted the constitutional protection of the family during the war by way of a referendum initiative. The greatest number of signatures came from the Catholic cantons Lucerne, St Gallen and Wallis, where large families were not unusual. Even at the end of the 1950s, the SKVP was still sceptical about equality for women, but did not reject the idea altogether. Economic and social policy had a weak theoretical foundation and had to take into consideration the social diversity of the SKVP, which embraced all classes. In the years of growth after the war the party did not treat the drafting of an economic programme as urgent.34 The theses formulated in the 1950s in the study group for economic and social policy were in favour of a middle course between liberal and socialist economic policies. They also show that the corporatist model of the inter-war period was still valid. The term ‘competition’ was very contested and problematic while the party was trying to unite the liberal and the Christian social wings. The party spoke out clearly against an anti-trust law which would have banned the prevailing trusts. Otherwise, the party’s economic programme was only very vaguely formulated. The SKVP drew up its social policies very late, long after the other parties had formulated their ideas and the terms were already coined. This is why it defined its position mainly in negative terms: ‘We are not economic liberals, or neo-liberals, but neither are we interventionists.’35 The field had already been staked out to a very great extent by the Liberals and the Social Democrats, who had close links with economic interest groups. The SKVP tried to push through the principle of subsidiarity in the social policy, and any state measures were conceived to support families. The SKVP believed that social policy should be at the service of family politics. THE SKVP AND ‘EUROPE’ The SKVP saw itself as a ‘mediator’ in the resuming of the contacts between the European Christian Democratic parties after the Second World War. The purpose of an initial meeting in Lucerne in 1947 was, from Rosenberg’s point of view, to bring together representatives of the various Catholic parties in Europe.36 The SKVP was not represented at the second congress, which took place in Liège in Belgium. The party leader Joseph Escher, Rosenberg and two members of the study committee for foreign affairs, Karl Wick and Antoine Favre, participated in the congress in Luxembourg in 1948. It is not clear whether the initial meeting to which the Swiss SKVP had extended invitations should be interpreted as a foreign or a European policy initiative. Thomas Holenstein, the SKVP parliamentary party leader, placed emphasis in his presentation on Swiss domestic issues; he did not set out a foreign policy specific to the party.37 The SKVP politicians used this meeting more to advocate a cautious foreign policy that was not specific to any particular political party’s stance. They subsequently supported the official foreign policy maxims of the Swiss government and of the Liberal minister for


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foreign affairs at that time, Max Petitpierre. The SKVP only began to debate the European question in its Study Committee for foreign policy from the late 1950s. It largely relied on Carl Doka’s ideas advocating Swiss foreign policy taking a global approach rather than being directed at a European regionalism.38 Doka also believed the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and EURATOM to be incompatible with national sovereignty. He classified these organizations as ‘political organizations’ that would pursue ‘political aims’.39 ‘Political organizations’, including the Western European Union and the Council of Europe, were placed opposite economic organizations such as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and the European Payments Union (EPU). Switzerland could participate in intergovernmental economic organizations without majority voting. Doka thus confirmed the Bundesrat’s general foreign policy conception, which likewise made a distinction between ‘political’ and ‘technical-economic’ organizations. The SKVP justified its dislike of supranational organizations by insisting that the Europe of the ECSC/EEC was a Rumpfeuropa, a truncated Europe. The SKVP politicians did not distinguish themselves in foreign and European policy-making in the 1950s. The SKVP’s Study Committee for foreign policy met only twice between 1955 and 1959,40 a turbulent period in European politics. The SKVP leadership tried to initiate an open public discussion at the party congress in November 1961 by inducing the cantonal parties ‘to make integration problems the subject of cantonal and regional educational meetings, so that the people can make informed decisions on European issues’.41 This desire for debate, which never took place in a substantial form, was preceded by the ratification of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960 and a controversial debate within the party. European integration received a great deal of coverage in the Swiss media in the early 1960s because of the unexpected British EEC application of 1961, but really controversial debates rarely took place so that the resulting conflicts within as well as outwith the KCVP’s responsible Study Committee for economic politics were rare. Interesting in retrospect are the differences between some exponents of the Catholicconservative milieu, including the Catholic trade union. Its leader Bruno Gruber pointedly supported the EEC and opposed the EFTA in the conservative press, which triggered off a short but violent debate in Vaterland, the conservative newspaper in central Switzerland.42 The internationally active unionist raised the question of integration to an all-or-nothing matter. Gruber advocated Swiss integration into the EEC mainly for economic and social reasons.43 He argued from a historical perspective by comparing the EEC with the setting up of the ‘Swiss common market’ following the founding of the Swiss federal state in 1848. Two weeks later, the Catholic deputy Emil Duft countered with an argument that the Swiss had no reason ‘to idealize this new strongly centralist and dirigiste community’ of the EEC. The Zurich banker drew upon the widely used image of a centralist and power-hungry Brussels bureaucracy. Duft also drew historic parallels in that he compared the possible entry of Switzerland into the EEC with ‘integration into the Habsburg Empire’ or ‘integration into the “New Europe” of the Axis Powers during the Second World War’.44 He contrasted this ‘centralist’ and ‘economically dirigiste’ Europe with ‘a federalist Europe, in the best sense of the word’.


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Even if Duft, in contrast to Doka, saw Swiss neutrality as not negligible in relation to the European issue, he considered the EEC’s supranational character to be incompatible with Switzerland’s federal structure based on the autonomy of the cantons. Duft also considered the EEC’s common customs external tariff to be a great disadvantage for Swiss firms operating globally.45 In the legislative period from 1959 to 1963, the SKVP’s parliamentary party discussed the possible late entry of Switzerland into the Council of Europe on several occasions. Party leader Ettore Tenchio called on the parliamentary party members to ‘concern themselves more with foreign policy’.46 After the Swiss delegation of observers had taken part in the sessions of the Council of Europe for the first time in January 1962, Duft stressed the ‘public-relations success’ to his parliamentary party, which was a result of Swiss parliamentarians having direct contact with their colleagues in the context of the Council of Europe. It was time that Switzerland woke up from its slumber and prepared for full entry into the Council of Europe. Duft saw the chance to gain sympathy there for Switzerland’s distance from the EEC during a turbulent period in Europe.47 In December 1962, the parliamentary party had to give its view on a report prepared by the Bundesrat, which had in the meantime steered itself towards a pro-membership position. Duft again campaigned for entry, ‘as the Council of Europe can draw attention to Switzerland’s special situation [neutrality] and promote good-will’.48 Conducting foreign policy such as the negotiation of state treaties, or decisions on entry into international organizations, was, in a strongly decentralized Switzerland, a primary concern of the government. It had co-operated closely with economic interest groups by way of specialist administrative departments for diplomatic and foreign trade matters since the nineteenth century. Parliament was drawn into the process only in 1945 by the creation of a special parliamentary foreign policy committee, although this had no authority over the government. Post-war foreign policy was actually determined by individuals from the historically dominant Liberal Party. Between 1945 and 1960, Max Petitpierre, as foreign minister, and between 1961 and 1969, Hans Schaffner, as economics minister, were leading figures in Swiss European policy-making. From a structural viewpoint, the possibilities for SKVP influence were therefore not great and the leading Catholic politicians often complained in the leading party committees about having very little say in foreign policy. The SKVP/KCVP’s European policy showed signs of weariness, however, long before the free trade treaty between the EC and Switzerland was signed in 1972. In 1968, parliamentary party leader Kurt Furgler challenged the Bundesrat to report to the public about Swiss integration policy.49 The referendum about the free trade treaty was reported briefly in a couple of lines in the CVP’s 1972 yearbook under the summaries of referendum results. After Switzerland’s entry into the Council of Europe and the election defeat of 1967, the party concerned itself mainly with questions of domestic politics. After Furgler, a member of the Swiss delegation to the Council of Europe and of the parliamentary foreign policy committee of the Nationalrat, was elected into government at the end of 1971, nobody in the CVP seemed to be interested in integration policy any more. Neither the party leadership nor the secretary-general were able to raise enthusiasm for European policy among the CVP parliamentarians. The repeated demands to concern themselves more with foreign and European issues had no effect.50


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THE SWISS CONSERVATIVES’ PATH INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY The Swiss Christian Democrats were initially able to defend the position they had in the 1970s between the right and the left quite well.51 The political climate cooled temporarily. Right-wing conservative parties campaigned against what they considered to be too high a proportion of foreigners in Switzerland. Criticism of the established parties in government from the ‘alternative’ left also became louder, but the four-party coalition still had the support of 80 per cent of the voters. The rise of the smaller protest parties was brief, however, when measured against the stability of the traditional government parties. The idea of forming a dynamic centre turned out not to pay off for the CVP over a longer period as the manoeuvring between the right and the left was increasingly interpreted as a lack of a real party line. It was especially unsuccessful in appealing to the voters in the urban centres in non-Catholic areas: the change in name could not disguise the Catholic character of the party. After 1975, an irreversible shrinking process began, which continued for some time but was slower than had been predicted by many. The more successful the demands for which Swiss political Catholicism had fought since the end of the nineteenth century were, the more difficult became the opening up of new areas of activity for the party. The final end of the nineteenth century’s culture war robbed political Catholicism of its raison d’être.52 The Action Programme of 1971, which was drafted in the wake of another election defeat, promised the dawn of a new era and was designed to spread a feeling of optimism. The programme, which was developed by the academic think-tank around the University of Fribourg, did not, however, give any concrete answers to the economic recession in the mid-1970s, or to the subsequent information revolution of the 1980s. The erosion of the CVP’s profile as a typical centre party could also, in a political system with a broadly based coalition, lead to the voters no longer knowing what the CVP stood for. Thus the new modern party programme had, at the end of the day, little influence on the CVP’s electoral fate. For those CVP supporters who still voted Christian Democratic as a matter of tradition in the 1990s, the party programme was not so important. In 1978, a new ‘programme of basic principles’ followed on from the 1971 Action Programme. Programme reforms followed in ever swifter succession after it became clear to the leading party members that the glorious ‘Rosenberg era’ was irrevocably a thing of the past. After a period of redefining the programme, the Swiss Christian Democrats also had to come to the painful conclusion that the voters (from 1971 on, including women) wanted less emphasis placed on principles in the programme, and more concrete answers to the problems arising from the accelerating changes in society. The issue that dominated the 1980s, the preservation of the fundamental tenets of life, was not however introduced into politics by the government parties, but was brought to them by green protest parties via the media. The Christian Democrats called for legislative measures to protect the environment only at the end of the 1980s. The call for a social and ecological market economy was included in the programme late on. Environmental politics soon had to take a back seat again, however, when a new economic recession began in the early 1990s and the aim of economic growth took centre stage again.


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The Swiss Christian Democrats polarized Swiss society with the issue of abortion. They defended the official position of the Catholic Church, which was that every intentional termination of a pregnancy would be judged as an extremely serious attack on human life, well into the 1980s.53 For a long time, the CVP successfully defined societal politics in terms of the family. In the 1990s, the established positions were criticized from within its own ranks. The women in the CVP, who were in the meantime courted as a welcome ‘minority’, were no longer prepared to disregard social reality.54 To them, the criminalization of abortion was not compensated for by more positively formulated incentives such as maternity insurance and child-care facilities. ‘The rebellion of the CVP women’, in the spring of 1997, finally brought about a hesitant change in the party programme and attitudes which had been fixed for so many years.55 This issue caused a lot of upheaval within the party, however, just as the question of the vote for women had done in the 1950s and 1960s. The alignment with the political centre seriously threatened the decade-long success of the party from the late 1980s on, and ever more increasingly in the 1990s. The party’s image was once again fundamentally called into question as a result of the polarization in social policy, against the background of falling state revenue and ever more demands from a more mobile society with a rising proportion of older people. The party found a way of holding its right and left wings through the concept of ‘value conservatism’. It remained a core force that could not be avoided in day-to-day politics, but it no longer succeeded in attracting new voters in cantonal and national elections with its politics of the centre, and certainly did not attract any non-Catholic voters. In the 1990s, the party lost its last newspapers—Vaterland in Lucerne and Die Ostschweiz in St Gallen—so that it increasingly had to make its presence felt in the independent media. It did not really succeed, however, because of its politics of the centre, which aimed at compromise and did not polarize sufficiently to attract greater media attention. In the spring of 1998, a new era began for the Swiss CVP when it demanded entry into the European Union at a special European Congress.56 After seven years of indecision on the European question, the party dared to act. After the 1992 referendum about the European Economic Area (EEA), which was narrowly rejected by the Swiss voters, the Liberals and CVP in the political centre tried to avoid the issue. While the left and the greens had since that time gone on the offensive for integration into the EU, strengthened by the EU entry of Austria, Sweden and Finland in 1995, a decidedly anti-Brussels front formed on the political right. What made it more difficult for the CVP was that Swiss Foreign Minister Flavio Cotti was the first Christian Democrat in this post since 1940. It was he who brought the idea of the ‘strategic aim of EU accession’ into the discussion. Although no real debate about Europe developed, integration hung like the sword of Damocles over day-to-day politics after 1992. A sort of basic consensus could temporarily be achieved, that is to say to take a bilateral approach to Brussels in order to compensate for the expected economic disadvantages of EEA exclusion. In the 1990s, negotiations between Berne and Brussels dragged on with various setbacks, so that many CVP members began to have doubts about the possibility of a bilateral solution to the problem of Swiss relations with the EU. Sooner or later there is no middle path any more in the EU question. While many East


43

European states and Turkey were about to attain EU membership at the beginning of the twenty-first century, silence reigned in Switzerland regarding Europe in the election year 1999 and beyond. The CVP is unlikely to be the first to break this silence. The CVP’s attempts to win votes from EU supporters by professing faith in the idea of Switzerland’s entry into the EU in 1998 clearly failed: it lost votes to the right-wing conservative antiEU Swiss People’s Party led by the charismatic chemical industrialist Christoph Blocher, who has often been compared with the Austrian Jörg Haider. As the majority of the Swiss population is, at the start of the twenty-first century, just as critical of the EU as ever, it is very difficult for a centre party such as the CVP to commit itself politically. Taking a stance on integration into Europe is very risky in electoral campaigns. ‘Europe does not frighten us any more,’ professed the CVP party leader Adalbert Durrer after an internal referendum in the CVP in 1998.57 It is clear, however, that the national-conservative opponents of integration into the EU continue to scare the Swiss Christian Democrats. NOTES 1 Hans-Ulrich Jost, ‘Bedrohung und Enge (1914–1945)’, in Beatrix Mesmer (ed.), Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer (Basle 1986), pp. 731–819, especially pp. 738–9. 2 Research about political parties has, to date, been rather scarce in Swiss historiography. With the exception of Erich Gruner’s work in the 1960s, there has not been any attempt to analyse and typologize the Swiss parties. See Erich Gruner, Die Parteien in der Schweiz, 2nd edn (Berne 1977). 3 Erich Gruner, Die Parteien in der Schweiz, 1st edn (Berne 1969), p. 35. 4 The so-called ‘magic formula’ has existed in Switzerland since 1959. The Bundesrat has a proportional composition of seven members, individually elected by Parliament since 1848. The Bundesrat has consisted of two Conservatives, two Liberals, two Social Democrats and one representative of the Swiss People’s Party since 1959. 5 The party’s name has been Christlich-demokratische Volkspartei (CVP) since 1971; from 1912 to 1957 the party called itself the Schweizerische Konservative Volkspartei (SKVP) and between 1957 and 1971 the Konservativ-christlichsoziale Volkspartei (KCVP). The parliamentary group called itself the CatholicConservative Parliamentary Group until 1957. After that date the name of the party and the parliamentary party were the same. 6 A comprehensive, archive-based study of the SKVP does not yet exist. See, however, Martin Zenhäusern, Die schweizerische Konservative Volkspartei 1943– 1947 (Freiburg 1983); Christoph Flury, ‘Von der Defensive zur gültigen Präsenz’. Die Konservativ-Christlichsoziale Volkspartei der Schweiz in der Zeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 1950–1960 (Freiburg 1994); Markus Rohner, Der Weg zur Schweizer Christdemokratie. Eine Analyse der Ursachen und Auswirkungen der Parteistatuten-Reform vom Dezember 1970 (Freiburg 1982). For an overview see also Urs Altermatt, ‘Die Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei der Schweiz 1945– 1995’, in Hans-Joachim Veen (ed.), Schweiz, Niederlande, Belgien, Luxemburg,


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Europäische Demokratische Union (EDU), Europäische Volkspartei (EVP) (Paderborn 2000), pp. 37–115. 7 Memorandum z.H. des Leitenden Ausschusses der Schweizerischen Konservativen Volkspartei über den Ausbau des Generalsekretariates der Partei (Martin Rosenberg), 15 January 1946, Bundesarchiv Bern (BAR) J II. 181 (-), vol. 214. 8 See Provisorische Rechnung von 1943, BAR J II. 181 (-), vol. 16. 9 Konservativ-christlichsoziale Volkspartei der Schweiz, Jahrbuch 1955–1959 (Berne 1959), pp. 34–5. 10 Indicated by Bruno Gruber, former secretary-general of the CNG, to the author. 11 Urs Altermatt, ‘Der Wirtschaftsflügel in der CVP: Die “dynamische Mitte” unter Druck’, Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Politische Wissenschaft, vol. 26 (1986), pp. 63–88, especially p. 73. 12 Gruner, Die Parteien in der Schweiz, p. 115. 13 Ibid., p. 114. 14 Schweizerische Konservative Volkspartei, Jahrbuch 1943–1947 (Berne 1947), p. 82. 15 In 1959, secretary-general Martin Rosenberg confirmed the SKVP’s confessional neutrality. See Konservativ-christlichsoziale Volkspartei der Schweiz, Jahrbuch 1955–1959, p. 50. 16 Statuten der Konservativ-Christlichsozialen Volkspartei der Schweiz, Lucerne 1957, article 1 (‘Wesen der Partei’). 17 Urs Altermatt, ‘Konfessionelles, nivelliertes oder zersplittertes Christentum’, in idem (ed.), Schweizer Katholizismus im Umbruch 1945–1990 (Freiburg 1993), pp. 251–71, especially p. 265. 18 See Ins Sechste Jahrzehnt—Manifest (Bern 1962). 19 See Schweizerische Konservative Volkspartei, Jahrbuch 1947–1951 (Berne 1951), pp. 55–60, and Jahrbuch 1951–1955 (Berne 1955), pp. 79–84. 20 Flury, ‘Von der Defensive zur gültigen Präsenz’, p. 177. 21 The 1968 accounts of the National Party showed a total income of 151,388 Swiss francs, the income from the external donors was 113,356 Swiss francs, or 75 per cent. See Erfolgsrechnung 1968, BAR J II. 181 (-), Bd. 189. 22 Altermatt, ‘Konfessionelles, nivelliertes oder zersplittertes Christentum’, pp. 252–3. 23 Peter Gilg and Peter Hablützel, ‘Beschleunigter Wandel und neue Krisen (seit 1945)’, in Mesmer, Geschichte der Schweiz, pp. 821–968, especially p. 924. 24 Heinz Niemetz, ‘Die Nationalratswahlen 1967’, in Christlich-demokratische Volkspartei der Schweiz, Jahrbuch 1967–1971 (Berne 1971), p. 35. 25 The only well-known Catholic Swiss towns are Freiburg, Lucerne and St Gallen. 26 In 1968, Franz Josef Kurmann took over from party leader Ettore Tenchio and in the same year, Urs C.Reinhardt was appointed secretary-general. 27 Karl Egon Lönne, Politischer Katholizismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/Main 1968), pp. 263–85. See also the chapter by Ulrich Lappenküper in this book. 28 Dusan Sidjanski, Charles Roig, Henry Kerr, Ronald Inglehart and Jaques Nicola, Les Suisses et la politique: Enquête sur les attitudes d’électeurs suisses 1972 (Berne and Frankfurt/Main 1975).


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29 Rohner, Der Weg zur Schweizer Christdemokratie, pp. 108–9. 30 The CVP’s proportion of the vote in 1971: Canton Bern 5.4 per cent, Canton Zurich 9.5 per cent und Canton Waadt 5.3 per cent. 31 Urs Altermatt, ‘Aufbruch aus dem katholisch-konservativen Ghetto?’, in Urs Altermatt and Hans Peter Fagagnini (eds), Die CVP zwischen Programm und Wirklichkeit, Zurich 1979, pp. 85–105, especially p. 90. 32 Altermatt, ‘Konfessionelles, nivelliertes oder zersplittertes Christentum’, p. 266. 33 ‘Thesen zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik’, in Konservativ-christlichsoziale Volkspartei der Schweiz, Jahrbuch 1955–1959, pp. 156–7. 34 Leo Schürmann, Wirtschafts- und sozialpolitische Probleme in grundsätzlicher Sicht, Referat vor dem Leitenden Ausschuss der SKVP, 28.8.1954. BAR J II. (-), vol. 1537. 35 Ibid. 36 Vorschläge von Generalsekretär Rosenberg für die Durchführung eines Conveniums, Berne, 25 September 1946. BAR J II. 181 (-), vol. 149. 37 Schweizerische Konservative Volkspartei, Protokoll des Conveniums christlicher Politiker Europas in Luzern, 22 March 1947, BAR J II. 181 (-), vol. 2399, pp. 32–5. 38 See Die Stellung der Schweiz zur europäischen Zusammenarbeit und zur europäischen Integration, Thesenvorschläge Dr. Charles Doka, BAR J II. 181 (-), vol. 2287. Carl (Charles) Doka was a member of the SKVP’s study group for foreign policy, publicist and founder in 1952 of the Kultureller Auslandpressedienst of the Swiss foundation Pro Helvetia. See Urs C.Reinhardt, ‘Carl Doka—Zum 70. Geburtstag’, Schweizer Rundschau Monatsschrift für Geistesleben und Kultur, vol. 1 (1966), pp. 2–8. 39 Ibid. 40 The SKVP’s other six study groups (finance, economic, social, family, defence and transport policy) met more regularly and also formed sub-committees. See Konservativ-christlichsoziale Volkspartei der Schweiz, Jahrbuch 1955–1959, p. 56 and following pages. 41 Entschliessung der Delegiertensammlung der Konservativ-Christlich-Sozialen Volkspartei vom 18.11.1962 in Aarau, printed in Die Schweiz vor der europäischen Integration, ed. Generalsekretariat der KCVP (Berne 1962), p. 1. 42 Gruber as CNG secretary-general was a member of the SKVP’s Study Committee for economic policy. 43 Vaterland, 23 June 1959. 44 Vaterland, 16 July l959. 45 Ibid. 46 Konservativ-christlichsoziale Fraktion der Bundesversammlung, Protokoll der dritten Sitzung vom 14. März 1961 (Frühjahrssession), BAR J II. 181 (-), vol. 2451. 47 Konservativ-christlichsoziale Fraktion der Bundesversammlung, Protokoll der vierten Sitzung vom 20. März 1962 (Frühjahrssession), BAR J II. 181 (-), vol. 2451. 48 Konservativ-christlichsoziale Fraktion der Bundesversammlung. Protokoll der zweiten Sitzung vom 4. Dezember 1962 (Wintersession), BAR J II. 181 (-)’ vol. 2451. 49 Schweizerischer Bundesrat, 11.8.1971: Die Entwicklung der europäischen


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Integrationsbestrebungen (Beilage zum 83. Bericht über wirtschaftliche Massnahmen), Schweizerisches Bundesblatt, vol. 2 (Bern 1971), pp. 647 and following pages. See also Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei der Schweiz, Jahrbuch 1967–1971 (Berne 1971), pp. 57–8. 50 It is, however, questionable whether other parties had a more active policy regarding Europe. There are as yet no comparative studies. 51 This section draws on published material as far as it is available, in contrast to the previous sections. Special thanks to Andreas Ladner and Michael Brändle, who kindly allowed the author access to the unpublished results of their research project Politische Parteien im Wandel: Parteiorganisationen im letzten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts. 52 Altermatt, ‘Die Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei der Schweiz 1945–1995’. 53 Alberto Bondolfi, ‘Es ist nie zu spät. Ethik und Fristenlösung—Plädoyer für eine neue Haltung der CVP’, Tagesanzeiger Zürich, 23 August 1997. 54 In 1981, the CVP leadership recognized the CVP women’s group as a second formalized sub-group alongside the Christian Social group and gave it the right to appoint delegates to party congresses. 55 ‘Der Aufstand der CVP-Frauen, Überwältigendes Ja zur Fristenlösung’, Tagesanzeiger Zürich, 14 April 1997. 56 ‘Die alte Garde der CVP hat verloren’, Tagesanzeiger Zürich, 6 April 1998. 57 Ibid.

4 The Primacy of Domestic Politics: Christian Democracy in the Netherlands Jac Bosmans THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE In keeping with the period before the Second World War, Dutch party politics was characterized by great continuity in the first two decades that followed it. This is true for the balance of power between the parties as well as for the respective social structures. During the occupation and shortly afterwards, a change in the party structures in favour of parties based purely on a programme, rather than on confession or ideology, was discussed. These discussions, which took place primarily in left-wing liberal circles and in which individual Catholics and protestants took part, have to be seen in the wider context of the great longing in these circles for a breaking through of the prevailing system of pillarization with its organization of society along confessional and ideological lines. This system was blamed for the economic and social misery of the 1930s and for the country’s military collapse in May 1940. The strength of tradition, pillarization and the undiminished ‘pillarized’ mentality of the electorate hindered a rigorous renewal of the prevailing societal structure, however. Nothing really changed. The results of the first post-war elections of 1946 echoed those of the last elections before the war in 1937. The confessional parties won 51.5 per cent of the votes compared to 52.7 per cent in 1937. The Catholics and the protestants were as usual organized into their own parties. The Catholic Party was by far the largest.1 Both of the Protestant parties—the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) and the ChristianHistorical Union (CHU)—returned to the political scene unchanged.2 This cannot really be said about the Catholic Party on first sight, as a seemingly new Catholic party appeared called the Katholieke Volkspartij, the Catholic People’s Party (KVP).3 It even presented itself as a party based on a programme rather than confession, and membership formally stood open to all Dutch voters who supported this programme. The KVP simultaneously made its mark as a party based on Catholic principles. As a result, it actually appealed only to Catholics. In fact, it turned out to be a complete continuation of the Roman Catholic State Party of the inter-war period. The leadership of this party prior to the Second World War was immediately on the spot in the summer of 1945 to take part in discussions and to guarantee continuity. The KVP leadership simply carried on with the basic programme of its predecessor and only many years later, in 1952, did it change to fit the new circumstances. Up until around 1960, party ideology was supervised by the Franciscan Siegfried Stokman, member of the Second Chamber and the Archbishop of Utrecht’s confidant


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since the occupation. The episcopate intervened in the first ten years, as it always had done, in favour of the KVP. This was very evident in the elections of 1946 and 1948. The bishops resolutely demanded of Catholics that they vote for the KVP. The party was not overjoyed by this as it wanted to prove that it was capable of guaranteeing Catholic interests in their widest sense, without the support of the Church. Yet attempts made to prevent such public support did not at first succeed. The episcopate followed a very rigorous course in the 1950s. On the occasion of the centenary of the reinstatement of the hierarchy of the bishops in the Netherlands in 1953, Archbishop Cardinal Jan de Jong called on Catholics to uphold their unity above all else. One year later, the bishops addressed the question of Catholic unity even more doggedly with the pastoral letter on ‘the Catholic role in public life today’. Catholic organizations were portrayed, in this letter, as being necessary for influencing and upholding the Christian character of public life. The so-called non-confessional currents—liberalism, humanism, communism and socialism—were judged harshly. These, the bishops maintained, would lead to growing de-Christianization and to a weakening and decline of morality. Catholics joining any of these movements would be punished by being refused the sacraments. Although the bishops limited themselves regarding the Labour Party (PvdA) to a strong recommendation not to vote for it, it still led to great political difficulties for the KVP. These difficulties could only be overcome by the leaders of both parties keeping a cool head.4 The Labour Party was founded at the beginning of 1946. It was formed by merging the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) and the left-liberals. In organizational terms it turned out to be the much longed-for breakthrough on the political left, as the Christian Democratic Union—a small left-leaning Christian party—and a number of individuals from the confessional main currents joined. Regarding its programme and its cultural and social allegiances it was, however, basically an extended version of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of the inter-war period. Just how strong the pillarized structure still was can be seen in this new party’s electoral results. It did not manage to win the elections of 1946 and had fewer votes (28.3 per cent) than the previously separate parties put together in 1937 (29.9 per cent).5 THE DECLINE OF POLITICAL ORTHODOXY Despite this disappointing start, the Labour Party remained a threat to the three big confessional parties—KVP, ARP and CHU—as it had the potential to break into the Catholic and Protestant milieus. Catholic and Protestant members could form special ‘study groups’ in the party organization. The party wanted to show that their specific interests were in safe hands. As long as the pillarized structure of society remained, however, the confessional parties were able to survive the offensive on their voters on a national level—the Catholics better than the Protestants, however. Political orthodoxy was very much ingrained in confessional circles. We can ascertain from the census of 1947, for example, that the percentage of Catholics in the electorate as a whole was between 35 and 36 per cent. Between 80 and 90 per cent of these Catholics also voted Catholic in national elections. This clearly illustrates that the support for the

The primacy of domestic politics

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Catholic Party was determined by its affiliation to the Church and that it was a party representing all social classes.6 Analysing the regional and local council elections, one can then see that orthodoxy did not have such a hold on this level and the Labour Party had more chance to win over Catholic voters. This was certainly true of the almost completely Catholic provinces Brabant and Limburg in the south of the country, where the KVP won only just over 80 per cent of the Catholic vote at regional elections. The Socialist Party knew how to profit from this.7 The KVP’s losses in the parliamentary elections of 1952 seem to refute the claim that there was no great voter movement in the time of pillarization. The KVP had a strong competitor in this election in the form of a splinter party, however, which some years later merged once again with the KVP. The Labour Party won only 1 per cent from the KVP. In Limburg, the Labour Party’s gains were so significant that the Bishop of Roermond became seriously worried about the obedience of his flock and rallied his colleagues to retaliate. This is the origin of the infamous pastoral letter of 1954, which was later interpreted as an old-fashioned attempt at creating a synthesis between organized and decreed Catholicism.8 When the 1956 election did not bring the increase in support that could have been expected because of the increase in the Catholic electorate, the KVP commissioned a research institute that was positively inclined to the party to make a prognosis for the future. The report was not reassuring. It warned that partypolitical unity on the basis of religion could not in the long term contain the influence on the voters of industrialization and urbanization.9 Ten years later, this analysis was proved correct. The confessional parties lost the majority in the Second Chamber in 1967. Four years later, the KVP had to give up its top position to the Labour Party. The decline that was brought about by the secularization of society and could no longer be contained was, at the end of the 1960s, an important impulse for the KVP, ARP and CHU to begin talks about a merger into an inter-confessional Christian Democratic Party. Many lengthy talks were necessary to overcome continuing confessional and programmatic differences, however. The Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) was formed only in 1980.10 This new party was at first a big success. It seemed, contrary to expectations, to stop the decline of Christian democracy. It even succeeded, at the end of the 1980s, in winning more votes than the three parties preceding it in the 1970s put together. It could no longer attain the 1971 level, however. The CDA dominated politics right into the 1990s under the long-serving Minister President Ruud Lubbers, who was first elected to the position in 1982. It could not stop the erosion of the meaning and influence that Christian democratic ideas had in society, however, and in this it was like many of its sister parties in many other countries. The CDA’s proportion of the vote fell from 35.3 per cent in 1989 to 22.2 per cent in the 1994 elections. The party was forced into opposition by the Social Democrats and Liberals, and Christian democracy was not represented in government for the first time since 1918.11 The elections of 1998 brought no change to the situation: the CDA again lost several per cent of the vote and had to remain in opposition. Only in the elections of 2002 and 2003 did the CDA become the largest single party again, forming a new government with the Liberals and the populist List Fortuyn in 2002 and with the Liberals and the Left-Liberals in 2003.


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ROMAN-RED COLLABORATION The three confessional parties KVP, ARP and CHU, strode on as separate entities until the end of the 1970s. At the beginning, they focused on their confessional differences with passion and conviction. Thanks to several smaller confessional parties they could continuously bank on a clear overall majority in the Second Chamber during the first two decades after the Second World War. The fact that up until 1967 half of the seats and usually more fell to them allowed them, as before the war, to determine the formation of government. Important changes are to be noted, however. Although the balance of power on both sides did not change fundamentally, the Catholics moved into the political centre This shift marked a big change from the Protestant-dominated 1920s and 1930s. There were two reasons for this. First, the KVP, under the leadership of the new parliamentary party leader in the Second Chamber, Carl Romme, quickly gained confidence. Romme had learned between 1921 and 1937, as leader of a small Catholic parliamentary party in the Amsterdam City Council, not to allow himself to be marginalized by the large majority that the Social Democratic parliamentary party had there. As minister for social affairs in a Christian government coalition of protestants and Catholics between 1937 and 1939, he was very critical of the protestant parties.12 Romme was not impressed by the sensitivities of the protestant representatives in government, who still saw the protestant character of the Dutch nation as being threatened by Catholicism. Second, both protestant parties were marginalized after 1945 because they did not want to carry their part of the responsibility for the decolonalization of Indonesia, an issue that dominated Dutch politics in the first years after the war. The CHU gave up its opposition to decolonization in 1948. The ARP, however, followed suit only in 1952. It was not hard for the KVP in this situation to take the initiative, leading a second fundamental change. The Catholics formed the government coalition in 1946 not with the protestants but with the PvdA. They thus formed the basis for a collaboration that was to continue at national level up until the end of 1958. In order for the KVP not to be totally dependent on the PvdA and to be able to use its position in the political centre, the KVP from time to time after 1946 also co-operated with either protestant or liberal parties. There were then predominantly confessional-liberal coalitions in the 1960s in which the KVP remained the dominant party. The PvdA was initially a coveted partner for the KVP for more reasons than one.13 First, it was feared that as an opposition party, it could have a radicalizing influence on the masses of non-Christian workers. This would then drive them into the arms of communism. In contrast, the PvdA in government (precisely because of its proximity to communist ideals) could see to it that the Communist Party’s following, which was initially quite substantial, was kept low. Fear of communism was very great in the first years of the Cold War. Thanks to the participation of communists in the resistance, the Communist Party was quite popular for many years. In 1946 they won 10.6 per cent of the vote, which gave the other parties something to think about. Ten years later it still gained 4.7 per cent. Much more fundamental for the long-standing Roman-red collaboration was that the almost dogmatic combating of socialism by the Catholics in view of the ideological development of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party in the 1930s had long since lost


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much of its traumatic character. The SDAP made efforts at that time to shed its Marxist tradition and came up with ideas for combating the economic crisis, which were not necessarily contradictory to Catholic social teaching. While social democracy had already taken on governmental responsibility in neighbouring and nearby countries since 1918, the rather fearful middle-class parties in the Netherlands kept the movement and its party away from government. This was to change only in 1939 as the SDAP was at last included in government, and this on the initiative of the Catholics, even if it was only a loose coalition government and the SDAP had only two ministers. After 1945, the state was to take on important extensive tasks in order to rebuild the economy, which had been shattered by the war. One of the main tasks was to be a fundamental extension of social security, which had been quite limited up to that time. There was, in addition, the necessity of creating many new jobs because of the swiftly growing population. As protestants, like the liberals, advocated ‘less state intervention’, the Catholics preferred to collaborate with the PvdA. Despite the premise of a restricted state, the Catholics in the inter-war crisis advocated that the state should intervene in the economy on a large scale in times of crisis, but then retreat. Because of the protestant partners’ limited readiness to develop a more interventionist social policy, they had already at that time become more open to possible collaboration with the Social Democrats. THE WELFARE STATE AND THE STRUCTURING OF SOCIETY The long-standing Roman-red collaboration laid the foundation for the Dutch welfare state after 1945. As it was a period of low unemployment it was generously endowed. Only Sweden had a more extensive social security system. The welfare state reached its apex in the Netherlands around 1970, after which it slid into a serious crisis. The claims for social security benefits rose far beyond what had been foreseen, partly because of the rapid drop in the percentage of adults of working age being in employment. The Catholics were convinced after 1945 that a speedy realization of the welfare system could be achieved only by the state.14 They used as points of reference the social encyclicals, Rerum novarum of 1891 and Quadragesimo anno of 1931. The state should only create the framework and, according to the principle of subsidiarity, it should leave direct welfare support to organizations within society. The Catholics thus barred the way to a state-controlled social security system. They were strongly supported in this conception by the protestants, who wanted to keep the state at as great a distance as possible. An extensive network of social insurance developed in which contributions were linked to income. The system was financed by both employers and employees. The post-war debate about a better society concentrated on the reorganization of firms, however, which should deal with the negative effects of the capitalist system. For the Catholics, the joint responsibility of employer and employee for the management of firms and labour relations according to the principle of subsidiarity was the starting point. It was important to the Social Democrats first of all to improve the position of the worker. The Catholics seized the initiative immediately after the war. They saw to it that in 1950 a law was passed for the public regulation of company statutes, the Publiekrechtelijke Bedrijfsorganisatie (PBO). It was a law tailored to Catholic ideas and interests. In order


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that the state remain in the background, company executive bodies were to be equipped with public-legal authority. Presiding over the system was to be a social-economic council, the Sociaal-Economische Raad (SER), at which employers and employees would meet with state representatives for global agreement of the different interest groups.15 The first minister to make a start on this process in 1952 was a Catholic, A.C.de Bruijn, the leader of the Catholic Workers’ Movement, who had championed such an organization of firms all his life. There was great disappointment when very little of this project, which had been discussed for over 75 years, was realized in practice. A state secretary only was entrusted with the PBO at government level in 1956. It was to be dissolved as a separate administrative unit at the next Cabinet formation in 1959. The SER, on the other hand, was an important advisory committee for the government and exists up to this day. It is important for mediation in Dutch industrial relations. Additionally, agriculture was extensively structured by PBO authority. The PBO made little advance with industry, however. The employers refused to participate. While wages continuously rose under the influence of the favourable economic situation of the 1950s and 1960s, the employees’ interest in the PBO simultaneously declined. The first attempts at changing the Dutch socio-economic structure were met with distrust outside of the Netherlands. At the congress of the Nouvelles Équipes Internationales (NEI) of European Christian Democrats in Scheveningen in 1958 there was a quarrel between the Dutch and the German delegations when German Economic Minister Ludwig Erhard outlined his free market approach and decisively rejected the model of an economic system under public law as a cartel system. That the Dutch delegation, under the leadership of the protestant Economic Minister Jelle Zijlstra, reacted vehemently to this attack was no surprise. The model was seen to be not only in keeping with Christian social teaching, but also the only solution to a decade-long debate about economic and social issues.16 THE PRIMACY OF DOMESTIC POLITICS The sharp reaction to Erhard’s criticism is to be explained by the primacy of domestic politics in all parties at this time. This is, at first sight, perhaps rather surprising as after some hesitation the Netherlands gave up its neutrality and entered NATO as a founding member in 1949. There was great public enthusiasm for all forms of European integration at first: according to surveys even greater than in most other countries.17 A united Europe was generally held to be the best guarantee for avoiding a Third World War. In the first years after the end of the war, various plans for a European federation were in circulation. They had been mainly devised, as in other occupied countries, by the resistance groups during the occupation and were the subject of lively discussion.18 When European integration actually began, however, reservations began to appear. Support for European federalism turned out to be the pet project of an intellectual elite. The main political motive for integration was not primarily an ideal but rather concern for security and economic reconstruction.19 The question of whether Europe would be organized along supranational or inter-governmental lines was subsidiary to these main concerns. In line


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with Alan S.Milward’s interpretation,20 the integration process was dominated in The Hague, as in other countries, by national needs. A federal Europe would only provide the framework to solve national problems on an international level in a practical manner. The primacy of domestic politics thus played a very decisive role. Almost all leading politicians who were aged 50 or older had begun their careers long before the outbreak of war and at a time when pillarization and the unwavering tradition of neutrality, in existence since 1815, had promoted a very inward-looking mentality. It was hard for most politicians after the war to free themselves from this. The lack of almost any international experience and the often conspicuous inadequacy of their knowledge of other languages are factors that should not be underestimated. They made a redirecting of the interests of these relatively old politicians with their long-term orientation towards domestic issues rather difficult. They preferred to leave foreign politics to the foreign ministry. In the parliamentary parties and in the parties as a whole, there were politicians who took an interest in international issues, but they were mainly backbenchers and promoted their own personal ideas rather than those of their party. The parties had, at the start, no clear standpoint on international issues, and were pleased to have politicians in their ranks who took an interest. This meant not having to deal with such matters as a party. There were more important things worth supporting: the reconstruction of one’s own country, the Indonesian conflict, and later the construction of the social security system and the PBO system. Intra-party consultations and the big party rallies were dominated by these issues. Other countries, Europe and the world were a minor consideration. The primacy of domestic politics was mainly cultivated by the three Christian democratic parties.21 The protestants feared a ‘Catholic Europe’ under the influence of politicians such as Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi, Paul Van Zeeland and Joseph Bech.22 That most of the members of the ARP committee did not even know in 1957 that the NEI had been in existence for ten years, despite their own party having been a member since 1954, illustrates this attitude well.23 Even more revealing is how difficult Carl Romme, leader of the KVP, found the search for an appropriate role in foreign policy. CARL ROMME In his maiden speech in the Second Chamber in July 1946, Romme formulated his stance very clearly: International relations have not developed to the extent that the upholding of the national interest no longer takes first place, and we are even further away from recognizing what could actually be termed as being of supranational interest.24 His reluctance was perhaps understandable given the situation at that time. Less understandable was that he kept his distance from the Congress of Europe in The Hague in 1948, where political leaders from all over Western Europe were present. A mark of Romme’s reserve was his difficult relationship with Adenauer. Adenauer, who was present in The Hague, wanted to take the opportunity to meet the political leader of the


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Dutch Catholics, but a private meeting was all that Romme conceded to him. Although leader of the Christian Democrats in the West German zones of occupation, Adenauer was, after all, only the mayor of Cologne. When he invited Romme to a meeting of leading West European politicians in Geneva, Romme declined because he did not wish to change his holiday plans. He did everything to keep his distance when Adenauer was West German chancellor after 1949. In his opinion, the contact with German experts in the KVP was of much more use to Adenauer. Romme did not appreciate the fact that after 1949, Adenauer would only work with colleagues from abroad on the highest level. Romme only once gave in to pressure and travelled to Bonn in 1950. He let Adenauer know in advance that he would have very little time and had to return on the same day to deal with domestic issues.25 This was typical of Romme. While the internationalization of politics proceeded, he laid emphasis time and again on the primacy of domestic politics. European collaboration should, according to him in 1950, under no circumstances give the wrong impression that national politics are less important. In our present time, with the tasks which it poses us, domestic politics seems to remain most important. The reforms made here—perhaps it is not already too late—are those which are necessary for saving Europe.26 What Romme considered the most important contribution of the Dutch to international politics was the dissemination of ‘our sense of law and justice, especially social justice, as without it, the foundation of the whole world becomes shaky’. The Netherlands would turn its back on international politics, ‘if we cannot give our full attention to the great and important issues of domestic politics, in which we can always do much more than in international politics and with which we can be a leading example in the world’.27 His energetic backing of the swift rearmament of West Germany in 1950 should not be interpreted as a change in his political stance with regard to Europe. He really was being led by self-interest: an armed Germany would act as a buffer against the Soviet Union. The Netherlands would otherwise be lost.28 In the course of the 1950s, Romme had to tone down his explicit preference for domestic politics, as Europe’s importance for the Netherlands could no longer be negated after the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 and of Euratom and the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957–58. He did not, however, initially show great enthusiasm. Romme wrote hundreds of political commentaries between 1945 and 1961 for the important Catholic newspaper De Volkskrant, of which not even one-tenth were related to foreign policy issues. He did belong to the foreign policy committee in the Second Chamber together with the leaders of the other parliamentary parties, and he was a member of his own parliamentary party’s committee for external affairs. He never, however, spoke at the annual review of the Foreign Ministry’s budget. Neither did he speak in the debates in Parliament about the Netherlands joining international organizations such as NATO, the ECSC, the European Defence Community (EDC), Euratom and the EEC. He delegated the task at such occasions to experts within the parliamentary party. He also let these experts speak at party rallies whenever questions of foreign policy came up. Romme took absolutely no interest in Christian Democratic co-operation on an international level. Concerning


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concrete European policy, it was a relief to him that the Foreign Ministry was in the hands of his Catholic Party colleague Joseph Luns. The only activity in which he took part on an international level was the Jean Monnet Committee. This commitment to European union was motivated by a sense of obligation, however, as all invited parties sent their leaders. He was seldom present at the committee’s conferences in Paris; his duties in The Hague offered him the desired reasons to decline. Romme did, however, advance the course of direct European elections. The question of direct European elections was already discussed in the 1950s and it was foreseen in a general way in the EEC Treaty. In the Netherlands, however, it was actually only the KVP which supported direct elections. Romme was initially reserved, but because of his membership of the Monnet Committee he changed his stance. It was suddenly over with just paying lip-service to an ideal to be realized in the distant future. Romme not only desired European elections now, but he held them to be a real possibility in the foreseeable future. At his prompting, the leading candidates of the big parties emphasized the importance of direct European elections in their election campaigns in 1959. They also quite clearly spoke out in favour of the European elections in the journal Nieuw Europa. Romme also saw to it in the formation of a government that the new Cabinet committed itself to appropriate support of direct European elections. This was actually against the will of Luns. At a conference of the Dutch section of the European Movement in the autumn of 1959, he went furthest with his declaration that European elections should already take place in 1962, or 1963 at the latest. When Romme left politics at the beginning of 1961, however, his commitment to ‘Europe’ vanished overnight. He did not give in to the mild pressure to remain active in the Monnet Committee, for example. The KVP, which might have nominated the next NEI president, did not even bother to sound him out, as everyone knew that he would not be seriously interested. Romme thus felt no need to work at the European level where he had never in any case really felt at home.29 CONCLUSION Romme was only one example of the Dutch Catholics’ attitude to questions of European and foreign policy. In a systematic analysis of the stance of various party leaders regarding Europe, the widespread aversion to concerning themselves with questions of foreign policy is even more evident. Only in 1960, when a new generation of younger politicians had taken over the leading posts in the parties, did international orientation quickly grow and the dominance of national interests disappear. These younger politicians had been formed by the demands of the post-war period. Because of progressive Europeanization and internationalization of political life it was, for the new generation, a matter of course that the Dutch Christian democratic parties stand up for supranational co-operation and worldwide solidarity. Romme’s successor, Norbert Schmelzer, who took up office in 1963, embodied this transformation.30 Looked at in this way, the 1960s can be seen as a decisive turning-point not only in the history of the interparty relations between the KVP, ARP and CHU, but also with respect to their European and international policies. Even after the decline in voters in the second half of the 1960s, Christian democratic ideas—as represented by one party, the CDA, from 1980—


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remained influential for Dutch politics. The CDA’s position in the 1990s was considerably weakened, however. Its role as an opposition party between 1994 and 2002 is the most obvious expression of this. In a secularized society, it did not have the guaranteed social and voter basis that had existed in the Netherlands in the first decades after the war. This development had its roots less in conditions typical of the Netherlands, however, than in more general historical trends in the evolution of West European society. NOTES 1 Doeko Bosscher, Die Rekonstruktion des Parteiensystems in den Niederlanden zwischen 1945 und 1952, in Horst Lademacher and Jac Bosmans (eds), Tradition und Neugestaltung. Zu Fragen des Wiederaufbaus in Deutschland und den Niederlanden in der frühen Nachkriegszeit (Münster 1991), pp. 89–105. 2 Doeko Bosscher, Om de erfenis van Colijn. De ARP op de grens van twee werelden 1939–1952 (Alphen aan den Rijn 1980); H.van Spanning, De CHU 1908–1980 (Amsterdam 1988). 3 J.A.Bornewasser, Katholieke Volkspartij 1945–1980, vol. 1: Herkomst en groei (tot 1963) (Nijmegen 1995). 4 M.G.Spiertz, ‘De Nederlandse bisschoppen in beraad (1951–1953). Uit de voorgeschiedenis van het Bisschoppelijk Mandement van 1954’, and ‘De aartsbisschop-coadjutor B.J.Alfrink voor een dilemma. Het moeizaam ontstaan van het Mandement van 1954’, Trajecta vol. 4 (1995), pp. 316–41 and 5 (1996), pp. 243– 74; Bornewasser, Katholieke Volkspartij 1945–1980, vol. 1, pp. 340–51. 5 Peter Jan Knegtmans, ‘De jaren 1919–1946’, and Doeko Bosscher, ‘De jaren 1946– 1970’, in J.Perry et al. (eds), Honderd jaar sociaal-democratie in Nederlands 1894– 1994 (Amsterdam 1994), pp. 62–117 and pp. 154–237. 6 Ruud A.Koole, ‘The Societal Position of Christian Democracy in the Netherlands’, in Emiel Lamberts (ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945–1995) (Leuven 1997), pp. 137–53. 7 Jac Bosmans ‘“Beide er in en geen van beide er uit.” De rooms-rode samenwer-king 1945–1952’, in P.W.Klein and G.N.van der Plaat (eds), Herrijzend Nederland. Opstellen over Nederland in de periode 1945–1950 (‘s-Gravenhage 1981), pp. 29– 54, here pp. 52–4. 8 A.F.Manning, ‘Uit de voorgeschiedenis van het Mandement van 1954’, Jaarboek Katholiek Documentatie Centrum (1971), pp. 138–48, here p. 142. 9 Jac Bosmans, ‘Het eenheidsgesprek tussen KVP, KWG en KNP 1952–1956’, Jaarboek Katholiek Documentatie Centrum (1982), pp. 46–99, here p. 97; idem, ‘Kanttekeningen bij de politieke en parlementaire ontwikkelingen van Nederland’, in H.W.von der Dunk et al. (eds), Wederopbouw, Welvaart en Onrust. Nederland in de jaren υijftig en zestig (Houten 1986), pp. 37–61, here P. 54. 10 Dik Verkuil, Een positieve grondhouding. De geschiedenis van het CDA (‘sGravenhage 1992); H.-M.T.D.ten Napel ‘Een eigen weg’. De totstandkoming van het CDA (1952–1980) (Kampen 1992); R.S.Zwart, ‘Gods wil in Nederland’.


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Christelijke ideologieën en de vorming van het CDA (1880–1980) (Kampen 1996). 11 Jac Bosmans, Staatkundige vormgeving in Nederland, vol. 2: De tijd na 1940 (Assen 1999), pp. 130–65. 12 Jac Bosmans, Romme. Biografie 1896–1946 (Utrecht 1991), pp. 125–210 and pp. 259–354. 13 Jac Bosmans, ‘De KVP, de groep-Steenberghe en de verkiezingen van 1952’, Jaarboek Katholiek Documentatie Centrum (1976), pp. 20–76, here p. 34. 14 J.M.Roebroek, The Imprisoned State. The Paradoxical Relationship between State and Society (Tilburg 1993); Joop M.Roebroek and Mirjam Hertogh, ‘De beschavende invloed des tijds’. Twee eeuwen sociale politiek, verzorgingsstaat en sociale zekerheid in Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage 1998); Mirjam Hertogh ‘Geene wet, maar de Heer’. De confessionele ordening van het Nederlandse socialezekerheidsstelsel (1970–1975) (‘s-Gravenhage 1998). For short analyses see Jac Bosmans, ‘Die schmalen Margen der Demokratie. Die fordernde Gesellschaft und der gefesselte Staat der Niederlande’, in Mathias Schmitz (ed.), Politikversagen? Parteienverschleiss? Bürgerverdruss? Stress in den Demokratien Europas (Regensburg 1996), pp. 119–29; Kees van Kersbergen, ‘Christian Democracy in the Netherlands and Its Influence on the Economic and Social Policy’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy in the European Union, pp. 313–27; P.de Rooy, ‘Great Men and a Single Woman. Politics and Social Security in the Netherlands’, in Ad Knotter et al. (eds), Labour, Social Policy and the Welfare State (Amsterdam 1997), pp. 143–54. 15 Joep van der Linden, ‘De bedrijfsorganisatie, een discussie over de verhouding van staat en maatschappij’, in H.J.G.Verhallen et al. (eds), Corporatisme in Nederland. Belangengroepen en democratie (Alphen aan den Rijn and Brussels 1980), pp. 229– 78. 16 Jac Bosmans, ‘Das Ringen um Europa. Die Christdemokraten der Niederlande und Deutschlands in den “Nouvelles Equipes Internationals” (1947–1965)’, in idem (ed.), Europagedanke, Europabewegung und Europapolitik in den Niederlanden und Deutschland seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Münster 1996), pp. 123–48, here pp. 146–7. 17 Walter Lipgens and Wilfried Loth (eds), Documents on the History of European Integration, vol. 4: Transnational Organizations of Political Parties and Pressure Groups in the Struggle for European Union. 1945–1950 (Berlin and New York 1991), pp. 588, 592–7, 611; Robert J.Shepherd, Public Opinion and European Integration (Westmead 1975), pp. 101, 109, 173. 18 A.F.Manning, ‘Die Niederlande und Europa von 1945 bis zum Beginn der fünfziger Jahre’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte vol. 29 (1981), pp. 1–20, here pp. 7–13. 19 A.F.Manning, ‘Les Pays-Bas face à l’Europe’, in Raymond Poidevin (ed.), Histoire des débuts de la construction européenne, mars 1948-mai 1950 (Brussels and Paris 1986), pp. 419–44, here pp. 421, 426–7, 442. 20 Alan S.Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe (London 1984), pp. 491– 502. 21 Bornewasser, Katholieke Volkspartij 1945–1980, vol. 1, pp. 282–92. 22 Rutger S.Zwart, ‘Christian Democracy and Political Order in the Netherlands’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy in the European Union, pp. 242–53, here p. 252.


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23 Bosmans, ‘Das Ringen um Europa’, p. 147. 24 Handelingen Tweede Kamer 1946, Verslag, 9 July 1946, p. 64. 25 Jac Bosmans, ‘Europa-Gedanken in den Niederlanden’, Ex Tempore. Historisch Tijdschrift KU Nijmegen 11 (1992), pp. 111–18, here pp. 115–16. 26 De Volkskrant, 3 June 1949. 27 Katholiek Documentatiecentrum Nijmegen, Archief KVP 558, Protocols of the Party Council, 18 February 1950, pp. 241–5. 28 Jac Bosmans, ‘Eine deutsche Frage für Carl Romme? Die Deutschlandgedanken des politischen Führers der katholischen Niederlande (1946–1961)’, in Walter Mühlhausen et al. (eds), Grenzgänger. Persönlichkeiten des deutschniederländiscben Verhältnisses (Münster, New York, Munich and Berlin 1998) pp. 231–47, here pp. 235–41. 29 Jac Bosmans, ‘“Ik kan dat moeilijk opbrengen”. De bronnen van de Rommebiograaf’, Biografie Bulletin vol. 4 (1994), pp. 17–26, here pp. 20–2. 30 Bornewasser, Katholieke Volkspartij 1945–1980, vol. 1, p. 587.

5 The Zenith of Christian Democracy: The Christelijke Volkspartij/Parti Social Chrétien in Belgium Emiel Lamberts

Christian democracy in Belgium, unlike in most other European countries, has a long, uninterrupted history.1 The new Christelijke Volkspartij/Parti Social Chrétien (CVP/PSC), established immediately after the Second World War, was in fact the continuation of the inter-war Catholic Party. This party had already taken form in the 1850s and had been the first religious party in Europe to build up a strong position of power for itself. It monopolized power during the period from 1884 to 1914, and in interwar Belgium it participated in all coalition governments, usually as the dominant partner. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CATHOLIC PARTY INTO THE CVP/PSC The Second World War was not really a turning-point in the history of the Catholic Party. Immediately after the war a reform of the party was carried out that had already been initiated in 1936.2 After the liberation, the Elements of a Programme for National Renewal of 7 December 1944 were worked out in Catholic circles. The cornerstones of this programme were: a sense of national community, the dignity of the human person, respect for the family and for legal authority, and a re-evaluation of the value of human labour. In May 1945, the party adopted its new name and made public a provisional programme and a manifesto. The victory of the Anglo-Saxon democracies strengthened the democratic approach in the party. In the provisional programme, more attention than in the Elements of a Programme was given to social questions, such as employment policy and health care. There was a plea for a statutory industrial organization and for a collective bargaining economy. Calls for the executive branch of government to be strengthened almost disappeared. In the following months, a number of study groups, in which Pierre Wigny and Robert Houben played an important role, developed the party’s programme further. The party’s grass roots were likewise consulted. All of this resulted in the so-called Christmas Programme of December 1945, which would remain the determining line of conduct for Christian democracy in Belgium for many years to come. The democratic and social character of this programme was strengthened by the circumstances of the times. The Christian Workers’ Movement (ACW/MOC) exerted a great influence on the socio-economic section of the programme.3 The Christmas Programme referred to a great degree to personalism. Emphasis was


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laid on the development of the person within a social framework. The person should have the freedom to develop according to his or her own insights (ideological pluralism), but this could never take place except in a social context. The person was part of a number of social relationships, natural or intermediate communities (sociological pluralism). These natural communities, in which the person could fully develop, must be allowed the necessary opportunities and should be supported and valued by the state (the principle of subsidiarity). The Christian Democrats gave attention most of all to the family and to professional organizations. They saw the family as the cornerstone of society and as a foundation of the social order. The professional organizations had to develop freely and, through mutual consultation with the government, support socio-economic development (the collective bargaining economy). The state was to play only a supplementary role, but it was expected to strive for the common good and to this end it had to create a favourable economic climate and to apply an active social policy. As far as political institutions were concerned, the party advocated parliamentary democracy and the reestablishment of a balance between the legislative and the executive branches. In response to the ethnic-cultural tensions in the country, the French-speaking and Dutchspeaking cultural communities were recognized as arising from natural social relationships, but federalism was rejected out of fear that it would lead in the end to separatism. Moreover, the Christian Democrats, following an already long tradition, declared themselves to be proponents of giving greater autonomy to the provinces and municipalities. They also argued for more international co-operation.4 The CVP/PSC no longer presented itself as a religious, confessional party. It no longer wished to give priority to the interests of the Catholic hierarchy. It opened its ranks to those of other opinions, provided they endorsed Christian values, which they saw as the foundation of Western civilization. Nevertheless, as will be shown below, a strong connection between the new party and the Catholic Church would remain. An element of organizational renewal was that the CVP/PSC came out publicly as a party of individual members. Much more than had been the case in 1936–37, the social class organizations (standen) were no longer directly involved in the decision-making process. The CVP/PSC thus technically became a ‘unitary’ party no longer divided according to class. It also became a ‘unitary’ party at the national level, which in a sense amounted to a step backwards compared with the pre-war situation when the Catholic Party was split into the Katholieke Vlaamse Volkspartij and the French-speaking Parti Catholique Social. Certainly, Flemish and Walloon wings were set up within the party but were given little authority. The party had three administrative levels: local, district and national. For the first time, a strong national leadership was created, with its own research centre and secretariat. The party chairman would gradually strengthen his influence with respect to the party’s collective administrative bodies: the Congress, National Committee and Party Council.5 As a party based on membership, the CVP/PSC set itself the target of recruiting 30 per cent of its potential voters, but in fact this percentage remained between 10 per cent and 15 per cent. Members were given a say in the composition of the local party executive and were also involved in principle in the composition of the district lists of candidates through a poll of members. In fact, this system functioned in a satisfactory manner only in the 1950s and membership polling collapsed very quickly after 1965. Input from the

The zenith of christian democracy

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party’s base was severely curtailed and from then on the district executive drew up the candidates’ list almost autonomously.6 EVOLUTION WITHIN THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE The more efficient party organization and the adjustment of the programme contributed to the electoral success of the CVP/PSC in the first elections after the Second World War. The party succeeded in renewing its political personnel, especially at the district and local levels, and in attracting new voters. An additional explanation for its success in this period was the disappearance of right-wing formations such as the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond and Rexism, two movements that had collaborated with the National Socialists during the war.7 Those who had previously voted for these two formations saw in Christian democracy the only alternative to the reinforced Left. The Cold War climate from 1947 onwards further strengthened this phenomenon.8 In the 1936 elections, the Catholic Party achieved barely 28.8 per cent of the vote. In 1946 it obtained 42.53 per cent, a figure it maintained with relatively little fluctuation until the 1961 elections. The introduction of women’s suffrage in 1948, realized under pressure from the CVP/PSC, turned out to strengthen the party’s electoral position less than expected. It should be pointed out that the position of the Christian Democrats, as had previously also been the case, was much stronger in Flanders than in Wallonia.9 From the 1960s, the CVP/PSC was confronted with emerging regional parties, both in Flanders and Wallonia, and with a renewed Liberal Party. Its share of the vote then fell back to between 30 and 35 per cent. In the post-war years, strong ideological contrasts emerged that had both an ethniccultural and a religious-philosophical dimension. As had already been the case at the end of the nineteenth century, a Flemish Catholic camp opposed a Walloon anti-clerical bloc. This polarization was expressed in the repression policy, the controversy around King Leopold III, and the school issue. Immediately after the war, work started on a repression policy against collaborators, who were to be found mostly in Flemish nationalist and francophone Rexist circles. In Flanders, there was a growing feeling that the repression was unjustifiably directed mostly against pro-Flemish Catholics and that left-wing parties, especially the Socialists and Communists, used it to grab power.10 A consequence of the repression policy was a short-lived rapprochement between the Christian Democrats and the Flemish nationalists. Although a great many Catholic Flemings had played significant roles in various resistance movements during the war, a rather negative attitude developed after 1945 towards the political inheritance from the wartime resistance. Unlike in France and Italy, Belgian and especially Flemish Christian democracy owed little to the resistance ideology. Catholic Flanders also had to cope with a second blow in the form of the settlement of the so-called King’s Question. Initially, none of the political parties was unanimous as to whether King Leopold III, who had been very accommodating towards the German occupier, could again take possession of the Belgian throne. The left-wing parties of the government made the return of the king contingent on a parliamentary decision, which hindered a quick resolution of the issue. The CVP/PSC supported the king. It sponsored a non-binding plebiscite held in early 1950: almost 58 per cent of the population opted for


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the return of the king, a good 42 per cent wanted his abdication. Yet the votes were spread unevenly over the country: in Flanders the ‘yes’ votes amounted to 72 per cent, in Brussels 48 per cent, and in Wallonia only 42 per cent. In the ensuing elections the CVP/PSC won an absolute majority. A Christian Democratic government was formed and a motion adopted in Parliament whereby the impossibility of Leopold III’s reigning was deemed to have passed. The king returned to Brussels in a tense atmosphere on 22 July 1950. In response, the Socialists and Communists organized political strikes and riots, which assumed great dimensions in Wallonia. The government gave way to the revolutionary threat and compelled Leopold III to hand over his royal prerogatives to his son, Baudouin I, in August 1950. By this time, however, the dispute about the monarchy had poisoned relations between the CVP/PSC and the other parties. It had also sharpened the conflicts between the Flemish and the Walloons.11 The CVP/PSC had been severely wounded because it had been forced to give way to street violence. It tried thereafter to realize other elements of its programme against the opposition from the left, particularly in relation to the so-called school issue. With the democratization of secondary education and to some extent higher education as well, subsidies for private, mostly Catholic, schools became an issue.12 Christian Democrats increased state subsidies for the Catholic secondary schools in order to guarantee freedom of school choice to everyone. This caused much opposition from the anti-clerical factions. The CVP/PSC lost its absolute majority in the 1954 elections. The parties of the left were out for revenge, and they formed a government held together by anticlericalism. The formation of such a government, unthinkable during the inter-war years, demonstrated how much tensions between the middle class and working class had diminished in the meantime. The new Socialist-led left-wing Cabinet pursued an education policy totally different from that of the previous government. Subsidies to the Catholic schools were drastically reduced, and a great number of state schools were set up. Catholics protested en masse against these measures, and the Catholic bishops voiced their opposition. As a consequence, the anti-clerical parties lost the elections of 1958. The CVP/PSC managed again to win an absolute majority in the Senate, but not in the Chamber of Deputies. In these circumstances, left and right proved willing to lay their weapons down. Both camps had tried successively to impose their will on their opponents, but were equally punished by the electorate, which apparently had a strong preference for more consensual politics. The school issue was now permanently settled. Freedom of school choice became the central principle of a so-called School Pact of 1958. It was guaranteed by a sufficient number of both public and private schools, and free secondary education for everyone. A similar arrangement was later worked out for higher education.13 The arrangements thus made for education led to an ideological truce, thereby allowing more attention to be given to socio-economic problems in the 1960s. The ACW/MOC felt that the social aspects of the Christmas Programme had been neglected because of the religious and ideological polarization of the early post-war period. This feeling led to a rapprochement between the Christian and Socialist Workers’ Movements. Between 1961 and 1981 a number of Catholic-Socialist coalition governments were formed. They increased state intervention in the economy and consolidated the welfare state. Several attempts to overcome the traditional party divisions and to achieve more structured co-


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operation between all democratic forces failed, however. In the meantime, the CVP/PSC acquired a more centre-left profile.14 Another consequence of the ideological pacification was that the Liberal Party distanced itself from anticlericalism. It transformed itself into the Partij voor Vrijheid en Vooruitgang (PVV/PRL) and basically assumed a rightist profile in the socio-economic sphere. From then on, it gnawed constantly at the CVP/PSC’s right wing. While it obtained hardly 12 per cent of the votes throughout the post-war period, its share climbed to 21.6 per cent in 1965. At the same time, the CVP/PSC was confronted with the rise of regional parties, both in Flanders and Wallonia, which further weakened its electoral position. Socio-economic themes thus became more important during the 1960s, but nevertheless it was the ethnic-cultural, Flemish-Walloon conflicts that from then on dominated the political agenda. Interestingly enough, socio-economic themes and ethnic conflicts became closely interwoven. The language problem had already acquired a broader political dimension in the late 1930s, but now it was extended to socio-economic life, due to Walloon concerns about their economy. From then on, the ‘language question’ was replaced by the ‘community question’. Two different communities, with strongly diverging interests, came increasingly into opposition with each other. During the 1950s, the Flemish Movement made a slow recovery, still burdened by the collaboration of its radical wing during the war. Both the government’s repression policy and Leopold III’s forced abdication generated resentment among many Flemings whose militancy on the school issue was also a manifestation of their disaffection. Already in the early 1950s, the Flemish Christian Democrats advocated a strengthening of language homogeneity and a regional economic policy to end Flanders’s lag in economic development. However, they could not prevent the creation in 1954 of a new Flemish Nationalist Party, the Volksunie, which wanted to turn Belgium into a federal state. While Flemish self-consciousness slowly grew again, the Walloon movement underwent a sudden radicalization. Towards the end of the 1950s, the decline of heavy industry in Wallonia entered a decisive phase. The once so proud coal mining industry, for a long time the backbone of economic life in the southern part of the country, caved in. The Walloon steel industry soon faced the same decline. The pent-up rage exploded during the campaign against the so-called Unity Law of 1961, which primarily sought to stimulate economic growth but also raised indirect taxes and trimmed social spending. Strikes in Wallonia soon took on a pre-revolutionary character. The Liège trade unionist André Renard gave the struggle a radical pro-Wallingant orientation. The battle against the Unity Law was lost, but in the meantime it had polarized the ‘communities’. In March 1961, Renard established the Walloon Popular Movement, or Mouvement Populaire Wallon, which strove for federal and socialist structural reforms. In a later phase, other small Walloon parties were formed, and in 1968 they merged to form the Rassemblement Wallon (RW), which would play an important political role for the next decade. The PSC, which represented a minority in Wallonia, opposed the regional tendencies as much as possible. The CVP for its part felt itself less threatened since it held a dominant position in Flanders. Moreover, for decades it maintained strong links with the Flemish Movement and showed itself sensitive to its aspirations. In the 1960s, the political initiative still lay with the Flemish Movement, which was stimulated by the electoral successes of the Volksunie. The Flemings succeeded in


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establishing the language frontier between Flanders and Wallonia and demarcating Brussels, which was still surrounded by Dutch-speaking areas. Thereafter, the transfer of the French-speaking section of the University of Leuven to Wallonia in 1968 safeguarded the language homogeneity of Flemish Brabant, which remained vulnerable to francophone influences. The ‘Leuven Question’ caused much turmoil throughout the country, and especially in Christian democratic circles, because the splitting up of the Belgian Catholic community’s most prestigious centre of learning was at stake. It led to the division of Christian democracy into two separate parties. According to the PSC, the CVP had allowed Flemish nationalists to lead it by the nose. Soon, the other ‘traditional’ parties, the Liberals and Socialists, divided as well, so that by 1978 no national parties were left. The ‘Leuven Question’ sealed the fate of the Belgian unitary state, setting in motion the process, which led to the regionalization and federalization of the country.15 Christian democracy clearly succeeded in building a strong position of power in postwar Belgium. Against the background of an ideological polarization immediately after the war, it was the only alternative to a reinforced left, in which the Communist Party played an important role for several years. This produced a shift to the right in the political profile of the CVP/PSC and, at the same time, strengthened its electoral position. Yet ideological polarization led to a bipolar political system in Belgian politics between 1944 and 1958. Christian democracy became a prominent political force, but nevertheless the anti-clerical parties were able to force the Christian Democracts into opposition for six years. From the 1960s on, the CVP/PSC lost votes to the emerging regional parties and to the renewed Liberal Party. Parallel with this development, it profiled itself more as a centre-left party. Remarkably enough, its electoral losses did not undermine its position of power; quite the opposite. The CVP/PSC remained the largest party in the country. It assumed a centre position with regard to socio-economic issues, which again took centre stage, and became an inevitable coalition partner in successive governments. After 1958 it was permanently in power up to 1999 and, with one exception during 1973–74, provided the prime minister. Christian democracy, as a centrist formation, seemed to thrive well in a multipolar political system. The CVP/PSC owed its position of power not only to the political climate and the political system after the Second World War—with an electoral system based on proportional representation—but also to its efficient organization, its strong local presence, and above all its firm ties with the Catholic class organizations and the Catholic ‘pillar’. THE CORNERSTONE OF THE CATHOLIC ‘PILLAR’ The composition of the CVP/PSC’s electorate demonstrates that it was and still is a people’s party for all strata and classes of the population. The most important differences shown by Christian Democratic voters compared with others is their involvement with the Catholic Church and active membership of Church organizations.16 This shows that Christian democracy in Belgium did not succeed in profiling itself as a non-religious, secular movement, which had been the intention in the first years after the war. The climate of political renewal quickly came to an end. The flaring up of ideological conflicts strengthened the age-old polarization between Catholics and anti-clericals. The


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controversy around Leopold III and above all the school issue caused the Catholics to close ranks. The religious-philosophical division of society was not eliminated, and ‘pillarization’ remained a specific characteristic of the Belgian political and social system.17 Pillarization, that is, the compartmentalization of society on a philosophical or religious basis, had already begun to develop in the second half of the nineteenth century.18 A Catholic organizational framework gradually developed that moved from the moral, religious, educational and charity sphere to the social and political domain. In the inter-war years, the world of sport and recreation, youth movements and media were all brought within the remit of the Catholic pillar. The Church hierarchy operated as command headquarters within the Catholic camp. In the meantime, a socialist and, although to a lesser extent, a liberal pillar had come into being alongside the Catholic pillar. Pillarization became a permanent fixture after 1945. On the Catholic side, a further centralization of the pillar, especially in the education and health-care sectors, was put into effect as a result of the school issue. The CVP/PSC—as had previously been the case with the Catholic Party—became the political voice of the Catholic pillar, and assured the operations of the pillar organizations through the application of the principle of subsidiarity. Social, educational and cultural tasks were entrusted to pillar organizations, which received state subsidies to carry them out. This system led to a strengthening of the pillar organizations, which themselves acquired a form of control over the state apparatus through the CVP/PSC. The ideological pacification after 1958, which was in part purchased by increased subsidies to private initiatives, further strengthened the Catholic pillar organizations in the educational and health-care sectors and afterwards in the sociocultural area as well. Nevertheless, a tendency towards de-pillarization, influenced by increasing secularization and tolerance in society, characterized the 1960s. In the Catholic Church itself, the Aggiornamento led to a more intense dialogue with the ‘modern world’, and freedom of religion began to be looked upon positively. The linking of politics and religion was questioned. One of the most important reasons for pillarization thus disappeared. De-pillarization occurred chiefly in the political arena: more and more Catholics turned away from Christian democracy and from then on supported other parties: liberal, nationalist, and later also the environmentalist parties. The Church hierarchy for its part increasingly recognized the autonomy of the secular. The bishops, who had still played a political role in the school issue and had taken up positions keenly contested at the time of the Unity Law and the Leuven Question, maintained a low profile thereafter. Pillarization did not, however, disappear in the social and cultural spheres. The pillar organizations succeeded in maintaining themselves in these sectors by their stranglehold on the state apparatus, their services and their social utility. They did, however, take on a different character. The ‘clerical’ influence disappeared from the Catholic organizational framework. The decline in the number of priests led to an increasing professionalism. Even the collective consciousness changed within Catholic organizations: Church dogmatic emphases gave way to values like solidarity and compassion, reflecting an evolution towards a socio-cultural Christianity. Notwithstanding political de-pillarization, the CVP/PSC, instead of the Catholic hierarchy, became to a much greater extent the


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binding force within the Catholic pillar, especially in Flanders. The Christian social and cultural organizations did not give up their privileged relationship with the CVP/PSC, even though increasing numbers of their members no longer voted for Christian Democratic candidates. To a large extent, it was precisely because of the lasting bonds between most Catholic organizations and Christian democracy that the latter could still depend on a faithful electorate for quite some time.19 Moreover, the social or class organizations contributed in large measure to the recruitment of the party’s executives.20 They also asserted themselves from the outset in the composition of the electoral lists and this even more at the local than at the district level. Formally, social class representation was no longer of primary importance in structuring the party, yet it was to continue covertly. While the national chairmen were mostly ‘classless’, the chairmen from the Flemish wing usually belonged to the ACW and those from the Walloon wing to the middle-class bloc. In the National Committee’s Flemish wing, the Christian Workers’ Movement representatives formed the largest, though not the dominant, group from 1945 to 1967.21 This was much more clearly the case with Flemish members of Parliament during the same period.22 On the Walloon side, the influence of the workers’ wing was much less important in the parliamentary party, but it gradually increased there too.23 These data generally confirm the picture of a Christian People’s Party—the CVP—with a more social profile and a Christian Social Party—the PSC—with a more middle-class profile. CONTRIBUTION TO A NEO-CORPORATIST STATE MODEL The social organizations exerted the greatest influence within the Catholic pillar. They had strong informal links with the CVP/PSC. They used these links to influence socioeconomic policies and specifically to shape the collective bargaining economy and the welfare state.24 Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Christian social movements had been influenced to a remarkable extent by corporatism, which was striving for interclass co-operation and social harmony. Corporatist ideas from France were the first to be disseminated in Belgium, but the more conceptual, organic corporatism from Germany and Austria exerted greater influence from the 1880s on. Corporatists opted for mixed occupational associations consisting of both employers and employees and involving structured consultation between the two. Socio-economic organizations had to acquire explicit powers in the socio-economic domain. They also had to play a political role through organized interest representation.25 At the beginning of the twentieth century, corporatist ideas were tempered by the rise of a more democratic, Christian trade unionism. In the 1930s, more authoritarian (state) corporatism became influential, mainly in the middle class, yet the Christian labour movement kept its distance from it. Christian workers still felt attracted to the basic ideas of moderate corporatism. They advocated an industrial organization established under public law that would guarantee social peace and at the same time extend the power of the trade union movement.26 In the Christmas Programme, largely due to the influence of the ACW/MOC, the basic ideas of moderate corporatism were adhered to faithfully: co-operation between capital and labour, the introduction of a public industrial organization and a collective bargaining economy, and


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the delegation of specific powers in the socio-economic arena to professional organizations. Immediately after the Second World War, the foundations were laid for the welfare state. A decree of 28 December 1944 provided a coherent system of social insurance for wage earners. This was repeated later on for other professional categories. The social security system built further on the pre-war system of social insurances according to professional categories and in fact followed the Bismarckian model in Germany. Unlike the Beveridge model, which achieved some kind of ‘national’ solidarity, the system aimed at solidarity within professional categories and as such was in harmony with neocorporatist principles. Even the pension systems were related to professional categories. The most important social insurance schemes were made compulsory, pointing to a statist tendency in the post-war welfare legislation. Still, the subsidiarity principle continued to operate, in large measure through the efforts of the Christian democrats. The trade unions and mutual aid societies remained, to a large degree, responsible for unemployment, illness and disability insurances. They were also involved along with the employers in managing the system.27 In the 1950s the Christian Democrats confronted the Socialists over the issue of health insurance. They opposed socialist statist tendencies. A compromise was finally reached in 1963: the system of independent mutual aid societies continued to exist, but state intervention increased. A system was put into place whereby the government took ultimate financial responsibility while the mutual aid societies continued to pay out the reimbursements. A system of consultation and agreements was put into place between the physicians, the health insurance funds and the government in order to assure the social efficiency of the system.28 The organization of industrial life under public law was another important development. Workers, acting via their unions, were assigned a role in determining their company’s future through joint industrial committees and labour councils. The economic aspects of this industrial organization were co-ordinated by the Central Council for Corporate Life, the Centrale Raad voor het Bedrijfsleven founded in 1948, and the social aspects by the National Labour Council, the Nationale Arbeidsraad founded in 1952. This large and complex system of industrial relations arbitration was modified from time to time, but its core remained unchanged.29 The social market economy came into being as a result of a compromise between the Socialists and the Christian Democrats, but its structure accorded to a large extent with what the Christian Workers’ Movement had been proposing all along. Both Christian and Socialist Workers’ Movements extended their power significantly with the introduction of the collective bargaining economy and the welfare state. They became routinely involved in questions of socio-economic policy. The trade unions and the health insurance funds, in particular, increased their influence. The whole system appeared to be of the greatest benefit to the Christian Workers’ Movement, which became stronger than its Socialist counterpart from the 1960s on.30 The Workers’ Movements were not alone in benefiting, though. The (Lower) Middle-Class Movement (NCMV), the Farmers’ Union (Boerenbond), and the Employers’ Federation (Verbond van Belgische Ondernemingen) became increasingly integrated into the consultative machinery and involved in policymaking. In this way, a neo-corporatist state structure came into being. Social consultation was organized systematically on every level. Consultation and consensus were seen as


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essential conditions for the coexistence of freedom and organized solidarity. The interest groups were also represented on scores of public advisory and management boards. Their de facto decision-making power was very great, especially in areas concerning workrelated social policy. They also exerted great influence on Parliament and the government through their representation in the political parties.31 INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Stemming from their conviction that society was composed of many natural communities, the Christian Democrats attached great importance not only to social (class) organizations but also to local institutions and cultural communities. This influenced, as described earlier, their ‘community’ policy, which was especially the case for the CVP.32 In addition, the Christian Democrats attached great importance to international cooperation.33 In the Christmas Programme, they argued strongly for a supranational authority. They counted on the United Nations (UN) to bring about a lasting peace. But the UN, with the introduction of the right of veto in the Security Council, became inefficient as an organ for peace after the outbreak of the Cold War. This is why Western Europe fell back on an alternative allowed by the UN Charter, namely the formation of regional agreements to guarantee collective security. The Belgian Christian Democrats strongly supported the Brussels Pact of March 1948 and afterwards the establishment of NATO in April 1949. The defence of the ‘Christian West’ became an absolute priority for the CVP/PSC during this period, and it seemed self-evident that it should be organized in an Atlantic context under the patronage of the United States. It is remarkable that the CVP/PSC opted very quickly for the reconstruction of vanquished Germany and its admission into the Western community, provided that the remnants of Nazism and militarism were eliminated. When the partition of Germany became a reality, the CVP/PSC accepted the prospect of the Federal Republic’s rearmament without too many problems, but it preferred that such a far-reaching measure would be preceded by the conclusion of a peace treaty. Initially, there was little interest among the Belgian Christian Democrats in the European movements, which held their first international congress in The Hague in May 1948. The objectives of these movements seemed to be too vague and too Utopian. According to the Belgian Christian Democrats it was not clear how European unification could fit in with the Atlantic defence, which they wanted to prioritize. Western European integration outside the Atlantic Alliance was unthinkable. Only when the Cold War intensified with the Korean crisis in 1950, and concrete and achievable forms of cooperation were developed that posed no threat to the Atlantic Alliance, did the CVP/PSC opt fully for West European integration. A ‘European’ propaganda offensive was launched in 1953 in party publications for its members. The Belgian Christian Democrats declared themselves firmly in favour of plans for a European Defence Community and a European Political Community, and later much regretted their rejection.34 From the early 1950s, the official party line always endorsed European unification. At every party congress, a ‘European’ resolution was voted for with hardly any debate. Nevertheless, there were minor differences of opinion between leading personalities in


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the party. Most were convinced supporters of European federalism. Others, very often French-speaking politicians, exhibited a more nationalistic reflex and were not insensitive to the Gaullist positions in the 1960s. This was enough to increase the European ardour of Flemish Christian Democrats. Generally speaking, a pro-European bloc, which favoured strengthening the European Communities through supranationality and extending them through the admission of Great Britain, inspired the official party line. Remarkable, too, is that the party was generally very concerned with the social aspects of European integration. Belgian politicians also played a leading role in the European Christian Democrat network. Thus Jules Soyeur was the first secretary-general (1947–49) and August de Schryver (1949–59) and Théo Lefèvre (1960–65) presidents of the Nouvelles Équipes Internationales, founded in 1947.35 Robert Houben, for his part, exercised an unmistakable doctrinal influence in this organization. It is striking that Belgian representatives in the transnational European party network were always apprehensive of too much conservative influence and too explicit co-operation with the Right, opposing, for example, the possible membership of the British Conservatives in the NEI and its successor organization from 1965, the European Union of Christian Democrats. They wanted Christian democracy to profile itself as a centrist movement. They adopted the same position within the Christian Democratic World Union, founded in 1961.36 GOVERNING DESPITE ELECTORAL DECLINE The renewal of the Catholic Party after the Second World War was a success in several respects. The CVP/PSC became a modern people’s party with an efficient, central structure and channelled grass-roots participation. It developed a well-worked-out programme with a socially progressive, democratic cast influenced by the circumstances of the time, which guided the party for many years to come. The party no longer had an over-whelmingly middle-class profile. The influence of the Christian social movements and especially the Christian Workers’ Movement had clearly increased, particularly within the CVP. Although the new party had become a party based on individual membership, the influence of the class organizations was still apparent. To a large extent, they provided the party with functionaries, deputies and voters and exerted great influence on the composition of the lists of candidates. They formed the central component of the Catholic pillar, whose cornerstone was the CVP/PSC. The Catholic pillar and Christian democracy remained very much intertwined. Against its original intentions, the CVP/PSC succeeded only very partially in promoting itself as a ‘secular’ movement. Immediately after the war, the party made electoral gains thanks to the religiousphilosophical polarization and the Cold War. Nevertheless, it was subdued in this bipolar political system by the reinforced left and—for the first time since 1884—went into opposition for several years from 1945 to 1947 and from 1954 to 1958. Afterwards— thanks to the restoration of multi-polarity in political life—it remained constantly in power until 1999 as part of the successive coalition governments that mostly consisted of Catholics and Socialists. Nevertheless, from the 1960s onwards, it lost ever more voters to right-wing formations—the regional and liberal parties. Moreover, the CVP/PSC split


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up in the wake of the Leuven Question in 1968. The other political parties, however, went down the same road, and, since 1978, there have been only regional parties in Belgium. The sister parties in Flanders and Wallonia continued to co-operate at the national level, which meant in effect that the CVP and PSC remained inseparable partners for the purposes of government. However, the differences already apparent between both parties were accentuated further. The CVP confirmed its more socially progressive profile and continued to function as the cornerstone of the Catholic pillar. The PSC strengthened its middle-class character and lost the exclusive support of the Christian Workers’ Movement in Wallonia, so that its role in the Catholic pillar became problematic. The CVP took on a strong Flemish profile, while the PSC retained its more Belgian reflex. All in all, Christian democracy exercised an unmistakable influence on Belgian politics after the Second World War. It was a buttress for the Atlantic and European orientation of Belgian foreign policy. The Flemish Christian Democrats, in particular, were strong advocates of a federal and social Europe. The ideological pacification led to a strengthening of the Catholic pillar, which, despite the tendencies of de-pillarization from 1960 onwards, was maintained in the social and cultural fields. The societal centre ground acquired a dominant role in the Belgian political and social model. Even in the socio-economic sector—the consultative economy and the welfare state—the intermediate organizations fulfilled an important function in a neo-corporatist system. Political de-pillarization gathered momentum in the last decades of the twentieth century. The rise of environmentalist parties in Wallonia and Flanders in the 1980s and later—in the 1990s—of the radical right-wing Vlaams Blok ensured the further electoral decline of the CVP/PSC, to between 20 and 25 per cent. However, the most formidable opponents of Christian democracy were the liberal parties, who took advantage of progressing secularization and strengthened individualism. They pleaded for a ‘new political culture’ that would allow more freedom for individual citizens and put an end to the dominant influence of the intermediate organizations in public life. They succeeded in gradually improving their electoral position to 23 per cent in 1999 and in presenting themselves as true ‘people’s parties’ that wanted to take over the political centre from the Christian Democrats. At the end of the century the socio-cultural dividing line became more important in public life again. This gave the liberals the chance to form a liberalsocialist-green coalition in 1999, resulting in the exclusion of the Christian Democrats from government for the first time since 1958.37 The future of Christian democracy in Belgium will largely depend on its ability to stand its ground against liberalism. In most other European countries liberalism has become a minority movement and is outclassed by conservative or (to a lesser extent) Christian democratic parties.38 In Belgium, as in a number of other, smaller countries, liberalism has profited from a reaction against the social model of pillarization combined with neo-corporatism developed in earlier decades by the Christian Democrats that no longer seems suited to the economic and political situation. Christian democracy and liberalism now openly confront one another and a rapprochement is not likely, for both electoral and ideological reasons. Indeed, the two groups, which are almost evenly matched, carry on a dogged struggle for the political centre. In socio-economic issues, liberalism has a centre-right orientation, while the Christian democrats follow a more centre-left course. This last factor also excludes a Christian democratic coalition with a


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radical right-wing movement such as the Vlaams Blok and rules out the ‘Austrian option’ on the lines of the Christian Democratic coalition with Haider’s Freedom Party, formed in Vienna in 1999 and renewed in 2003 after substantial Christian Democratic electoral gains. Because of its historical background and its ideological profile, Christian democracy in Belgium is destined to remain in the political centre. In this highly contested territory it will be successful only if it manages to highlight its own distinctive character and adapt the guiding idea of social personalism to new circumstances. NOTES 1 For the most recent contributions on the history of Christian democracy in Belgium after 1945 see Wilfried Dewachter et al. (eds), Un parti dans l’histoire (1945–1995). 50 ans d’action du Parti Social Chrétien (Brussels 1996); Emiel Lamberts (ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945–1995) (Leuven 1997); Martin Conway, ‘Belgium’, in Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway (eds), Political Catholicism in Europe, 1918–1965 (Oxford 1996), pp. 187–218; Lieven de Winter, ‘Christian Democratic Parties in Belgium’, in Mario Caciagli et al. (eds), Christian Democracy in Europe (Barcelona 1992), pp. 29–54; Paul Lucardie and Hans Martien Ten Napel, ‘Between Confessionalism and Liberal Conservatism: the Christian Democratic Parties of Belgium and the Netherlands’, in Dean Hanley (ed.), Christian Democracy in Europe. A Comparative Perspective (London 1994), pp. 51–70. 2 See also Emmanuel Gerard, ‘Religion, Class and Language: The Catholic Party in Belgium’, in Wolfram Kaiser and Helmut Wohnout (eds), Political Catholicism in Europe 1918–1945 (London 2004), pp. 94–115. 3 Mark Van den Wijngaert and Brigitte Henau, ‘De “catholique” à “chrétien et populaire” (1936–1951)’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 33–51. 4 Jean-Louis Jadoulle, ‘L’évolution du programme du PSC/CVP (Noël 1945–1968)’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 343–64. 5 Wilfried Dewachter, ‘Organisation et fonctionnement du PSC-CVP. Un projet fort saisi entre positions de pouvoir établies et tendances nouvelles’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 161–86, here pp. 162–5. 6 Dewachter, ‘Organisation’, pp. 165–70. 7 Bruno de Wever, Greep naar de macht. Vlaams-Nationalisme en Nieuwe Orde: Het VNV, 1933/1945 (Antwerp 1993); Martin Conway, Collaboration in Belgium. Léon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, 1940–1944 (New Haven, CT and London 1993). 8 Emmanuel Gerard, ‘Christian Democracy in Belgium’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy, pp. 65–78, here p. 66. 9 In 1950, the CVP won 64 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the PSC 26. In 1958 the ratio was 58 to 28, in 1965 47 to 17. 10 Luc Huyse et al., La répression des collaborations, 1942–1952: un passé toujours présent (Brussels 1993). 11 Roger Keyes, Échecau Roi. Léopold III (1940–1951) (Paris 1986); V.Dujardin, Belgique 1949–1950: entre Régence et Royauté (Brussels 1995).


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12 Catholic primary education had already been largely subsidized on the basis of the Law of 19 May 1914. 13 Jeffrey Tyssens, Guerre et paix scolaires (1950–1958) (Brussels 1997). 14 Gerard, ‘Christian Democracy in Belgium’, pp. 73–6. 15 Els Witte and Jan Craeybeckx, La Belgique politique de 1830 à nos jours. Les tensions d’une démocratie bourgeoise (Brussels 1987); Jan Velaers, ‘Les forces vives de toute une génération: la réforme de l’Etat de 1970 à 1995’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 492–528. 16 Wilfried Dewachter, ‘L’ancrage de la Démocratie chrétienne en Belgique’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy, pp. 154–73, here pp. 160–3; Jaak Billiet, ‘Les électeurs du PSC et du CVP’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 297–324. 17 On pillarization as a social phenomenon, see Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation. Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley, CA 1975); Harry H.G.Post, Pillarization. An Analysis of Dutch and Belgian Society (Gower 1989); Kenneth D.McRae, Consociational Democracy. Political Accommodation in Segmented Societies (Toronto 1974); Rudolf Steininger, Polarisierung und Integration. Eine vergleichende Untersuchung der strukturellen Versäulung der Gesellschaft in den Niederlanden und Österreich (Meisenheim am Glan 1975); Hans Righart, De katholieke zuil in Europa. Het ontstaan van verzuiling onder katholieken in Oostenrijk, Zwitserland, België en Nederland (Meppel and Amsterdam 1986); Staf Hellemans, Strijd om de moderniteit. Sociale bewegingen en verzuiling in Europa sinds 1800 (Leuven 1990). 18 On the historical development of pillarization in Belgium see Emiel Lamberts, ‘Les sociétés pilarisées: l’exemple belge’, in Gérard Cholvy (ed.), L’Europe. Ses dimensions religieuses (Montpellier 1998), pp. 219–34; Pilarisation en Belgique, Revue belge d’histoire contemporaine (special issue) 13 (1982); Jaak Billiet (ed.), Tussen bescherming en verovering. Sociologen en historici over zuilvorming (Leuven 1988). 19 Patrick Pasture, ‘Entre Église et citoyen: le PSC-CVP et sa base organisée’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 265–96. 20 Dewachter, ‘Organisation et fonctionnement’, pp. 174–9; Dewachter, ‘L’ancrage’, pp. 165–7. 21 A third of the Flemish wing of the National Committee had ties to the ACW in the period 1945–1967, a third had no class ties, and the remaining third consisted of representatives of the middle-class organizations and the Boerenbond. 22 Of the Flemish CVP members of Parliament in the 1945–67 period, 35.1 per cent had ties with the ACW, 20.6 per cent with the Boerenbond, 17.6 per cent with the middle-class organization, 22.5 per cent had no ‘class’ ties. Over the years, the number of ‘classless’ declined while middle-class representation increased. 23 In the 1945–50 period, the workers’ representation in the PSC was only 11 per cent. It increased to 29 per cent in 1965. 24 Michel Dumoulin, ‘L’influence des démocrates-chrétiens dans l’ordre socioéconomique en Belgique’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy, pp. 328–35. 25 Emiel Lamberts, ‘De ontwikkeling van de sociaal-katholieke ideologie in België’, in Emiel Lamberts (ed.), Une époque en mutation. Le catholicisme social dans le


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Nord-Ouest de l’Europe (1890–1910) (Leuven 1992), pp. 49–63. 26 Dirk Luyten, Ideologisch debat en politieke strijd over het corporatisme tijdens het interbellum in België (Brussels 1996). 27 Patrick Pasture, ‘The April 1944 “Social Pact” in Belgium and Its Significance for the Post-War Welfare State’, Journal of Contemporary History 28 (1993), pp. 695– 714; Emmanuel Gerard, ‘De Christelijke Volkspartij en het Sociaal Pact na de Bevrijding (1944–1948)’, in Dirk Luyten and Guy Vanthemsche (eds), Het Sociaal Pact van 1944 (Brussels 1995), pp. 325–44; Guy Vanthemsche, De beginjaren van de sociale zekerheid (1945–1963) (Brussels 1994). 28 Herman Deleeck, ‘La politique sociale’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 441–70. 29 Dirk Luyten, Sociaal-economisch overleg in België sedert 1918 (Brussels 1995); Victor Van Rompuy, ‘L’empreinte sociale-chrétienne sur la politique économique en Belgique de 1945 à 1994’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 393–422, here pp. 415–19. 30 Patrick Pasture, Kerk, politiek en sociale actie. De unieke positie van de christelijke arbeidersbeweging in België (1944–1973) (Leuven 1992); idem, ‘La classe ouvrière, le mouvement ouvrier et la construction des Etats-providence dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest’, in François Guedj and Stephanie Sirot (eds), Histoire sociale de l’Europe (Paris 1997), pp. 213–28, here pp. 224–5. 31 August van den Brande, ‘Neo-corporatism and functional-integral power in Belgium’, in Ilja Scholte (ed.), Political Stability and Neo-corporatism. Corporatist Integration and Societal Cleavages in Western Europe (London 1987), pp. 95–119. 32 For the repercussions on local politics see Emiel Lamberts, ‘L’influence de la Démocratie chrétienne en Belgique sur l’ordre politique’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy, pp. 254–69, here pp. 265–6. 33 Michel Dumoulin, ‘La politique étrangère’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 377–87; Lamberts, ‘L’influence’, pp. 266–8. 34 Maria Carina, De houding van de C.V.P. ten aanzien van de Atlantische Alliantie en de Europese Integratie (1945–1958). Onderzoek van de ledenbladen, unpublished licentiate thesis (Leuven 1998). 35 See also the chapter by Wolfram Kaiser in this book. 36 Philippe Chenaux, ‘Contribution a la démocratie chrétienne internationale’, in Dewachter, Un parti dans l’histoire, pp. 327–39; idem, ‘Les démocrates chrétiens au niveau de l’Union Européenne’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy, pp. 449–58. 37 Gerard, ‘Christian Democracy in Belgium’, pp. 73–8; Emiel Lamberts, ‘Belgium since 1830’, in Hans Blom and idem (eds), History of the Low Countries (New York and Oxford 1999), pp. 313–85, here pp. 374–84. 38 This development is abundantly clear on a supranational level. In 2002, of the 626 members of the European Parliament, only 54 were members of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR). A few liberal parties, such as Démocratie libérale in France, already have structural ties with the European People’s Party, which holds 232 seats.

6 Entry of the Catholics into the Republic: The Mouvement Républicain Populaire in France Bruno Béthouart

Rare are the observers of French political life, in the very heart of France or in neighbouring countries, who would have believed, on the eve of the Second World War, that the Christian Democratic political forces would become, in June 1946, the strongest party in France, with 28.2 per cent of the vote and 168 deputies.1 Used to being content with less than 5 per cent of the vote, parties such as the Parti Démocrate Populaire (PDP) and the Jeune République (JR), which claimed to have their roots in the social doctrine of the Church and were reconciled to the Republic, had not really achieved the breakthrough that their leaders had hoped. Placed in the centre of the French political spectrum, they were rejected by the right as being too bold with their social policies and refused by the left who, with the Radical Party, possessed a centre party in competition with the Christian Democrats. The surprise of the Liberation can be explained certainly by inter-war preparatory work, but the decisive factor was the majority choice of the Christian Democrats for the Resistance. Christian trade unionists refused from the outset the Vichy Work Charter and launched themselves into underground fighting along with militant communists and socialists from the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). The Christian Democrats allied themselves to Charles de Gaulle and joined movements and networks that they sometimes led, like Georges Bidault, the brilliant journalist of L’Aube, who became head of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) after the arrest of Jean Moulin. The unity of the liberation, when the French people found themselves allied to de Gaulle, allowed the new Mouvement Républicain Populaire, created in November 1944, to take part, alongside the communists and the socialists, in the political and socio-economic reconstruction of the country. From 1947, the MRP underwent a period of electoral decline due to the diversity of their supporters, internal debates that had sprung up about their choice of political alliances and their socio-economic options, although Europe provided hope for these mostly Catholic militants who were now firmly behind the French Republic. SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS The manifesto of the MRP called upon men and women from all social classes, whatever they have been in the past, their political affiliations and especially all those who took part in the

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Resistance and the Liberation, to create with them a truly new political party, driven by the revolutionary spirit of the French people and to exclusively serve national grandeur.2 No religious overtures featured in this text, which appealed to ‘men of good will’. Their voters came first of all from conservative circles, orphaned since the right’s compromise with Vichy. Rooted in the ‘Christian lands’ such as the west, the north-east with its départements of Alsace and Lorraine, and on the high ground such as the Jura, the HauteSavoie, the south-east of the Massif Central and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, the largely Christian-inspired Democrats, as François Goguel called them,3 momentarily gained a foothold in many of the regions that favoured the right. The areas where the Christian Democrats had a weak presence matched the ‘deserts’ of the right in 1936: the centre, the southern Mediterranean and the Aquitaine basin. The MRP, however, managed an electoral breakthrough, gaining 20–30 per cent of the vote, where the candidates for the right managed similar results only in the centre-west, inner Aquitaine, the Southern Mediterranean and certain towns in the north. The MRP recovered some of the votes from the radical and socialist electorate. According to a survey by the Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (IFOP), in July 1946 more than a quarter of MRP voters were working-class, especially women, compared to a third for the socialists.4 The range of MRP voters was greater than that of its neighbours on the left,5 but it had a popular base: more than 20 per cent of the deputies elected in June 1946 were workers, more than in the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), and 16 per cent were white-collar workers and managers, the largest proportion among the various political groups.6 Much more than a ‘machine to rally Pétainists’—an expression used by newspapers and communist posters in 19457—the new party saw itself as inter-class. It ‘took on the role of the consensus party, which had for a long time been assumed by the Radicals’.8 The electorate of the MRP were quite humble, comprised of 19 per cent workers, according to a survey in 1952, 15 per cent white-collar workers, 18 per cent farmers and 20 per cent managers from the professions. Nearly a third of the MRP electorate were self-employed. The MRP was a Christian-inspired party that refused to be a ‘confessional party’. It aimed to be a secular party, led by men of conviction but not involved in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Apart from the Resistance, a rallying point for the forces of the left, the memory of the condemnation of Sillon in inter-war France could explain the distrust and the distance they put between themselves and the hierarchy, according to Pierre-Henri Teitgen: Pius X condemned it claiming (and it was a very badly justified claim), that it pretended to be the political embodiment of Catholicism. So, as such, the Pope needed to keep them under control, under the supervision of the Church, something that from the outset the leaders, the founders and the members of the MRP did not accept in any way.9 The will to remain autonomous was misunderstood by the MRP’s political partners, however, who did not believe in the reality of this distance. Moreover, the more or less open compromise of key Church figures during the Occupation made the MRP’s task


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after Liberation somewhat delicate. In certain circumstances the MRP acted as a shield and provided the Church with a ‘clear conscience’. The attitude of bishops in France was nevertheless more balanced than in certain countries in Europe such as Italy, Germany and Belgium, where the hierarchy publicly supported Christian democracy. The MRP kept up good relations with Rome, however, largely thanks to the two French ambassadors, Jacques Maritain and Wladimir d’Ormesson, and to visits or contact by certain members of the MRP with the papacy. Relations with the clergy were changeable, depending on the people involved and the period. In the debate about priests’ engagement in social work, representatives from the MRP, especially those who were originally from the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC), thought that a priest’s place was not in earthly activities, where the lay clergy, on the other hand, should invest their time. A clear distribution of tasks was deemed indispensable in order to avoid any abuse of power, any clericalism. Everyone in his place, the layman out in the world, the priest in the role of ‘sower of ideals’. The second stumbling block for certain members of the clergy resulted from different interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, which met in Rome from 1962 to 1965. The Church was divided between two forms of ministry, especially in the workingclass world.10 For advocates of the traditional point of view, it was necessary to preserve one’s identity, justifying the social doctrine of the Church and the Christian-inspired parties, while the ‘progressives’ insisted on the idea of ‘burying’ the ‘yeast in the dough’ and thought that the main thing was to act ‘in a Christian way’. Fernand Bouxom, during the foundation congress, underlined that ‘the MRP is a Christian-inspired movement’, but he quickly added, ‘it should not only be known as a movement of do-gooders and churchgoers’.11 The policies promoted by the members of the MRP had to be suitable for unbelievers and agnostics who remained attached to the values of Western civilization, the general context in which the great axes of Christian democrat-inspired politics lay. It was not necessary to be a Christian, much less a Catholic, to be a part of the MRP: this claim was reiterated at all the congresses and remained valid until the MRP dissolved in the 1960s to be succeeded by various Christian-inspired parties and groups. The final aim was, as Maurice Schumann recalls, to create ‘a brotherhood that brought together morality and politics’.12 The account of Teitgen, one of the MRP’s leaders, makes clear their initial motivation: During the Resistance, we learned to get to know each other, those who believed in God and those who did not, to respect each other, to dream together during the days of anguish that, no doubt after the war, we could get together… We did not want the MRP to appear like a clerical party… We never dreamt of creating in France a political party similar to the Christian Democrat parties which existed in Italy, Germany and Belgium… In those countries, Christian Democrats are in fact the whole of the right against the left. I had the greatest difficulty making Konrad Adenauer understand why we could not accept to merge with the political groups of Paul Reynaud or Antoine Pinay. The German Paul Reynauds and Antoine Pinays, they were immersed members of the German Christian Democrats… None of the activists in the MRP would have been able to accept it. We refused to define ourselves as the French Christian


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Democratic party, apart from one exception, an important exception, namely Georges Bidault.13 Without ever assembling all practising French Catholics, the MRP united in the early days a good majority of them. In 1952, a survey revealed that 79 per cent of the MRP’s electorate were regular churchgoers. Out of 100 churchgoers, 54 voted for them, 20 per cent chose the Indépendants and 18 per cent the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF). The Catholic vote then became more pluralistic. In 1956, no more than 34 per cent of practising Catholics put their trust in the MRP. In 1965, the presidential candidate Jean Lecanuet received only 20 per cent of the vote of regular churchgoers, while de Gaulle received 66 per cent and the Socialist François Mitterrand 8 per cent.14 While this was going on, the MRP suffered a decline in the religious areas of the west, the east, the uplands of the Jura and the lower Pyrenees, which first of all fell to the RPF, then quite quickly to the moderates who set themselves up in the traditional areas of the inter-war right. The proportion of the MRP electorate who were regular churchgoers tended to increase, from 73 to 79 per cent between 1948 and 1953. Although Léo Hamon, a Jew, played an active role in the leadership, and Maurice Walker, a Protestant and senator for the north, was leader of the parliamentary party, it is undeniable that the key posts on the national plan were held mainly by Catholics who, for the most part, came from Catholic organizations and the Christian trade unions. The MRP had to, as Etienne Borne did during a retrospective assessment in 1993, respond to accusations of clericalism, ‘cardinal sin of the MRP’.15 The Catholic philosopher recalls the words of one of his friends, underlining the singularity of post-war France, where ‘priests vote for the right, their curates for the progressive left, and the bishops, in order to compromise themselves as little as possible after Vichy, vote radical’. The decision to support the Catholic Church in the name of the defence of Christian identity, a necessary pluralism and fundamental freedoms, distanced the MRP from the left, who were attached to a militant and anti-clerical secularism at the same time as the internal evolutions of the Church pushed them away from Christians who were concerned about a less institutional presence of Catholicism. The secularization movement that began in the 1960s and manifested itself at the heart of Church structures through the deconfessionalization of the CFTC forced the leaders to carry out an ideological redefinition in the form of a more or less complete break with Christian democratic ideology, while its electorate remained largely Catholic. THE CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY Several MRP politicians occupied important posts in the government, in Parliament and notably in the committees set up after the war. Thanks to excellent lawyers such as Teitgen, Paul Coste-Floret and François de Menthon, the MRP played an important role in the constitutional debates. They brought to these debates on the founding of the Fourth Republic, but equally of the Fifth Republic in 1958, a doctrinal sophistication that the Third Republic, a prisoner of old ideas, never had. The drafting of the constitution of 27 October 1946 was largely the work of the MRP, in particular of de Menthon who, as


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general rapporteur of the Constitutional Committee, successfully fought against the first draft, which was rejected in the referendum of 5 May 1946, and of Coste-Floret, the rapporteur for the new draft, which was passed in October 1946 by 53.5 per cent of the vote. Conscious of its limits,16 the MRP looked to reform the new constitution, which rested initially on the support of the three largest parties. Coste-Floret, in the name of the MRP, succeeded in December 1954 in a slight reform with a view to increase the stability of the executive. Robert Lecourt, who became lord chancellor in March 1958, proposed a law that foresaw in particular the adoption without a vote of proposals put forward by the government, subject to the fact that no censure motion be voted. This idea, thought up by Edouard Moisan, MRP parliamentarian for the Loire-Atlantique département, was incorporated into the constitution of 1958 as Article 49–3. As regards social legislation, the MRP took part in the setting up of social security bodies respecting freedom of choice and democracy. During the creation of the new social security system, in line with the main guiding ideas of the directive of October 1945,17 they had reservations on two key questions: the idea of a single social security administration, which the MRP strongly opposed, and the desire for a generalization of the system. From July 1946, Charles Viatte, a maths teacher and MRP parliamentarian for the Jura, was appointed rapporteur for a proposal for a revision of the administrative organization of social security, and he put a check on its generalization. The law of 22 August 1946, which was largely the work of Robert Prigent, a former member of the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, a leader of the CFTC, parliamentarian for the north and minister for health and social security, confirmed the separation of the administration of family benefits and offered France a real family policy: maternity benefits were introduced and incentives for large families were noticeably increased, as were family benefits and income support. Maternity leave was extended to 14 weeks and a dependants’ allowance set against tax was introduced. Germaine Poinso-Chapuis, parliamentarian for Bouches-du-Rhône and the first woman to hold a ministerial portfolio in Robert Schuman’s cabinet from November 1947 to July 1948, engaged in a real fight against alcohol abuse and successfully introduced a decree awarding an allowance to every parent of a school-age child in June 1948. Pierre Schneiter, minister for health and social security, with Jules Catoire as state secretary, succeeded her in July 1948 and retained his ministerial duties on six occasions up until 1951: ‘France has the best family legislation. In every aspect of health care, favourable report follows favourable report,’ he insisted in an interview in La Croix on 28 October 1950. The post of minister for employment and social security, a strategic function for the socio-economic evolution of the country, was filled by the Christian Democrats during a period of nine years during the Fourth Republic. Paul Bacon was a member of the CFTC and national leader of various workers’ groups. On 28 October 1949 he became state secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office in the Bidault Cabinet. Then on 7 February 1950 he succeeded the Socialist Pierre Ségelle as minister for employment, still in the Bidault Cabinet. Shortly after his arrival, he put through a bill on collective agreements. Twelve times minister for employment and social security between 1950 and 1962, he set up a proper system for running his ministry.18 Among the key objectives was a return to financial equilibrium within the social security system thanks to, among other measures, good administration of funds, hospital reform, the development of professional training


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for adults and new methods of tackling unemployment. The reform of businesses that desired employee participation finally came with the declaration of the decrees of 20 May and 17 September 1955 at the time of the Edgar Faure Cabinet, with a collective bonus in the form of exemption from social security contributions for those businesses taking part.19 Under the Fifth Republic, MRP ministers were in office from 1958 to 1962: Robert Buron as minister for building works and transport, Joseph Fontanet as state secretary for industry and commerce and then for health and Maurice Schumann as minister for urban development. Paul Bacon initiated the creation, in January 1959, of the Association pour l’Emploi dans l’Industrie et le Commerce (ASSEDIC) and the Union Nationale pour l’Emploi dans l’Industrie et le Commerce (UNEDIC). On 2 June 1959 a new social security system was set up, which included the introduction of contracts for doctors, despite the hostility of their professional organization. These laws were the result of efforts started during the Fourth Republic and implemented thanks to the new, stronger executive.20 Bacon put forward a document on social advancement in July 1959, and in December another bill facilitating economic and social training for workers in positions of responsibility in trade unions. Up to a point, the social doctrine of the Church drove the MRP’s social policy agenda. It invoked the superiority of fundamental natural rights, such as the right of ownership, the right of association and the idea of the common good, a higher calling to which all citizens had to submit. The desire to put man at the heart of any economic system was equally a basic requirement. While collectivism was strongly condemned, the capitalist system found favour in the eyes of the Christian Democrats only on the condition that it underwent certain structural reforms relying on the recognition of the right of state intervention as an economic and social regulator, the right of association for workers and the role of Parliament and the law for the preservation of the common good.21 The Church’s work for the global expansion of justice was resumed, under the influence of Father Lebret, by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum progressio in 1967 because ‘the social issue has become a world issue’.22 Christian Democrats such as Pierre Abelin, minister for overseas territories, would take to heart this global approach by initiating the first North-South agreements at EC level, signed in 1975 in the form of the Lomé Convention. Attention to personal dignity showed itself in the Christian Democrats’ defence of educational justice. It was, according to them, an integral part of social justice. The Poinso-Chapuis decree of June 1948 theoretically awarded an allowance to every parent with a school-age child, including those in private education, then the passing of the Marie law on 3 and 4 September 1948 extended the grants to pupils in private secondary school education. With the so-called ‘Barangé law’ of 1951, named after an MRP parliamentarian, allowances were from then on paid to all children, including those who went to Catholic primary schools.23 To modernize relations within businesses, the MRP also showed itself to be an ardent defender of worker participation. Francine Lefebvre, as rapporteur in March 1946, obtained the introduction of staff representatives, then the introduction of proportional representation in the election of staff representatives and committees in 1947. Relations within business were changed by the law on collective agreements, for which Bacon was rapporteur in December 1946, then by that on


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accidents at work and professional illnesses, voted for on 5 September 1946, with Louis Beugniez, parliamentarian for Pas-de-Calais and future president of the Commission on Employment and Social Security, as rapporteur. MRP politicians also developed entirely new concepts. Bacon, spokesman for Atelier-Travail which, from 1945 to 1950, put in touch Christian parliamentarians and trade unionists, put forward proposals on workers’ educational holidays and on ‘work and savings’ societies, where workers would finally be recognized as full partners. Jules Duquesne and Jules Catoire put forward in July 1953 a law aiming to fight unemployment by banning the combination of a full-time job with a pension when it exceeded a certain amount.24 The rural Christian Democrat spokesmen supported community agricultural projects and especially the setting up of the Groupement Agricole d’Exploitation en Commun (GAEC). This worry about social inclusion and justice and democratization was combined with a will to modernize. Jean-Marie Louvel, MRP state secretary for trade and industry from 1950 to 1954, embodied the will to play a leading role in the socio-economic recovery of France. Pierre Abelin, parliamentarian for Vienne, was junior minister of finance in 1953 and in 1955 headed the Commission on Economic Affairs. Buron, parliamentarian for Mayenne, member of the Finance Commission, then finance minister, defended productivity growth as a way to improve the quality of life of the French people. Pierre Pflimlin ensured a permanent Christian Democratic influence in agriculture from 1947 to 1951, with the help of Gabriel Valay, especially in the abortive attempt at organizing markets within the European framework of a ‘green pool’, which foreshadowed the later Council on Agricultural Policy. Along the lines of the programme of the Conseil National de la Resistance, the postwar MRP manifesto expressed the wish for an ‘economy led by a state freed from the power of money’ and ‘nationalization of key industries’. Catoire and his friends argued in the National Assembly for a ‘certain type’ of nationalization, which respected the role of people and co-management but refused state control and collectivization.25 A real debate evolved in the very heart of the MRP between those who approved of a liberal approach to the economy and those who favoured an interventionist attitude: Pflimlin, Schuman and Robert Lecourt were more inclined to consider the plan as a guide, an indicator, while de Menthon, Teitgen and Maurice Byé thought that economic planning should be a precise tool and wanted to give it an authoritative character.26 Buron thought that fullscale planning was abandoned too quickly: I am not an ideological interventionist, but the effort necessary in the aftermath of Liberation was so great that, in my opinion, it is too early to abandon close collaboration between everyone under the leadership of the State by a return to free initiative, which may often favour the common good, but this is in no way the key objective.27 The first economic plan, devised by Jean Monnet in February 1946, was a true general mobilization. Precise objectives were programmed for decisive sectors, such as the production of coal, electricity, public transport, agricultural mechanization, steel and construction materials. The second plan from 1950 to 1954, as well as the third from 1954 to 1957, oriented towards industrial production, manufacturing and consumer


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goods, were less rigid in their objectives and their implementation. However, these plans rested largely in the hands of technocrats, without benefiting, as the MRP interventionists wanted, from any real democratic control over major economic issues. The liberal principles of Pflimlin were therefore reaffirmed: the Monnet plan ‘can and must stimulate and guide production, but there is no question of any direct intervention vis-à-vis the industrialists’.28 Pflimlin, joined by Bacon and Charles Barangé, general rapporteur for the budget on several occasions, wanted a mixed economy, clearly distinct from an economy controlled in a bureaucratic and corporatist manner. This point of view finally succeeded in France as each plan, a kind of travel diary, remained an indication of trends. THE MRP’S CONCEPT OF EUROPE During the years following the Liberation, the new party’s foreign policy was directed by Bidault, little appreciated by General de Gaulle.29 Bidault initially remained very reserved at any thought of a reconciliation with Germany. He wanted to use the Sarre region as a security for a rigid policy in the face of any desire for revenge on the Prussian side. From 1944 to 1947, French diplomacy, headed by the former leader of the Resistance, looked to exercise strict inter-Allied control over a very decentralized Germany, a flexible confederation halfway between the German Confederation of 1815– 66 and that of the North German Confederation of 1867–71. As Maurice Schumann, who subsequently became state secretary in the Foreign Ministry, recalls, it was in 1946 that, on his initiative, Schuman saw Adenauer, whom he had not previously met, and that friendly relations began. In fact, concerned about dismantling the institutional and cultural origins of German militarism, Schuman ‘was not born a European activist, he became one largely in the light of the two world wars started by Europe … He chose to be European.’30 Appointed foreign minister in the summer of 1948, on 9 May 1950 he launched the first real project of European co-operation while Bidault was prime minister. This pragmatic idea would win majority approval and become one of the MRP’s spearheads due to the popularity of its originator with ordinary party members. Schuman was supported fervently, especially by Christian trade unionist parliamentarians such as Henri Meck and Jules Catoire who, during the inter-war period, had been in contact with Belgian social Catholics and with German Catholic trade unionists through the international Christian trade union movement. As Pierre Létamendia recalls, ‘it is to Schuman alone that we must attribute the total conversion of the MRP to the European idea’.31 He took up Jean Monnet’s idea. Monnet was planning commissioner, who worked with a team of young civil servants, students from the elite écoles polytechniques and lawyers. Monnet submitted first to Bidault and then to Schuman, foreign secretary from 1948 to 1953, his plan for a European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Schuman understood immediately the economic but also the ideological and political implications of such a plan, which would allow the birth of a Europe that conformed to the wishes of the leaders and the activists of the MRP. Having taken care to obtain the approval of Chancellor Adenauer, Schuman proposed on 9 May 1950 the creation of such a Coal and Steel Community, within precise institutional structures open to other European countries.32 At the request of Monnet, the first


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president of the High Commission, the ECSC, in conjunction with the Marshall Plan, gave a strong impetus to the domestic production of each member state. The MRP leaders therefore contributed, together with the established Socialists, to the ideas on planning and European integration to provide France with a quite spectacular recovery. Progress was significant in sectors classed as priority by the Modernization Plan such as electricity, which doubled its production between 1944 and 1950, and coal, where output increased quickly and again reached the previous record production level of 1929. The failure of the integrationist project of the European Defence Community (EDC) in the French Parliament in August 195433 forced the MRP to fall back on a European approach that rested on progressive functional integration in stages based on concrete steps and avoiding discussions on political theology, especially between federalism and inter-governmentalism. The European Economic Community (EEC) was ratified by the Mollet government in 1957. The Franco-German Treaty of 1963 was the result of an understanding between de Gaulle and Adenauer. Then the supporters of a more intergovernmental unification of Europe out-flanked the more federalist Christian Democratic concept by rallying round them on the right the moderates and the liberals and on the left the radicals and the socialists. Europe quickly became a stumbling block between the MRP and de Gaulle. De Gaulle opposed the MRP’s European and Atlantic policy with the Schuman Plan, NATO and the EDC. Communists and Gaullists competed with each other in their hostility to these projects. The MRP, however, with the marked exception of de Menthon, rallied around de Gaulle on his return to power in 1958 and MRP ministers came to secure this reconciliation up until the incident at the president’s press conference of 15 May 1962, when de Gaulle taunted supporters of a supranational Europe and the MRP subsequently left the government. In 1964, 58 per cent of MRP sympathizers approved of de Gaulle’s foreign policy, while only 18 per cent disapproved.34 This split between the leadership and the voters struck home among certain key figures who, ‘in a continuous trickle’,35 according to Jean-Marie Mayeur, left the MRP to rejoin the Gaullist ranks, from Louis Terrenoire and Edmond Michelet to Maurice Schumann and Marie-Madeleine Dienesch. While the disagreements between the MRP leadership and de Gaulle over the European question were very strong until well into the 1960s, their approach to the social question was quite familiar: ‘I am a social Christian,’ declared de Gaulle to Bidault in November 1948. A subscriber to Temps Présent, de Gaulle was deeply impregnated with the moral and social teachings of Catholicism. His political projects such as workers’ participation and state control of large conglomerates were informed by the Christian Democratic vision of man and society.36 Teitgen recalls that de Gaulle summoned him in the winter of 1944–45: to explain that we had to transform ourselves into a new force, an ‘intelligent conservative party’, he said to us, and to not look to the left…to occupy territory which had previously been occupied by the right and from there to consolidate ourselves and group together all the forces of Catholic origin. The MRP did not want to and that is why it never presented or defined itself as a Christian Democratic party.


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After having regained a certain strength in 1958 during de Gaulle’s return to power, the MRP decided to oppose the election of the president of the newly created Fifth Republic by universal suffrage. It insisted on a role for intermediary political bodies and mistrusted a plebiscite-rich democracy. In conjunction with pronounced repercussions over Europe,37 this disagreement eventually drove the MRP into the camp of the opponents of the Gaullist regime. In November 1962, the MRP lost one million votes and gained only 38 seats in the new Assembly, which was dominated by the Gaullists. Lecanuet, the new party leader elected in 1963, first examined the solution proposed by Gaston Defferre, the Socialist parliamentarian for Bouches-du-Rhône, who preferred the setting up of a party federation bringing together the SFIO, the MRP and the Radicals, to a Socialist alliance with the Communists. After he acknowledged the failure of such a scheme, Lecanuet decided, in 1965, to stand as a candidate in the first presidential elections against de Gaulle. The encouraging result that he achieved reinforced his desire to found a new centrist party. On 23 and 24 April 1966, the Centre Démocrate (CD) was officially founded during a constituent convention, while the MRP was disbanded in 1967. Alongside the old MRP members who, according to a survey in 1970, made up 44 per cent of the members,38 politicians from the Centre National des Indépendants (CNI) and from Radical circles, such as René Pleven and Jacques Duhamel, tried to find a political space in the new centrist party despite the bipolarization reinforced by the majority voting system.39 Opposed to unbridled economic liberalism and in favour of a certain degree of interventionism, the CD condemned any alliance of the Socialists, their eventual partners in a third political force to be reconstructed with the Communists, and set out a liberal, social and European path, which, as well as rejecting the totalitarian aspects of the extreme left, also opposed the Bonapartist temptations of certain Gaullists, who wanted a strong executive. The elections of 1967 brought home to the centrists the impact of bipolarization: the CD obtained only 13.4 per cent of the vote against 15.8 per cent for Lecanuet in the presidential elections of 1965. The electoral decline which continued in 1968 when they only gained 10.3 per cent prompted Duhamel and the secretary-general of the CD, Joseph Fontanet, to ally themselves with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s Independent Republicans, in order to take on the role of constructive opposition at the heart of the presidential majority.40 The heirs of the MRP eventually split into two groups with different strategies for facing the Gaullist majority. Supporters of a united majority formed a new party after the election of the Gaullist Georges Pompidou as president of the Republic in 1969, the Centre Démocratie et Progrès (CDP). Led by Duhamel, who became minister for the arts in January 1971, and by Fontanet, minister for employment, the CDP gained only 3.8 per cent of the vote in the elections of 1973. The Centre Démocrate, which supported the candidature of Alain Poher, MRP senator and president of the National Assembly, refined its opposition and tried, with the Radical Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, to create a movement of reformers that obtained 12.8 per cent of the vote in 1973. At the Congress of Rennes in May 1976, these two parties came together to become the Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (CDS), controlled by former MRP politicians: the leader, Lecanuet, the secretary-general, André Diligent, and the treasurer, Maurice-René Simonnet, came from the MRP. The Atlanticist, family-oriented and social policy choices of the new party combined the great axes of the old Christian Democrat-inspired party. In March


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1978, Lecanuet became president of the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF), the Giscardian component of the presidential majority alongside Jacques Chirac’s Rassemblement pour la République (RPR). The centrists made up the left wing of this presidential majority. After François Mitterrand’s victory in the presidential elections of May 1981, Pierre Méhaignerie, new leader of the CDS from 1982, reinforced the alliance with the Gaullists in the context of the Union pour la Nouvelle Majorité (UNM). The victory of the opposition in the legislative elections of March 1986 allowed the CDS to gain 46 seats. Having supported their own candidate, Raymond Barre, former prime minister under Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, in the first round of the presidential elections in 1988, when François Mitterrand was re-elected, the centrists formed their own parliamentary party within the Chamber of Deputies, the Union du Centre (UDC). They did not hesitate to support certain projects of the Socialist prime minister, Michel Rocard, and chose to go it alone during the European elections of June 1989 by supporting Simone Veil. The failure of this attempt at political independence, combined with limited progress in the elections of March 1993, prompted François Bayrou, secretary-general of the UDF, to try and renew the public image of the party. Supported by René Monory, centrist president of the Senate, and Pierre Méhaignerie, he chose, against the advice of Bernard Bosson, who was more worried about a deepening of its identity, to enlarge the party and give it a presidential strategy. On 25 December 1995, the CDS became the Force Démocrate (FD) without, despite all that effort, succeeding in rallying parties and individual politicians outside the traditional Christian Democratic constituency.41

CONCLUSION The thoughts of Teitgen, hero of the Resistance, minister for information and then lord chancellor under de Gaulle and leader of the MRP in 1952, explain and justify the MRP’s post-war attitude of the Popular Republicans vis-à-vis any attempt at organizing the party together with sister parties in a cohesive Christian Democratic ‘International’: ‘The MRP in fact found other Christian Democratic parties “conservative”, claiming that none of them had rival parties on the right.’42 Supported by the Belgian Parti Social Chrétien (PSC), MRP delegates at European party congresses preferred ‘an association of people’ to an ‘organization of parties’. Despite the choice of Robert Bichet, former MRP secretary-general, as president, then secretary-general of the Nouvelles Équipes Internationales (NEI), founded in 1947, the mistrust remained, especially on the part of the left wing of the MRP, who feared the accusation of a Vatican-controlled ‘black International’ at the time of another ‘school war’ and in view of a much sought-after cooperation with the SFIO. Worried about bringing a social and in particular a family dimension to France, to renew social relations in society and within business, to find a balance between state intervention and liberalism, between the executive and the legislative, the MRP hesitated from the beginning between its support for de Gaulle and its desire to anchor itself on the left. The fight for Europe allowed the party leadership to put across to the activists an ‘identity of substitution’,43 avoiding an internal rift without losing itself in a ‘black


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International’. However, the opposition to de Gaulle clearly expressed in 1962 brought them back to the initial debate with engagement with the founder of the Fifth Republic. According to Jean-Dominique Durand, the decision to withdraw from the government ‘was deeply damaging to the MRP on the one hand and to the creation of Europe on the other hand, by marginalizing the Christian Democratinspired party and by enclosing de Gaulle in his own reasoning’.44 The heirs of the MRP kept the European, social and family identity but did not manage to regroup around a centrist pole the supporters of a third way between the left and the conservatives.45 The strategic questions of political positioning and selecting potential presidential candidates proved the real key to the political success of this party family, whose liberal, social and European ideas have attracted electors on the right as well as on the left in post-war French politics. NOTES 1 Elections législatives, Archives Nationales, Cote MRP 350 A.P., p. 93. 2 Microfilm no. 51, référence 137.269. Extrait du Manifeste du MRP, document publié lors du congrès de fondation à Paris les 25–26 novembre 1944. Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (F.N.S.P.). 3 François Goguel in Esprit, December 1945. 4 Sociologie du Mouvement, M.R.P.1, Archives Nationales, 350 A.P.3. See also Pierre Levêque, Histoire des forces politiques en France de 1940 à nos jours, vol. 3 (Paris 1997), p. 137. 5 Pierre Létamendia, Le MRP, thesis (Bordeaux 1975), p. 201. 6 M.R.P., 5 Sondages, Archives Nationales, 350 A.P.1. See also Hubert Néant, La politique en France XIXe-XXe siècle (Paris 1991), p. 184. The author refers to the research of Gérard Cholvy. 7 Robert Bichet, La Démocratie Chrétienne en France, Le Mouvement Républicain Populaire (Besançon 1980), p. 75. 8 Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, ‘Modernisation et transformation des partis politiques au début de la IVe République’, Colloque FNSP: La France en voie de modernisation 1944–1952 (Paris 1981), p. 19. 9 Testimony of Pierre-Henri Teitgen, 22 November 1980, personal oral archives. 10 André Deroo, Un missionnaire du travail, Père Stéphane—Joseph Piat (Arcueil 1980), pp. 264–72. 11 Manifeste du MRP. Archives Jules Catoire. 12 Brochure sur le premier congrès national MRP. Archives Jules Catoire. 13 Testimony from Pierre-Henri Teitgen, 22 November 1980, personal oral archives. 14 M.R.P., 5 Sondages, Archives nationales, 350 A.P.1. 15 Etienne Borne, ‘Sur le MRP: souvenir sans repentir’, France Forum, vol. 297–8 (1994), pp. 35–6. Reprinted from La Croix, 8 December 1984. 16 Microfilms no. 51, références 137.269 (Congrès de 1944–1951), F.N.S.P. See also P.Avril, ‘Le MRP et les institutions’, France Forum, vol. 316 (1997), PP. 21–4. 17 Archives de l’Assemblée nationale, à partir du Journal Officiel des débats parlementaires. See also Bruno Béthouart, ‘Les Réformes sociales à la Libération; le


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poids des parlementaires MRP’, Revue du Nord, vol. 305 (1994), pp. 359–90. 18 Archives de l’Assemblée nationale, à partir du Journal Officiel des débats parlementaires. See also Bruno Béthouart, ‘Le ministère du Travail et de la Sécurité Sociale: un monopole du MRP de 1950 a 1962’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 43 (1996) no. 1, pp. 68–105. 19 Archives de l’Assemblée nationale, à partir des procès-verbaux de la Commission du travail et de la sécurité sociale. 20 Le Monde, 8 January 1959. 21 Hugues Portelli, Les démocrates chrétiens et l’économie sociale de marché (Paris 1988). 22 Nouvelle Encyclopédie Catholique (Paris 1989), p. 503. 23 Archives de l’Assemblée nationale, à partir du Journal Officiel des débats parlementaires et des procès-verbaux de la Commission du travail et de la sécurité sociale. See also Bruno Béthouart, ‘L’apport socio-économique de la Démocratie chrétienne en France’, in Emiel Lamberts (ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945–1995) (Leuven 1997), pp. 336–63. 24 Journal Officiel des débats, July 1953. Archives de l’Assemblée nationale. 25 Microfilms no. 51. Référence 137.269 (Congrès de 1944–1951). Extrait des travaux du Ve congrès national de Strasbourg 1949, F.N.S.P. 26 R.E.M.Irving, Christian Democracy in France (London 1973), p. 122. 27 Michel Launay, Robert Buron (Paris 1993), p. 42. 28 Irving, Christian Democracy in France, p. 111. 29 Jacques Dalloz, Georges Bidault (Paris 1993). See also Jean-Claude Demory, Georges Bidault (Paris 1995). 30 Michel-Pierre Chélini, ‘Robert Schuman et l’idée européenne’, France Forum, vol. 313–14 (1996), p. 27. 31 Pierre Létamendia, Le Mouvement Républicain Populaire—Histoire d’un grand parti français (Paris 1996), p. 117. 32 Le Monde, 20 May 1950. 33 Le Figaro, 27 May 1954 and Le Monde, 1 September 1954. 34 M.R.P., 5 Sondages. Archives nationales 350 A.P.1. See also Létamendia, Le MRP, p. 133. 35 Jean-Marie Mayeur, ‘Le MRP et le Gaullisme’, France Forum, vol. 316 (1997), p. 33. 36 See Marc Sadoun et al. (eds), La politique sociale du Général de Gaulle (Lille 1990). 37 Serge Berstein, Jean-Marie Mayeur, Pierre Milza (eds), Le MRP et la construction européenne (Brussels 1983). See also Danielle Zéraffa, Du MRP au CDS: aspects du discours centriste sur l’Europe, 1962–1978 (thesis, Paris-Nanterre 1983). 38 Colette Ysmal, ‘Adhérents et dirigeants du Centre Démocrate’, Revue française de science politique, vol. 29 (1979) no. 1, pp. 77–88. 39 Alain Gauduffe, Les démocrates chrétiens en France après le MRP: étude du Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (CDS) de 1976 à 1994 (thesis, Paris X-Nanterre 1995). 40 Pierre Létamendia, ‘Le centrisme en politique’, Encyclopaedia Universalis (Paris


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1993), pp. 278–80. See also Danielle Zéraffa, ‘A la recherche du centre dans la vie politique française (1962–1986)’, Vingtième Siècle, vol. 9 (1986), pp. 81–96. 41 Le Monde, 28 November 1995, pp. 26–27. 42 Microfilms no. 51, références 137.269 (Congrès de 1944–1951), F.N.S.P. See also Bichet, La Démocratie Chrétienne en France, p. 244. 43 Jacques Mallet picks up Alfred Grosser’s expression in France Forum, vol. 316 (1997), p. 48. 44 Jean-Dominique Durand, L’Europe de la Démocratie Chrétienne (Brussels 1995), p. 277. 45 Pierre Levêque, Histoire des forces politiques en France de 1940 à nos jours, vol. 3 (Paris 1997), pp. 249–91.

7 Born for Government: the Democrazia Cristiana in Italy Carlo Masala

One cannot understand the history of Italy without taking into consideration the history of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC). This party, more than any other, played a very great role in the foundation and the development of the Italian Republic and participated in its successes and its crises. The DC was, up until its renaming and subsequent dissolution, the partito nazionale, the ‘party born for government’1 in Italy. It was the largest of all Christian democratic parties in Western Europe, with 1,612,730 members in 1963.2 Due to its supreme position in the Italian party system and its size, the DC had further special characteristics in comparison to other West European Christian democratic parties. These make an analysis of the development of the DC in a European context especially interesting. First, the DC in Catholic Italy did not have the problem that some other parties had, namely having to integrate different confessional currents in one Christian democratic party. While in other Christian democratic parties, such as the German CDU/CSU, the issue of confession was one of the greatest challenges in the construction of a liberalconservative people’s party, the challenge for Alcide De Gasperi, the first DC leader, was the integration of different groups with their varying values, aims and political ideas that posed a problem for the internal development of the DC, especially in its early years, including the party’s political programme. Different corrente3 (political wings) competed for party positions and programmatic supremacy. In the time just after the war, the central issues of the relationship between Church and party and between state and economy led to hefty debates within the DC and party unity was often put to the test. Second, the DC was, in fact, held together by its political opponents.4 This was also what differentiated the developments in Italy after 1945 from the developments in other West European countries, with the exception of France. Up until the 1980s, the main opposition to the Christian Democrats in Italy was not a socialist or social democratic party as in Germany or Austria, but rather the biggest communist party in Western Europe, the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI). The East-West conflict, which conditioned the structures and processes of international politics for over forty years, was also reflected in Italian society and politics. The communist and socialist left in Italy was unable to achieve a political majority at this time, but it did, however, have a certain power to undermine government policies as a result of the institutional set-up of the Italian state and the left’s strong role in society.5 This threw up three elementary questions for the DC’s governing policy. How could the influence of the Communists be reduced in the long term? How could Italian society be modernized without the PCI using

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its preventative power, through strikes, for example, and how could the PCI be prevented from gaining power in Italy? Leading representatives of the left wing of the DC such as Amintore Fanfani and Aldo Moro saw the answer to the first question in a partial opening up of the DC to the left, the apertura a sinistra, which first resulted in the toleration of their DC-led government by the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI).The DC leaders saw the answer to the other two questions in Italy’s close integration in the West. The country’s participation in NATO6 and European integration was to lead to the formation of a transatlantic bloc opposing the imperialist Soviet Union. It was supposed to lessen the danger of a Communist takeover of power in Italy. THE DC: (CATHOLIC) PEOPLE’S PARTY OR PARTY OF THE CATHOLICS? With the crisis of Italian fascism in the summer of 1943, political Catholicism began to emerge once again after the enforced political silence and internal emigration of over twenty years. The initiative came mainly from Alcide De Gasperi. He reactivated members and deputies from the inter-war Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) such as Giovanni Gronchi, Giuseppe Pella, Attilio Piccioni, Mario Scelba and Antonio Segni. He also won over leading representatives of the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI) such as Aldo Moro, Giulio Andreotti and Giorgio La Pira, as well as a group of younger professors from the Universitá Cattolica in Milan around Giuseppe Dossetti, who was to be Gasperi’s main opponent in the DC up until his resignation from politics in 1951, Amintore Fanfani and Gustavo Bontadini,7 and a Catholic resistance group formed around Piero Malvestiti and Gioacchino Malavasi, the Guelfen,8 which was the only clandestine Catholic political organization in existence during the fascist period.9 For Gasperi the aim was clear from the start: the party ought to be a cross-class people’s party.10 Although De Gasperi was a Catholic, he never felt responsible to the clergy. In order to give the DC a central role in a post-fascist state and allow it to become a partito italiano, as he called it, De Gasperi was careful to avoid a fragmentation of Catholic groups, instead forming a single people’s party that firmly integrated the Catholic voters into the political system of the Italian post-war republic.11 A more confessional Catholic party would have raised the problem of being possibly too dependent on the Vatican.12 At the beginning, De Gasperi was faced with the problem that the Vatican leaders showed only moderate interest in a Catholic people’s party. When, in February 1943, the US Foreign Ministry asked which people the Vatican would suggest as possible negotiating partners for the Allies as well as possible members of a post-fascist Italian government, there was no answer, although the Pope would have had the possibility of naming politicians who were close to him.13 Giulio Andreotti, who had excellent relations with the Vatican, believed that a Catholic party would not have been in the interests of Pope Pius XII, as such a party would have drawn the Vatican into Italian politics and it would then have been forced to compromise.14 The discussions in the Vatican were mainly dominated by the fear that post-war Italy would be dominated by a communist party and could thus fall prey to Soviet power. Pope Pius XII insisted, for this


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reason, that Italy mainly needed a strong government, whatever its exact shape, to fend off the communist threat. Within the newly founded DC, there were sections, however, that advocated the formation of a Catholic confessional party or greater consideration for the Catholic social doctrine in the DC’s programme. Giuseppe Dossetti was one of the main exponents of this current.15 Influenced by the philosophy of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, he represented a religious, left-wing and pacifist position. Between 1947 and 1951, Dossetti and his followers had the magazine Cronache Sociale at their disposal, which gave the group its own platform for the presentation of its ideas. At the centre of the DC’s deliberations about its policy direction was the idea of Christian solidarity. As Giorgio La Pira had already written in August 1943, it had to be the task of a Christian party to offer solutions for the new Italian state on the basis of the gospel.16 Direct influence of the Church on such a party was, however, rejected. In this respect, an article that Fanfani published in 1946 in the magazine Humanitas is of special interest.17 In it, he stated very clearly that the DC was not a Catholic party and that the Catholic Church should therefore not be regarded as its point of reference. He also rejected direct Church influence on the party. Fanfani argued that the party must be independent from the clergy. In contrast to De Gasperi he did not plead for a Catholic party in which all Catholic currents should have a place, but rather excluded those currents within the DC and elsewhere, whose aim was the formation of a Vatican-bound party.18 In the arguments about the question of the internal structure of the DC between a pluralist Catholic people’s party and concentration on left-wing Catholicism De Gasperi was supported by the Vatican. For Pope Pius XII, the Utopian ideas of Dossetti19 and his followers endangered the formation of a broad anti-communist party. In 1946, the efforts of the group around Dossetti, Fanfani and La Pira mainly concentrated on anchoring their idea of ‘integral democracy’20 in the constitution, which was to be redrawn. This idea consisted of political, economic and moral democracy striving for the realization of Christian values in the state, the economy and society.21 If there was at least agreement between De Gasperi and the group around Dossetti in principle that the DC was not to be degraded to a Vatican party, there were other currents within and outwith the DC, which had exactly that aim. These currents were supported by a sector of the clergy. The most important advocates of such a Catholic party were the Azione Cattolica (AC),22 the largest Catholic lay organization, and the Jesuit magazine Civiltá Cattolica. In the period just after the war, the AC was of inestimable value for the DC, with 2.5 million members in 1946. Almost all the leading figures in the newly founded DC who did not come from the PPI had been in the AC. The AC was the DC’s ‘elite training centre’. Moreover, the party could use the organizational apparatus of the AC. Some leading AC figures demanded stronger orientation towards the Vatican. Luigi Gedda, the president of the AC’s Youth Organization, already said in 1946 that one could not regard the DC as the political point of reference for the AC members when other parties existed that shared the aims and ideas of the AC.23 Gedda pleaded, first and foremost, for the reconstruction of Catholic unity under one organizational roof, leaving enough room for other movements that at the time were not represented in the DC. Gedda was thinking less of the group around Dossetti and much more of Guglielmo Giannini’s L’Uomo Qualunque movement.24

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In March 1946, Gedda suggested that the AC should put forward its own list of candidates for the parliamentary elections, a list that would form an alliance with the DC. In return for such a visible presence of the AC on the DC’s lists, Gedda promised 2.5 million voters for the DC. His aim was to create an independent parliamentary basis for the AC’s ideology and programme, as he did not think the DC was capable of representing Catholic values adequately. But it was not Gedda’s only aim to achieve a stronger representation of these values in politics. Looking at the PCI and its strong position in Italy’s political system, Gedda pursued his aim of creating the basis for more vehemently anti-communist politics, through the creation of a strong centre-right bloc that was to include the monarchists and the neo-fascists. Gedda was supported in this intention by a section of the clergy. The magazine Civiltá Cattolica and the rector of the Lateran University in Rome, Roberto Ronca, supported Gedda’s plans for the creation of a centre-right bloc in the years 1946–50.25 The extent to which the ideas of Gedda, of a large sector of the AC and of the circle around Civiltá Cattolica differed from those of De Gasperi and Dossetti becomes clear in their understanding of the role of the state. While De Gasperi and Dossetti wanted to see a strong state, this idea was not shared by a large section of the mondo cattolico. Their opposition was very evident in the Jesuit Father Antonio Messineo’s publication of 1946. The sovereignty of the state was limited and not absolute, argued Messineo. It was limited in its sovereignty by the law of God, natural law and international law. The state was an abstract entity in which the individual was not able to protect his own personal dignity.26 Messineo’s objections are not to be interpreted as a rejection of the democratic state per se. He was more concerned that moral-spiritual authority be left in the hands of the Church. The Church should take on the role of a mediator between the democratic state and its citizens. De Gasperi repeatedly emphasized that the DC should be understood as a national people’s party and neither the party of Catholics nor a Catholic party. At the party congress in 1947 in Naples, he urged the delegates to firmly anchor the DC as the partito nazionale in the Italian party system. He saw no other way to retain power.27 This decision in favour of the Catholic people’s party variant meant the end of arguments within the DC, at least for the time being. The basic discussions about the question of the relationship between Church and party did not flare up in the following years, but the differences resulting from the different options and connected ideas about policy were not resolved. In the policy elections of 1948 the DC was propped up again by the organizational apparatus of the mondo cattolico and even more by the AC. The citizens’ committees that had been initiated by Luigi Gedda all over Italy contributed considerably to De Gasperi’s victory in the elections, as they drew former fascists and voters from the monarchist camp into the party’s fold. These voters might not otherwise have voted for the DC.28 The DC not only won 48.5 per cent of the votes, but came out of the election as a real people’s party as its members and voters came from all social classes of Italian society.29 The question of the most desirable coalition combination remained problematic and disputed, however, in the following years. The right wing of the DC, including those members who had supported the idea of a Vatican party, pleaded in the face of the communist threat for a coalition of the DC with the monarchists and if necessary also


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with the neo-fascists, in order to form a strong anti-communist bloc. Co-operation with rightwing parties in the elections for the Rome City Council was a last attempt to achieve such a coalition. The so-called Operazione Sturzo in 1952 was also supported by the Vatican. Gedda even threatened De Gasperi with putting forward an AC list of candidates at the elections for the City Council if he refused to form a centre-right bloc.30 Although De Gasperi was afraid that the Vatican would now pursue the formation of a Catholic party or would at least support it,31 he opposed these attempts to give up the policy of centrismo in favour of a policy of coalitions with the rightwing parties. Such a policy could have also contributed to the break-up of the DC.32 The DC’s right wing faced the supporters of the Dossetti line, who pleaded for a reconciliation with the Socialists in order to solve the social, economic and political problems of the country on the basis of as wide a consensus as possible. De Gasperi beat a middle path in this issue too and formed a coalition with the smaller secular parties, the Liberals, Social Democrats and Republicans. After his resignation from party leadership in 1953 and the appointment of Amintore Fanfani to the position of secretary-general of the DC, the issue of the relationship between Church and party became less pertinent as Fanfani freed the party from its organizational dependence on the Church by building up an effective party organization.33 The DC’s relationship with the Church changed fundamentally after the 1960s. As a result of the progressive secularization in Italian society, the connection to Catholicism lost its importance as a motivating factor for party members and voters. With Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, the Church also redefined its role in society. This new way of thinking could be seen in, among other things, the fact that the Vatican no longer saw the AC as a ‘political organization’. Instead it should concentrate exclusively on its role as a lay organization of the Church. This resulted in the programmatic and organizational restructuring of the AC.34 THE QUESTION OF A JUST ECONOMIC SYSTEM The question of the relationship between Church and party split the DC and deepened the chasm between ‘left’ and ‘right’ in the party to the same degree and in a similar way as economic policy did. The first programmatic beginnings for economic policy in postfascist Italy were already formulated in the Idee ricostrutive, which De Gasperi formulated with others in the summer of 1943. Central to this programme were comprehensive land reform and profit-sharing schemes.35 De Gasperi tried to find a balance between economic liberalism and the state’s social responsibility to its citizens: the limits set by ethics and public interest are also valid for a liberal economy. It is the state’s duty to get rid of those concentrations of power in industry and in the financial sector which are only artificial products of economic imperialism.36 De Gasperi came under attack for the economic policy of his first government from two sides. The criticism came mainly from the left wing of the DC, that is to say from the group around Dossetti and the trade unionist Giovanni Gronchi, and the right wing,

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which was supported by the Italian employers’ association Confindustria. While the necessary pointers for the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society were successfully laid in the first post-war years, the arguments within the DC were about the long-term role of the state in the Italian economy. Dossetti, Fanfani and Moro accused De Gasperi of under-emphasizing the social responsibility of Christians to society. In order to even out the social inequalities of the free market, the group around Dossetti pleaded for an economic policy of state intervention and the nationalization of companies. His followers’ ideas for economic policy were discussed in countless articles in the Cronache Sociale. Despite certain programmatic differences within this group, they mostly drew on the economic theories of the left-liberal John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge in Britain.37 ‘First the person and then the market’ was the credo of Dossetti’s followers. Their approach was thus opposed to that of the members of government who were responsible for economic and financial policy: Luigi Einaudi, Piero Malvestiti and most importantly Giuseppe Pella, who were trusted by De Gasperi. This government’s programme became known as the linea Einaudi. In the early years, it was marked mainly by the combating of inflation, credit restrictions for banks and measures promoting industrial development in the south. These measures, as well as land reform, introduced and carried out under Antonio Segni’s leadership, formed the basis for the swift reconstruction of the Italian economy, which experienced its first high point in 1947 when Italy became a member of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Initiated by De Gasperi, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno was founded in 1950 as an independent body under public law in order to promote economic development in the south of Italy. It was to work hand in hand with the ministries’ development policies for the south. This project was so ambitious that it comprised 42 per cent of Italian territory and 37 per cent of the Italian population in 1950.38 This hybrid economic system was opposed by the groups around Grossetti and Gronchi. They argued that profit-making should not dominate economic policy-making, which should be exclusively directed towards the common good. In order to achieve social and economic equality for all citizens state intervention had to be extended, Gronchi demanded with the support of Christian trade unionists.39 At the meeting of the DC Congress of its consiglio nazionale from 14 to 16 January 1951, there was an open confrontation between the Dossetti group, Gronchi and De Gasperi’s followers, almost leading to a split in the party. The reason for the confrontation was the imminent parliamentary debate about Pella’s fiscal policy. His policy, which was exclusively directed towards the stabilization of the Italian currency, the lira, was strongly attacked by the left wing and also by the so-called Vespa group. This was a heterogeneous group of right-wing conservative parliamentarians within the DC, who saw themselves as a lobby group for the farmers from the south. The group accused Pella of his policy of credit restriction and currency stability being counterproductive to the development of the south. While the DC’s left wing saw Pella’s policies preventing an extension of state intervention and the realization of greater social justice, the DC’s right wing complained that his policies violated the freedom of the economy, hindered necessary investments, and at the end of the day damaged mediumsized and family-owned industry. De Gasperi pointed out in his contribution that an


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extension of state intervention would decisively weaken Italy’s position on the world market, as it could result in the withdrawal of foreign capital. Pella’s policy of stabilization, he added, was the prerequisite for boosting private initiative in Italy, which would create the foundation for a strong, prosperous economy.40 De Gasperi eventually won the support of Confindustria by getting the party to swear allegiance again to his government’s economic policy and fending off a split.41 The subsequent success of De Gasperi’s policy showed that it had been the right one. Italy experienced its so-called ‘economic miracle’ in 1957–58 and completed the transformation from an agrarian state to an industrial state as a result of the strategic decisions made between 1947 and 1954.42 With De Gasperi’s resignation and the assumption of the DC leadership by the second generation, whose leaders, with the exception of Andreotti, came from Dossetti’s school of thinking, and whose organizational platform was the corrente (or wing), Iniziativa Democratica, Dossettiinspired politics made more and more headway at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s under Amintore Fanfani and Aldo Moro. The statecontrolled enterprises that had up until that time belonged to Confindustria were taken out of the control of the employers’ association and placed under the direct control of the state. Fanfani thus reduced the influence of Confindustria, whose members had up until then made the biggest donations to the DC. Fanfani placed state enterprises as well as the Cassa under the direct control of the state and the DC and installed his followers in the leading positions in these enterprises and organizations. Thus he also ensured the DC its own financial basis, independent of Confindustria. Under Moro, who was secretarygeneral of the DC from March 1959 to January 1964 and minister president of three governments between 1963 and 1968, yet another sphere was brought under the direct control of the state with the nationalization of the energy sector. Moro’s leitmotif was that ‘the market must be directed by political decisions’.43 The course of the Dossetti followers and their corrente, Iniziative Democratica, was not uncontested within the DC, however. It was attacked from the left by the corrente, Base. The Base had been formed by DC members who found Fanfani and Moro too pragmatic and who saw themselves as Dossetti’s true heirs. Their resistance to the economic policy of the Fanfani and Moro governments can be aptly described as ‘fundamental opposition’. Beyond the nationalization of further sectors of industry, the Base really wanted the transformation of the middle-class liberal state to benefit the working class.44 The economic policy of Moro’s governments was attacked from the right from the corrente, Primavera, which was led by Andreotti. Along the lines of De Gasperi’s policies, this group stood for the idea of a free market in the sense of classical economic liberalism.45 Over the years, it became clear that Dossetti’s ideas had been and were being perverted by DC politicians. Nationalization and stronger state regulation of the free market served only to benefit the party in general and the leaders of its wings, as the top posts in the economy were no longer filled by specialists, but taken by party members who misused their positions in order to finance their political ambitions.46 With the so-called apertura a sinistra, this patronage-based economic system was extended to the Socialists, who then helped uphold it so that up until way into the 1980s a wide party consensus existed supporting this system.

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EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AS A FUNCTION OF NATIONAL POLITICS During the Second World War, Catholic resistance fighters had already been mulling over how a new catastrophe in the form of a third world war could be prevented in the future. The DC had already spoken out in 1943 in its Milan programme for a federation of free European states with a direct representation of the people alongside the national governments, and with a European as well as national citizenship.47 The DC’s aims in this respect were broadly in line with the ideas that were being discussed in most European resistance groups and anti-communist circles at this time.48 A European federation was often seen as a way out of the seeming malaise of the nation-state and a solution to rivalries and security dilemmas between the European states.49 European integration should also contribute to Italy, as a defeated nation, not being discriminated against in comparison with other European states.50 Such discrimination against the Italian nation and its people would, De Gasperi feared, bring with it the danger of dwindling support for the idea of a European federation.51 European integration was, for De Gasperi, a way to strengthen the nation-state, not to replace it.52 Alongside the political advantages De Gasperi also linked concrete economic aims to the participation of Italy. The freedom of Italians to work in other countries in a possible European federation could ease the burden of unemployment, which was a grave problem at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s.53 In order to be able to realize both aims of Italian European policy, De Gasperi repeatedly insisted that economic integration should be accompanied by political integration as both were ‘mutually inter-dependent’.54 The importance De Gasperi placed on the idea of European unity is also reflected in the fact that he personally led the Italian delegation at the European Congress of the European federalists in Aachen in 1948. The idea of integration based on Christian, ‘occidental’ values was not decisive for him or for most other DC politicians. It was rather power politics that motivated the DC’s European policy. European integration was, to a certain extent, a ‘non-subject’ within the DC up until about 1948–49. There were no discussions worth mentioning, let alone debates about it between the different wings of the party. Domestic policy issues were the subject of intense discussions within the party at that time. This changed, however, as the East-West conflict entered a new phase.55 The integration of Italy into ‘Europe’ and its reliance on NATO, created in 1949, became a function of the Italian security concept. An integrated Western Europe should be a counterweight to the imperialistic Soviet Union. It should also promote economic prosperity in Italy to fend off the danger of a Communist takeover. This was all the more important after De Gasperi had dismissed the Communists from the initially broad-based governmental coalition.56 In the following period, the Italian government launched a series of initiatives that all aimed at the strengthening of West European collaboration. One of these was the project for an Italian-French customs union in 1947. In August 1948, a memorandum then followed to the French government in which the Italians propagated the idea of a gradual transformation of the Organization of European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) into a military, cultural and political organization. De Gasperi immediately reacted to Robert


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Schuman’s initiative of May 1950 for the founding of a European Coal and Steel Community. He let the French government know through the Italian ambassador in Paris, Pietro Quaroni, just one day after the publicizing of the Schuman initiative to the French government, that Italy would participate in any negotiations. This was despite the fact that Italy had no coal and only limited steel production.57 In the following period, under the leadership of De Gasperi, Italy developed into one of the strongest supporters of the idea of European integration, especially in security and defence.58 Italy’s entry into NATO came up against hefty criticism within the neutralist pacifistic currents in the DC, however. They feared that the integration of Italy into Western security structures would result in intensifying conflicts between Democrats and Communists in Italy59 and make the Italian government too dependent on the United States.60 This section of the DC did support the idea of economic integration with supranational elements, however. They expected it to ensure peace in Europe through a federal structure within which national sovereignty would be limited to only the absolutely necessary.61 But as the prospect of a neutral Italy, which should have taken on a mediating role in the East-West conflict, increasingly proved illusory, most exponents of the left wing of the DC changed course and accepted the political and military reality as well as the limited room for manoeuvre that Italy had under these conditions. Fanfani and Moro carried on De Gasperi’s policy of Western integration. They also let themselves be guided by the principle that Europe’s political integration, which both supported, should not develop in opposition to the United States, as a withdrawal of the Americans from Europe would weaken Italian security considerably. The DC experienced no arguments between so-called ‘Gaullists’ and ‘Atlanticists’. In contrast to the West German CDU only individual politicians, such as Mario Scelba, saw in de Gaulle’s efforts to transform the transatlantic relationship from being asymmetric to more symmetric a policy that would benefit all European nations.62 One essential element of Italian Western integration was the aim of equality with West Germany and France. To prevent the emergence of informal Franco-German power structures at the expense of Italy, the Italian political elite supported an ever greater institutionalization of integration.63 Most Christian Democrats as well as Socialists treated de Gaulle’s attempts to establish French supremacy in Western Europe with mistrust. They also viewed critically de Gaulle’s approaches to West Germany to form the nucleus of a West European counterweight to the United States. De Gaulle’s trip to Germany from 4 to 9 September 1962 gave rise to great controversy in Italy about the emergence of a new bilateral ‘Axis’.64 What is interesting in relation to all of this is that in 1962, Fanfani turned down an offer from de Gaulle for closer French-German-Italian collaboration.65 Fanfani feared that in such a triangular union, Italy would be marginalized by the French and Germans. It was just as important that the Socialists, who by then tolerated the DC government in Parliament, were also opposed to privileged collaboration between continental European states, as well as to de Gaulle’s political plans for Europe. When de Gaulle held the famous press conference on 14 January 1963, in which he announced the French veto against British entry to the EEC, and when eight days later, on 22 January 1963, the Franco-German Treaty was signed, a storm of indignation broke out in Italy and within the DC.66 The answer Italy was searching for in response to de Gaulle’s challenge lay in

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the inclusion of Britain in the EEC to counterbalance the political weight of the French and the Franco-German relationship. Moro and Fanfani even began to think about a continuation of the integration process, excluding France. This idea was acceptable neither to West Germany nor to the other EEC member states, however.67 It has to be said that there were no real discussions or even controversies in the DC about European policy. Most correnti were too focused on domestic policy issues and consequently did not pay much attention to foreign policy. As long as Italy’s position in the EEC did not appear to be endangered, European policy was left to the minister president in office and his foreign minister. CONCLUSION Looking back at the development of the DC in the first decades after the end of the Second World War, the assumptions made in the introduction about the special position it had within the West European Christian Democratic movement have been confirmed. The DC was the largest, but at the same time most heterogeneous Christian democratic party in Western Europe. The DC spectrum stretched from right-wing conservative clerical positions to socialist-tinted thinking in the Base. The party was only held together by its common opponent, the Communists, as well as by the sinecures distributed among the correnti and their leaders by Fanfani’s and Moro’s governments. As there was thus no alternative to the DC for the various corrente, sharp ideological discussions took place within the party and so strained its internal cohesion enormously, without ever leading to a split, however. Concerning the relationship between Church and party, De Gasperi’s line won through after a phase of intensive debate about the different ideas. De Gasperi strove for the formation of a people’s party that would firmly integrate Catholic voters into Italy’s political system. In the economy, policy change also occurred, at the latest with the change of leadership from De Gasperi to Fanfani. The state increasingly intervened in the country’s economy. His policy was not, however, necessarily intended to transform Italy into a welfare state along the lines of West Germany or the Scandinavian countries. The main motivation for the dirigiste measures were, as has become clear, to be found in the relationship between party, state and industry. European policy finally did not feature greatly in the internal DC discussions. The reason for this was less that there was an intra-party consensus and more that there was not much interest in this policy field. That is why European integration remained the domain of the responsible minister in the DC. Most of the time, European policy was marked by a pronounced passivity. This is not too surprising when Italy’s limited room for manoeuvre as a ‘medium-sized’ power is considered. As long as Italy formally secured equal position alongside West Germany, France and later also Great Britain, in the EEC, there were few incentives for a more proactive role in European politics. With the transformation of world politics in the years 1989–91, the system of coordinates of Italy’s domestic politics and the Italian party system also changed. The external pressure of the existence of the Soviet Union and its satellite the Italian PCI disappeared. Under the pressure of legal persecution of the Christian Democrats’ and


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Socialists’ corruption scandals a process of erosion began within the DC. Initially it was just smaller groups or individuals who left the party, such as the mayor of Palermo, Leo Luca Orlando and Mario Segni with his referendum movement.68 The subsequent defeats in local and regional elections, in which the DC did not even win 10 per cent of the vote in some parts of Italy, promoted intra-party discussion about a new orientation of the partito nazionale. On 18 January 1994, exactly 75 years after the founding of the interwar PPI, the DC was renamed the Partito Popolare Italiano. But even these measures did not stop the process of disintegration the Italian Christian Democrats were experiencing. A small group of more rightwing former DC functionaries and deputies split off from the newly formed PPI and united in the Centro Cristiano Democratico (CCD). This group then swiftly aligned itself to the Polo per le Libertá, led by Silvio Berlusconi, and was represented by ministers and state secretaries in the government formed by the two parties. The coalition question led in the course of time to a renewed split of the PPI. While one group, that around the Milan professor of philosophy Rocco Buttiglione, saw the future of the PPI in an alliance with Berlusconi, a minority of members and the majority of the national leadership pleaded for the participation in the alliance L’Ulivo, which was led by the ex-communists from the Partito Democratico di Sinistra (PDS). Buttiglione and his followers left the PPI as a result and founded the Cristiani Democratici Uniti (CDU), which aligned itself with the Polo. The PPI remained in the shadow of the ‘Olive Tree’ and the elections of 21 April 1996 were won by this coalition. In total, the three parties that had their origins in the DC could win only 12.6 per cent of the votes, the CDU/CCD 5.8 per cent and PPI 6.8 per cent.69 Recently, there has been renewed movement within the Christian Democratic party structures. In mid-February 1998, the former Christian Democratic State President Francesco Cossiga announced the founding of a new liberal-conservative party, the Unione dei Democratici per la Repubblica (UDR). This party’s aim was to build on the ‘positive’ traditions of the DC and to reorganize the political centre in Italy. The majority of CDU members also aligned themselves to this party. Cossiga left it open until the end of that year as to which of the two big ‘blocs’ he would align the UDR. He finally decided to enter the centre-left government led by the former communist Massimo D’Alema.70 For the time being, reorganization of the Christian Democratic parties to unite them appears out of the question. Programmatic ideas are too different and personal animosity between the individual party leaders is too great. Moreover, as a consequence of the end of the East-West confrontation, there is also, at present, no external pressure to unite the different parties. NOTES 1 Hans-Joachim Veen, ‘Einführung’, in idem (ed.), Christlich-demokratische und konservative Parteien in Westeuropa, vol. 3 (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1991), pp. 9–13, here p. 11. 2 For the development of the membership of the DC from 1946 to 1985 see Table 1 in Rudolf Lill and Stephan Wegener, ‘Die Democrazia Cristiana Italiens (DC) und die

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Südtiroler Volkspartei’, in Veen, Christlich-demokratische und konservative Parteien, pp. 17–206, here p. 186. 3 The DC corrente cannot really be compared to West European party ‘wings’, which are rather loose formations of party members and functionaries, as they are unique in being firmly institutionalized groups within the party. They have their own pressagencies and journals as well as their own headquarters and teams. 4 Pasquale Hamel, Nascita di un partito. II processo di aggregazione del partito democratico-cristiano (Florence 1982), p. 42. 5 See Carlo Masala, ‘Italien’, in Werner Weidenfeld (ed.), Europa-Handbuch (Bonn 2000), pp. 116–25. 6 See Ottavio Barié (ed.), L’alleanza occidentale. Nascita e svillupi di un sistema di sicurezza collettiva (Bologna 1988), and Egidio Ortona, Anni D’America 1944–1951 (Bologna 1984). 7 See Eleanora Fumasi, ‘Origine e primi sviluppi della Democrazia Cristiana a Milano’ (1941–1946), Bolletino del’Archivo per la storia del Movimento Sociale Cattolico in Italia, vol. 26, no. 3 (1991), pp. 307–51. 8 For an overview of several other minor, mostly left-wing groups see Francesco Malgeri, La sinistra cristiana (Brescia 1982). 9 For the Guelf movement see Carlo Brezzi, ‘Il gruppo guelfo fra gerarchia ecclesiastica e regime fascista’, in Pietro Scoppola (ed.), I cattolici tra fascismo e democrazia (Bologna 1975), pp. 235–98. 10 See Giulio Andreotti, Intervista su De Gasperi a cura di Antonio Gambino (Rome and Bari 1977), pp. 28–9. 11 See Francesco Malgeri, ‘La Democrazia Cristiana in Italia’, in Emiel Lambert (ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union 1945/1995 (Leuven 1997), pp. 93– 104, here p. 95. 12 See Sandro Magister, La politica vaticana e L’Italia 1943–1978 (Rome 1979), p. 45. 13 The document can be found in Pietro Scoppola’s ‘La Democrazia cristiana in Italia dal 1943 al 1947’, Storia e Politica 32 (1975), pp. 184–5. 14 See Andreotti, Intervista su De Gasperi, p. 22. 15 For Dossetti’s biography see Silvio Tramontin, ‘La Democrazia Cristiana dalla Resistanza alla Repubblica’, in Francesco Malgeri (ed.), Storia della Democrazia Cristiana, vol. 1 (Rome 1987), pp. 13–171, here pp. 151–2. 16 Giorgio La Pira, quoted in Paolo Pombeni, Il Gruppo dossettiano e la fondazione della Democrazia Cristiana Italiana (1938–1948) (Bologna 1979), p. 169. 17 See Amintore Fanfani, ‘Partiti di inspirazione cristiana e Chiesa Cattolica’, Humanitas, vol. 1, no. 2 (1946) pp. 381–5. See for an interpretation of this contribution Pombeni, Il Gruppo, pp. 212–13. 18 See Fanfani, Partiti di inspirazione cristiana, pp. 383–4. 19 See Paolo Pombeni, Le ‘Cronache Sociale’ di Dossetti. Geografia di un movimento di opinione 1947–1951 (Florence 1976). Aldo Moro, Lezione di filosofia del diritto (Bari 1978). See also Paolo Posseti, Storia della DC dalle origini al centro-sinistra, 2nd edn (Rome 1978), pp. 140–2. 20 Aldo Moro, Lezione di filosofia del diritto (Bari 1978). See also Posseti, Storia


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della DC, pp. 140–2. 21 See Giuseppe Dossetti, La Ricerca Costitunte (Bologna 1994). 22 For a history of the Azione Cattolica see Gabriele De Rosa, Storia politica dell’Azione Cattolica in Italia, vol. 2 (Bari 1954), and Luigi Ferrari, L’azione cattolica in Italia dalle origini al ponteficato di Paolo VI (Brescia 1982). 23 Francesco Malgeri, Chiesa, cattolici e democrazia, Da Sturzo a De Gasperi (Brescia 1990), p. 258. 24 See Roberto Sani, Da De Gasperi a Fanfani. La ‘Civilitá Cattolica’ e il mondo cattolico italiano nel secondo dopoguerra (1945–1962) (Brescia 1986), p. 69. 25 Malgeri, Chiesa, cattolici e democrazia, p. 258. 26 ‘Idee sulla Democrazia Cristiana’ (Genova, estate 1944), in Malgeri, Storia della Democrazia Cristiana, vol. 1, pp. 404–10, here pp. 405–6. 27 Alcide De Gasperi, Discorso politici (Rome 1969), p. 166. 28 See Lill and Wegener, ‘Die Democrazia Cristiana Italiens’, p. 128. 29 Vittorio Cappecchi, Il comportamento elettorale in Italia (Bologna 1968), pp. 272– 304. 30 See Andreotti, Intervista su De Gasperi, p. 112. 31 See De Gasperi’s letter to Scelba of 9 June 1952, as well as De Gasperi’s letter to Missiroli of 2 July of the same year in De Gasperi scrive (Rome 1987), vol. 1, p. 208, and vol. 2, p. 302. 32 For Operazione Sturzo see Andrea Riccardi, Il Partito Romano nel secondo dopoguerra 1945–1954 (Brescia 1983). 33 See Gianni Gabet Bozzo, Il partito cristiano e l’apertura a sinistra. La DC di Fanfani e di Moro 1954–1962 (Florence 1977), pp. 15–21. 34 See Giovanni Formigoni, L’azione cattolica italiana (Milan 1988), p. 144. 35 ‘Idee ricostrutive della Democrazia Cristiana’, in Andrea Damilano, Atti e documenti della Democrazia Cristiana, vol. 1 (Rome 1968), pp. 1–8, here pp. 4–5. 36 Ibid., p. 4. 37 See Cronache Sociale 1947–1951. Antologia, vol. 2 (Rome 1961). 38 Sophie G.Alf, Leitfaden Italien. Vom antifaschistischen Kampf zum Historischen Kompromiss (Berlin 1982), p. 137. 39 Lucio Avagliano, ‘Democrazia Cristiana italiana e politiche socio-economiche’, in Lamberts, Christian Democracy in the European Union, pp. 363–8, here p. 364. 40 See Manlio di Lalla, Storia della Democrazia Cristiana, vol. 1 (Casale Monferrato 1979), pp. 365–78. 41 See Giorgio Galli and Piero Facchi, La sinistra democristiana. Storia e ideologia (Milan 1962), p. 113. 42 For the division into periods and economic data from 1947 to 1963 see Paolo Savona, ‘L’Economia italiana negli anni del centrismo’, in Istituto di studi Ugo La Malfa (ed.), 1947 /1958. L’Italia negli anni del centrismo (Rome 1990), pp. 39–49. See also Bruno Bottiglieri, La politica economica dell Italia centrista (1948–1958) (Turin 1984). 43 Quoted from ‘Relazione all’ VII Congresso Nazionale della DC (Napoli 27.–31. Gennaio 1962)’, in Aldo Moro, Scritti e discorsi (1951–1963), vol. 2 (Rome 1982), pp. 96–109.

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44 See Jean-Paul Chassériaud, Le parti Démocrate Chrétien en Italie (Paris 1965), p. 329. 45 See Atti del VII. Congresso Nazionale della DC (Rome 1961). 46 See Ruggero Ofrei, L’Occupazione del potere. I democristiani 45/75 (Milan 1976). 47 ‘Il Programma di Milano della Democrazia Cristiana (25 Luglio 1943)’, in Andrea Damilano, Atti e documenti, vol. 1, pp. 9–11, here p. 9. 48 See Walter Lipgens, Europa-Föderationspläne der Widerstandsbewegungen 1940– 1945 (Munich 1968). For the Italian debate see Sergio Pistone, ‘Die Europa Diskussion in Italien’, in Wilfried Loth (ed.), Die Anfänge der europäischen Integration 1945–1950 (Bonn 1990), pp. 53–68. 49 John H.Herz, Weltpolitik im Atomzeitalter (Stuttgart 1961), pp. 130–1. 50 ‘Programma della Democrazia Cristiana (Gennaio 1944)’, in Andrea Damilano, Atti e documenti, vol. 1, pp. 23–34, here pp. 32–3. 51 In 1950 71 per cent of the Italian population supported European integration. This was more than in any other country in Western Europe (France 56 per cent, Germany 68 per cent); see Europa Federata, no. 22, 20 May 1950. 52 See Giulio Andreotti, De Gasperi e il suo tempo (Milan 1964). 53 The letter can be found in Giuseppe Petrilli, La Politica Estera ed Europea di De Gasperi (Rome 1975), p. 55. 54 Matteo R.Catti, De Gasperi: La nostra Patria Europa (Milan 1969), p. 27. 55 See Werner Link, Der Ost-West Konflikt. Die Organisation der internationalen Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert, 2nd edn (Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne and Mainz 1988) pp. 120–54. 56 See Marco Barbanti, ‘Funzione strategiche dell’anticommunismo nell’ et à del centrismo degasperiano 1948–1953’, Italia contemporanea, vol. 45 (1988), pp. 39– 69. 57 See Bino Olivi, ‘L’Italia e il Mercato europeo’, in Istituto Affari Internazionali (ed.), La politica estera della Reppublica italiana (Milan 1967), pp. 485–534, here p. 493. 58 For the Italian position on the EDC, see Alfredo Breccia, ‘Italien und die Anfänge der EVG’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann and Walter Schwengler (eds), Die Europäische Verteidigungsgemeinschaft. Stand und Probleme der Forschung (Boppard 1985), pp. 177–90. 59 See Guido Formigoni, ‘La sinistra cattolica italiana e il Patto Atlantico (1948– 1949)’, in Barié, L’alleanza occidentale, pp. 209–60. 60 See Corriere della Sera, 30 May 1950. 61 See Q.Tossati on 31 October 1948 quoted from Barié, L’alleanza occidentale, p. 226. 62 See Carlo Masala, Italia und Germania. Die deutsch-italienischen Beziehungen 1963–1969, 2nd edn (Cologne 1998), pp. 43–5. 63 See Maurice Vaïsse, ‘De Gaulle, l’Italie et le projet d’Union Politique Européenne 1958–1963. Chronique d’un échec annoncé’, Revue d’historie moderne et contemporanaine (1995), pp. 658–69. 64 See Il Tempo, 6 October 1962. 65 See Per Fischer, Europäische Politische Union. Entwicklung seit dem Abschluss der


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Römischen Verträge vom 2. März 1963, Stiftung Bundeskanzler Adenauer Haus 12.63/1. 66 See the relevant references in Masala, Italia und Germania, pp. 42–8 and pp. 244– 50. 67 For a more detailed analysis see Carlo Masala, ‘Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Italien und der Beitritt Grossbritanniens zur EWG’, Zeitgeschichte, vol. 25, no. 1/2 (1998), pp. 46–68. 68 See Annette Jünemann, ‘Vom Movimento per la Riforma Elettorale zum Patto per L’Italia: Erfolg und Misserfolg der Referendumsbewegung Mario Segnis’, in Luigi Vittorio Ferraris, Günther Trautmann and Hartmut Ullrich (eds), Italien auf dem Weg zur ‘zweiten Republik’? (Frankfurt/Main 1995), pp. 107–22. 69 For the background to the split see Carlo Masala, ‘Die Christliche Mitte in Italien’, Die politische Meinung, vol. 41, no. 320 (1996), pp. 320, pp. 67–1, and Pietro Scoppola, ‘La Democrazia Cristiana’, in Gianfranco Pasquino (ed.), La Politica Italiana. Dizionario Critico 1945–95 (Rome 1995), pp. 213–45. 70 See Carlo Masala, ‘Italienische Parteien in Bewegung’, Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung—Auslandsinformationen, vol. 14 (1998), pp. 4–19 and idem, ‘Die Europapolitik in den Mitgliedsstaaten der EU: Italien’, in Werner Weidenfeld and Wolfgang Wessels (eds), Jahrbuch der europäischen Integration 1997/98 (Bonn 1998), pp. 347–54, here pp. 351–3.

8 In Conflict with the Communist State: The Catholic Church and Catholic Political Organizations in Poland1 Jan Żaryn

During the Second World War, the Catholic Church in Poland was the victim of terrible persecution, as was the entire nation. In the Western lands occupied by the ‘Third Reich’ from 1939, the Poles were no longer allowed to go to mass or to take confession in the Polish language. Many Polish priests and bishops were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Others, in accordance with the policy of ‘Germanization’ of the country, were chased from their dioceses and forced to hide in central Poland, dubbed by the occupying forces the ‘General Government’. In total, around two thousand Polish priests died in the camps and in public executions, among them five bishops.2 The western part of Poland was occupied by the USSR between 1939 and 1941 and was, from the beginning, subject to strong atheist propaganda. Churches were closed, the goods that belonged to them were plundered and the clergy were cut off from any contact with the Holy See. In 1940, much of the civilian population was deported in atrocious conditions by the Soviet political police, the NKVD, to far-away regions of the USSR. In the years that followed, the eastern part of Poland passed from hand to hand according to the vicissitudes of war. In 1944 the Red Army, allied to the United States and Great Britain, occupied once again the territory east of the River Bug which, before 1939, had belonged to the Second Polish Republic. The NKVD now arrested many members of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church—among others Bishop Adolf Szelążek—and started the total liquidation of the Greek-Catholic Church. Contact between the Polish episcopate and the clergy from the formerly Eastern Polish territories was entirely broken off until 1956.3 In July 1944, the Polish Communists, under protection from the Soviet Communists from the USSR and profiting from the entrance of the Red Army and the NKVD in Poland, created at Lublin the so-called Provisional Government of National Unity. Religious instruction in schools was allowed to recommence as of September 1944. The Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) reopened its doors. At the same time, the NKVD arrested the main leaders of the Resistance. Very quickly, the Nazi concentration camps were turned into Soviet camps for Poles, for example at Majdanek. FIRST POST-WAR YEARS 1944–47 At the end of the war, after the ‘pacification’ of the country and the extermination of


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Polish Jews, Poland, within its new borders, became a homogenous country, almost without ethnic minorities, where 95 per cent of the population was Catholic. According to the Polish Communists’ long-term plans, Catholicism in Poland, as an outdated ideology, had to be systematically eliminated and the Church hierarchy forced to shut themselves away in ‘presbyteries’. But in the first months and even years after the war, the Communists did not dare undertake an open fight against the Church, which was strongly anchored in Polish tradition. In June 1945 representatives of the political majority in Poland, including the Polish Popular Party (PSL) headed by Stanisław Mikołajczyk, former prime minister of the government in London, were admitted to the government on conditions appropriate for political minorities. The Communist Party, with the Red Army and the NKVD at its side, ran all the important ministries in the new government, in particular the army and the security organization, the MBP. Despite the rupture of the concordat with the Holy See by the Provisional Government in September 1945, following the introduction of civil marriages and legal divorce, and although Pope Pius XII became a target of the most virulent Communist propaganda, they still kept the Church estates and even pushed the episcopate to establish a network of parishes in the ‘reclaimed land’ from Germany. This last issue provided a vast field of common interest between the Church and the government. From the east, in the land taken from Poland, flocked thousands of displaced Polish Catholics. They were able to settle in this new and unknown land thanks solely to the presence of the Church. In July 1945 the Primate Cardinal Auguste Hlond returned to Poland, now equipped with great power by the Vatican, after having been imprisoned by the Germans during the war. These special privileges allowed the primate to resolve certain problems—for example, the appointment of apostolic administrators for the whole country, including the ‘reclaimed land’. The weakness of the Polish Communist Party’s repression mechanisms did not allow the government to put up sufficient opposition to these activities. Throughout the country, associations such as the Catholic Youth Association, the altar boys’ groups and the Caritas organization (including Caritas Academica) were all reactivated, as well as elite training groups such as Juventus Christiana and Sodalis Marianum. The diocesan press was restarted, producing, among others, two main weekly publications: Tygodnik Powszechny, linked to the metropolitan Curie of Cracow, and Tygodnik Warszawski, affiliated to the metropolitan Curie of Warsaw.4 However, the government did not quite give permission for the renewal of Catholic Action. They increased the bureaucratic control over the Catholic organizations and never allowed them to formally rely on the law on association, but they could not openly oppose them due to pressure from the general public. The Communists, strong thanks to the Soviet Union but too weak to hinder the renaissance of Catholic life in Poland, mainly erected a barrier against those who wanted to enter politics with the aim of promoting Christian ideas. In July 1945, Karol Popiel, leader of the Catholic Labour Party both before and during the war, returned to Poland from London. The members of his party remained underground. By referring to the decisions of the Moscow conference, Popiel engaged in entirely legal activities but clashed straight away with the opposition of the Communists. The attacks against the Labour Party came from several sides at the same time. First they formed a rival party under Communist control with the same name to confuse its

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members. Its programme and above all its membership gave no guarantee that it would be a Christian or a democratic party. At the same time, the security forces did not allow Popiel’s party to organize a general congress. The majority party in the National Council, created by nomination, the Communists illegally limited the number of parties. Only one Labour Party could be found on the list, which forced Popiel to seek a compromise with the Communists. Therefore, the legally formed Labour Party was very heterogeneous. It included a strong internal force that did not conform to social Christian teachings, and part of its members were linked to the Communist Party. Nevertheless, in the first few months of its existence the party grew significantly through recruiting of members who supported Popiel’s political line. These were mostly workers from Silesia. In the middle of 1946, a coup d’état in the party gave full power to the minority of members who supported communism. In September 1946 the Polish episcopate, who up until then had avoided expressing an opinion on the conflict, published a special communiqué informing the faithful that the Labour Party, despite its historic name, was no longer based on principles which conformed to Catholicism. Popiel’s supporters were forced to emigrate. The man himself left for Rome in 1947. Some—among others young politicians such as Wiełnaw Chrzanowski—found themselves back in the editorial offices of Tygodnik Warszawski. The following year, 1948, they were arrested and imprisoned. After three years of detention, most of the leaders of the Labour Party found themselves in the dock. The infamous trial where Labour Party activists were accused of having collaborated with the German secret police, the Gestapo, ended in verdicts of long years of imprisonment. Most of them did not leave prison until 1956 and some of them died there, including the editor of Tygodnik Warszawski, the prelate Zygmunt Kaczyński.5 The armistice between the Communist state and the Church thus ended in 1947. At the same time, Mikǒłajczyk’s legal party, the Popular Party, was brutally eliminated from political life.6 THE CHURCH AND CATHOLICS IN POLAND 1947–50 The impact of the Church on young people who gathered around it was the biggest problem for the Communists. The Catholics, in principle if not in practice, were still allowed to take part in religious education. They had the right to create Catholic organizations. Caritas was part of the Church and brought aid to people, for example UNRA food parcels. The Church still possessed large amounts of land, which would ensure its financial independence. The Church profited from these privileges as much as possible, against the will of the Communist government, which tried, by resorting to intimidation, to turn young people away from Catholic organizations and including them in an organization exclusively for young people from 1948 onwards: the Union of Young Poles (ZMP). Using the ‘carrot and stick’ method, the ZMP revelled in all the privileges that were refused to others. The secret police controlled Catholic circles, which led to numerous arrests. The board of censors received the order to deal ruthlessly with the Catholic press. All these actions were aimed at discouraging young people from organizing their lives outside state structures where the Communists, at least as of 1948, had complete and incontestable power. Taking into account the impossibility of


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excluding religion from schools, the Communist authorities created new civic schools, with patrons such as the Association of the Friends of Children, an organization dependent on the Communist Party. At the same time, the authorities began a process of systematically running down Catholic convent schools. The Communists also succeeded in weakening the influence of the Church within the scout movement by excluding the chaplains and in 1950, the organization was liquidated. Between 1947 and 1949, the Church protested time and time again against these actions, which deprived Catholics of their rights and were formally assured by the existing legislation. They openly warned the public authorities of the danger of provoking reckless emotional reactions among young people. Discussions between the Church and the state were very difficult. In one of their letters to the government, the Church authorities demanded, inter alia: 1. that Catholic primary and secondary schools and colleges of all kinds can resume their activities as before and profit from the public educational rights in accordance with the current laws; 2. that nursery schools belonging to a certain parish should be preserved… that children should not be sent to nonconfessional schools without the agreement of their parents…5. that Catholic youth should not be forced to join organizations whose ideological aims would be contrary to Catholic theology and that they can associate freely within Catholic organizations.7 The reply to this letter from the bishops asserted that the rights of Catholics had never been damaged and that their attitude was due to their aversion to the regime. In these conditions, a dialogue did not exist. The Communists realized that the strength of Catholicism in Poland resulted from the authority the Church hierarchy, bishops and priests, enjoyed in the nation. Therefore they began, from 1947 onwards, to pit the Polish priests and bishops against each other. It was in Communist propaganda that they first divided the clergy into two groups: the ‘positives’ (progressives) and the ‘reactionaries’. The MBP’s fifth department drew up a plan of oppression that had to be enforced on a clergy already weakened by previous persecutions. Each year the number of priests arrested by the secret police, the UB, grew. First it was the chaplains of the old resistance army, then a bit later the leaders of the youth associations, such as Abbot Tomasz Rostworowski, and school chaplains, such as the priests Leon Pawlina and Leopold Pietroszek, then finally those who had the courage to preach critical sermons or resist the pressure of the security forces. ‘We work on the principle’, declared the minister for public security in March 1949, ‘of setting up a spectacular trial in each district against a member of the clergy. The aim of the proceedings is to undermine the authority of the Church and to cut it off from the masses.’8 The implementation of this plan was quick and decisive. They invented the appropriate documentation and gave each priest a criminal record. In fact, more than 500 members of the clergy found themselves in prison in 1950, and in the years to come that number increased to 1,000. Between 1949 and 1950, the Communists succeeded in creating divisions in the heart of the clergy by forming the movement of ‘patriotic priests’, to which numerous privileges were granted, such as freedom of the press,


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reduction in taxes, and other bonuses. In July 1949, a joint commission was set up for talks between the Church and the government. It was made up of three bishops and three government representatives. After three months, the episcopate was forced to sign a declaration where certain paragraphs compromised the clergy. The propaganda side of this document was designed to stifle opposition from the people. The Communists were double-dealing: on the one hand they were putting into place new statutes, limiting the rights of the Church, and on the other hand they were declaring that the conflict would be over as soon as an ‘agreement’ between the Church and the state was signed. In the last months of 1949, the remaining Catholic associations were liquidated by the bishops, under pressure from the Communists. All religious gatherings were forbidden, with the exception of the procession of Corpus Christi. Repressive measures against priests increased. Finally, in January 1950, the government got their hands on the Caritas organization. Faced with protests from the Church hierarchy, the Communists imposed fines on priests who dared to read bishops’ letters in church. Little by little the state seized all of the Church’s possessions. It threatened to close the seminaries and convents but did not dare do it yet, taking into account public opinion. However, these threats seemed real enough in the light of what was happening in Czechoslovakia at the time.9 The example of the routed Czech Church and the difficult experiences at the beginning of 1950 in Poland eventually led Primate Archbishop Stefan Wyszyński to make an arrangement with the Communist authorities. This ‘agreement’ of 14 April 1950, considered by the Communists as a modus vivendi between the state and the Church in Poland, was in reality an agreement signed by the Church under severe pressure. The episcopate’s aim was to gather strength before new repressions, which it foresaw. Through this document, the Church undertook to respect the civil authorities. It promised not to hinder the collectivization of agriculture and declared that it was against ‘banditry’, that is to say any armed activity. The episcopate promised to extract from the Vatican the establishment of permanent dioceses in the formerly German Western and Northern Polish territories. These decisions were seen by the people as legitimate and did no harm to the authority of the Church in Poland. The state, for its part, allowed the continued presence of religion in schools and freedom of the Catholic press. The episcopate was also allowed to keep up its relations with the Vatican. Shortly afterwards, the Communist authorities broke these guarantees. Paradoxically, it was just the signing of the ‘agreement’ that unleashed the greatest persecution. Primate Wyszyński wrote in his letter to the Vatican in July 1950: ‘We live here under conditions of a permanent revolution of Communist law, which has no relationship with any normal judicial system, neither with the kinds of institutions recognized in the West.’10 THE MOST DIFFICULT YEARS 1950–56 In the middle of 1950, the Communist authorities decided to start a new attack on the Catholic Church in Poland. This policy reflected the general policy of a state dominated by one party, the Polish Union Workers’ Party (PZPR), which removed from public life all enemies of the system, real or imagined. They began the collectivization of rural


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property, against the will of its owners. They reformed education by exchanging the academic and teaching staff and replacing the older ones with young Marxists. In the world of art, they condemned anything that was incompatible with socialist realism and in literature and the cinema they introduced politically charged works that were to reinforce the regime. But one of the key elements in this battle to create a ‘new man’ was to deprive the Church of its influence on the people. From 1950 to 1955, the authorities systematically eliminated religion from state schools while closing the few convent schools that were left. In 1950 alone around 500 priests were forced out of schools. In 1952, in certain regions of Poland such as Silesia, there was no religion in schools any longer. The authorities allowed the Catholic University of Lublin to remain open, but some of the professors were forced to take early retirement in 1954, and degrees from the university were not accepted for jobs in state institutions. In a totalitarian country, there were not many other posts available, however. They also closed the seminaries for the clergy and pressured young people to join the ZMP, the only legal organization. Despite this policy, the number of priests actually increased from 1945 to 1952 and again from 1970; in 1945 there were only 8,800 priests in the dioceses, in 1958 there were almost 13,000 and in 1971 more than 14,000. In the middle of 1950, the Communists profited from the recognition of East Germany by Poland to initiate a conflict between the Polish episcopate and the Vatican to damage the autonomy of the Church. They insisted that Primate Wyszyński himself appoint bishops for or Northern and Western Poland. Given the impossibility of the task, because the appointment of bishops was a matter for the Pope, the Communist authorities proceeded to arrest the apostolic administrators appointed by Cardinal Hlond in August 1945. They then forced the chapters to elect new ones. Primate Wyszyński, wanting to avoid a schism in the Polish Church, accepted this election and arrived in Rome in April 1951 to obtain from the Pope a possible compromise or even the permanent confirmation of the old administrators. The Vatican’s attitude was enough for the Communists to accuse it of being ‘on the side of the Nazis’. The Church in Poland could not defend the Vatican because of the strict censorship. At the same time, its efforts to maintain relations with the West, including the Vatican, were presented by propaganda as a ‘betrayal of the nation’s interests’. The Communists’ aim was not to ease the conflict but to aggravate it. In January 1951, the Communists arrested the bishop of Kielce, Czesław Kaczmarek, who was subjected to two years of torture and finally sentenced to twelve years in prison.11 Almost at the same time they started to arrest other members of the clergy from the Curie of Cracow, accused of treason, espionage and the illegal possession of US dollars. The trials of the clergy reported by the state-controlled press, based on false testimonies, were aimed at undermining the authority of the Church, intimidating priests and bishops and forcing the primate to change his policy towards the state. From 1949, the Communists supported the movement of ‘patriotic priests’—around 40 people initially, but rising to 1,000 by 1953.12 Having identified supporters of the regime among the priests, the Communists proclaimed a decree on 9 February 1953 concerning the appointment of clerics, from parish priests to bishops. The Church was considered as one of the institutions subject to government authority: in the future, it would use it as a tool for spreading propaganda, following the example of the Soviet Union and the Orthodox Church. The primate and all the bishops strongly protested against the


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interference of an atheist state in the internal organization of the Church. In a letter dated 8 May 1953, addressed to the government, they wrote: If it so happens that conditions render it impossible to appoint to ecclesiastical posts appropriate, just and competent people, we have decided to leave these posts vacant rather than entrust to unworthy hands the destiny of souls. If anyone dares take up a post from other hands than ours, let him know that he deserves the high penalty of excommunication from the Church.13 At the same time, always with a view to reaching a compromise, the bishops gave their permission for the clergy to swear an oath to the state. The Communists saw this concession as a sign of weakness and asked for complete submission to the decree. Furthermore, they insisted that the episcopate condemn Bishop Kaczmarek. Not having got what they wanted, the Communist authorities arrested Cardinal (from 1952) Wyszyński during the night of 25 September 1953 and deported him to a secret place. For two years the primate was entirely cut off from any communication with his colleagues. Imprisoned first at Rywałd, then at Stoczek Warmiński where, because of the dampness of the ruined convent, he fell seriously ill, the primate was transferred to Prudnik Sląski and, towards the end of 1955, Komańcza.14 The Church hierarchy in Poland was now without a leader.

THE PAX ASSOCIATION 1945–5615 In 1948, after the liquidation of the weekly newspaper Tygodnik Warszawski and the imprisonment of its editors, when in turn Tygodnik Powszechny refused to take part in political dialogue with the Communists, there remained in Poland only one legal Catholic group linked to the journals Dziś i Jutro and Słowo Powszechne. Its leader, Boleslaw Piasecki, had already been known before the war as a right-wing politician. In 1944, Piasecki, who had been hiding in the vicinity of Warsaw, fell into the hands of the NKVD and was delivered to the Polish Communists. Piasecki was freed after several months of imprisonment. In November 1945, he and his friends received permission to publish a weekly review and, two years later, a magazine. This group, which in 1951 took the name of PAX, stated from the beginning that collaboration with the Communist regime was possible ‘for the recovery of Poland’—yet a Poland dominated by the Communists. With this so-called ‘realist’ approach, PAX tried to attract members of the Catholic intelligentsia. It clearly differed from the principles of the Labour Party, which was based on the socio-economic doctrine of the Church and criticized the Communist revolution. PAX activists took part in discussions on the value of the Communist regime and economic problems. They hoped to be able to ‘civilize’ the Communists while keeping their freedom to express themselves. They believed in the possibility of a co-existence between two ideologies: Christian and Marxist. This agreement between PAX and the Communists was interpreted differently by each of the two partners but always in a utilitarian manner. The authorities wanted, thanks to this Catholic group, to demolish the thick wall of anti-Communist opposition created by the Polish intelligentsia and the


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Church hierarchy. Piasecki’s group dreamed of setting up a ‘second force’ in Poland, an autonomous empire within a totalitarian state. The Communists, however, had more means by which to achieve their goals. The opinion of the Church hierarchy on the subject of PAX was clearly expressed by the primate on 12 February 1950 while the state was bringing Caritas under its control: ‘The members of PAX have taken upon themselves the role of a Trojan horse, with the aim of breaking the solidarity of Polish Catholics.’16 During the first phase of its activity up until 1955, the PAX Association gathered together people from different political backgrounds and at least two generations. Among the closest collaborators of Piasecki were his friends from before the war and from the time of the German occupation (Jerzy Hagmajer, Zygmunt Przetakiewicz) but also others, for example Witold Bieńkowski, member of the Żegota organization during the war, created to help Jews, and Alexsander Bocheński, follower of Marshal Józef Piłsudski. There were also young people, for example Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who became prime minister in 1989, and those who had just come out of the Resistance (Andrzej Micewski, Janusz Zabłocki, Ryszard Reiff). The PAX Association had a great influence on the Polish intelligentsia, especially on those who had political ambitions. PAX had an important economic base, the businesses INCO-Veritas, a publishing institute, l’Instytut Wydawniczy PAX, and national and local press offices. PAX was also represented in Parliament, with three deputies in 1947, which allowed the Association to set up certain initiatives. Piasecki constantly emphasized the independence of his organization. For example, he hired people who had come out of Communist prisons to work in his businesses, people for whom there was no work in state companies. Piasecki, who was in contact with the head of the MBP’s fifth department, Colonel Luna Brystygier, sometimes intervened in favour of political detainees, sometimes even successfully. All the positive aspects of PAX’s activities, however, could not hide the political price they had to pay. As of 1948, the state authorities entered into open conflict with the Catholic Church in Poland. From the beginning, Catholics who had taken part in charity work under various guises or even those who had expressed their religious feelings without the agreement of the state were reproached by the Communists. The propaganda held the episcopate wholly responsible for the bad relations between the state and the Church. The complicated policy of the Vatican concerning the ecclesiastical organization of Northern and Western Poland provided the Communists with a good pretext. The PAX publications sided with the state on these issues. In 1950 PAX activists also supported the imposition of state control over Caritas, which up until then had belonged to the Church. Caritas had several hundred community centres, homes for mothers and children and orphanages, indispensable after the enormous losses of the war. The members of PAX, worried about what would become of them, decided to get involved in the reorganization of Caritas. In this way, Catholic solidarity was broken. They split in two: some approved of the bishops’ firm attitude, others accepted the compromise with a view to saving what could still be saved. From the very beginning, PAX emphasized the progressive nature of its activities. Through these actions they wanted to charm the left-wing intellectuals from the West, for example Emmanuel Mounier’s review Esprit.17 In 1954 Piasecki published the book Zagadnienia istotne. He opposed the binary opposition of capitalism or socialism,


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supporting a Catholic-Marxist alliance—a third way. He considered himself to be the leader of this movement.18 The Holy See, fearing the progression of communism from the East towards the West and critical of the moral relativism in Piasecki’s work, saw his ideas as subversive and extremely dangerous. On 19 June 1955 they condemned Piasecki’s book and the weekly review Dziś i Jutro. The PAX activists submitted to this decision without, however, changing their convictions. In 1955, some of the members of PAX—Zabłocki, Mazowiecki and others—began to criticize their leader from within the Association. Up until then, Piasecki’s authority had never been challenged by his followers. This first revolt ended with the opponents being expelled from the group. This decision had serious consequences for PAX and for the future of lay Catholics in Poland. Alongside the ‘progressive Catholics’ another group was set up, in competition with this organization. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 1956–66 After the twentieth conference of the Soviet Communist Party in early 1956, during which Khrushchev publicly revealed some of Stalin’s crimes, the Communist regime in Poland entered a deep crisis, made worse by the disastrous economic situation in the country. The powerful elites, rejecting all responsibility for Stalin’s crimes, gave a little bit more freedom to the press, who up until then had been able to report only the officially prescribed versions of the facts. All activists from the resistance army, including the priests, were freed from the prisons. At the same time, a wave of prisoners from the gulags came from Russia to Poland. The Communists wanted controlled reform aimed at altering the ‘true socialist’ system, but in practice this control escaped the hands of the Communists, in Moscow as well as in several satellite countries.19 The people of Poland, in the months following the Soviet party congress, expressed their economic, political and religious needs more and more openly. But the Communists, although divided, in looking for the people’s support did not yet see the necessity of changing their policy towards the Church. ‘The thaw has not yet reached the Church’s door,’ noted Bishop Choromański in September 1956.20 From 1955 onwards, the Polish bishops prepared the nation to celebrate some important anniversaries for the Catholic Church in Poland, in particular the three hundredth anniversary of the solemn Vows of Jean Casimir, king of Poland, in Lwów in 1656, the twentieth anniversary of the Polish Youth Vows at Jasna Góra in 1936 and the tenth anniversary of the consecration of the nation in the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary. The main festivities had to take place at Jasna Góra on 26 August 1956, a day consecrated to the Virgin of Czestochowa. Although the censored press did not give out any information about these demonstrations, nearly a million followers turned up at the sanctuary on the day. At the last minute they laid on extra trains and were allowed to stock up Czestochowa because it was invaded by pilgrims. The walk from the station to the sanctuary through the Avenue of the Saint Virgin Mary, around two kilometres, lasted two and a half hours. The high point of the demonstration was the reading aloud of a speech on the Vows of the Nation, written for this occasion by the imprisoned primate. The absence of the cardinal was marked by a bouquet of flowers placed on a chair,


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topped with a canopy.21 When, in October 1956,22 the political crisis broke out in Poland that led to Władysław Gomułka becoming the leader of the Communist Party, it became clear that the primate had to be released. Gomułka accepted all the conditions. On 28 October 1956 the primate was already at Warsaw. Concerning relations between the state and the Church, the period from 1956 to 1958 is considered as one of a certain normalization. In fact, the cardinal, by his personal authority, supported Gomułka, whose fall would have led to either direct Soviet intervention or a return to the old Stalinist regime. These two options, ghosts of the past, became more and more real as Polish claims for freedom intensified. The primate, unlike József Mindszenty in Hungary, looked to soothe political ambitions while taking care to enlarge the freedom of the Church. From November 1956 the Joint Commission of bishops and state representatives began its work, which co-ordinated the conditions of the return of the bishops to their posts in the dioceses, including in the ‘reclaimed land’. Religion returned to schools. In January 1957, the primate gave his support to Gomułka’s group in inviting all believers, for the first and last time, to vote in elections for the Diet. The text for the Vows of Jasna Góra on 26 August 1956 constituted the basis for the entire religious programme of the Great Novena from 1957 to 1965. The aim of this programme was to prepare a Catholic people spiritually for the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of its baptism in 966. The Great Novena was set up by the primate Wyszyński during a period of political crisis which affected the structures of the Communist Party and the totalitarian state. The authorities were forced to grant temporary concessions. In official party documents they noted that ‘during the difficult period we have experienced in 1956 and 1957, the appetite of the Catholic hierarchy has increased considerably’.23 In 1958, the Gomułka group returned, as far as its religious policy was concerned, to the Stalinist period. The Communists undertook a planned attack on the positions secured by the Catholics. As at the beginning of the notorious restrictions in this area, the militia violently forced their way into the monastery at Jasna Góra in July 1958 and the civil servants, from the MBP, now called the SB, occupied the primate’s Institute and arrested all its employees, both priests and laymen. Most of the restrictions that affected the Church from 1958 to 1966 were aimed at a return to the pre1956 situation. In 1961 they eliminated religion from state schools once and for all. Children’s catechism could continue only in churches. They reinforced once again the ‘patriotic priest’ movement, whose organizational base was now the state-controlled Caritas. Furthermore, they again tried to differentiate between the ‘progressive’ bishops—Archbishop Karol Wojtyła was initially considered as one of these—and those who were ‘backward’, such as Primate Wyszyński. In the policy of the state towards the Church there was one new fact: the creation of a permanent committee for the clergy, subject to the control of the socio-administrative department of the PZPR’s Central Committee. This committee made strategic decisions and drew up instructions and directives, which were implemented through various bodies, in particular the Office of Religion and the Ministry for Home Affairs, or more practically by the SB’s fourth department during 1962–88. From 1958 onwards, the authorities clearly once again saw the Catholic Church as an enemy of the regime. The Communists, in their objective of making the Polish nation atheist, clashed with


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the Great Novena carried out by the primate. From 1959 onwards, every year for ten years, every first Sunday after 3 May, followers from all over Poland renewed their Vows of the Nation. In the Polish Millennium year 1966, the festivities marking the end of the Novena took place in all the main towns of the dioceses.24 Each time, the occasion was presided over by Cardinal Wyszyński, who accompanied, along with his followers, the copy of the Black Virgin on its pilgrimage. This daring programme, uniting the whole nation around religious and patriotic symbols, prompted an agitated reaction by the Communist authorities. In fact, the police at one point ‘arrested’ the Black Virgin, transported by car, and made it an ‘internee’. Evidently, the aim of the Great Novena programme was not only to deepen the religious training of the Polish people, but also to confront the daily reality of a system of Socialist realism and Communist propaganda that persuaded citizens, especially young people, that they should live without religion. To rival the Millennium of the Baptism, the government authorities organized a lay programme of festivities linked to the thousandth anniversary of the creation of a Polish state. Although 1966 was not actually the historic date of this event, it was necessary at all costs to counterbalance the religious festivities. The fourth session of the Second Vatican Council coincided in Poland with the preparations by the episcopate to celebrate the Millennium of the Baptism of the Nation. On this occasion, the Polish bishops sent invitations to all members of the episcopate taking part in the Council. But one proved to be of the utmost importance—the one sent to the bishops of Germany in November 1965. The Polish bishops made themselves spokesmen for a large portion of the Polish people who, bullied by censorship, could not express themselves freely. They first of all put forward the Polish point of view on the harm done by Germans to the Polish nation, but they also drew their attention to the positive aspects of German-Polish relations, finishing with the observation that the Germans had also suffered outrages, with the famous closing phrase: ‘We hold out our hands to forgive you and ask that you forgive us.’25 This letter, aside from its religious and ecclesiastical content, reminded the Germans and the Poles that they shared a common interest in the re-creation of a European civilization. During the time of the Berlin wall and the Iron Curtain, the bishops’ letter was like an invigorating breath of freedom. The contents of this letter, falsely reported by the press with the intention of harming the bishops, were seen by the authorities as a crime of high treason. The Communist press profited from a historically motivated and understandable antagonism between the Poles and the Germans to discredit the episcopate in the eyes of the people. The Communists accused the bishops of calling into question the western borders of Poland, of forgetting the losses of their nation and, above all, of having spoken out on a matter that was not within their competence but was a matter for the state. At the same time, the Communists prepared a new attack against the Church, the results of which were felt in 1966 when the rival festivities took place at the same locations and the same dates as the religious festivities, leading in some cases to confrontations. The primate recalled in his memoirs: Vespers was taken by Archbishop Wojtyła. Just when we started singing to salute the Holy Scrament, we heard the gunfire greeting Marshal Marian Spychalski who, at the adjacent square of Liberation, was leading the


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demonstrations for the millennium of the Polish State. It was a strange effect, this song accompanied by gunfire. Shortly afterwards, the guns stopped firing but the singing continued …[At Poznan] people were offended by these political demonstrations imposed by the Party, ready to explode.26

CATHOLIC PUBLIC LIFE 1956–65 In the autumn of 1956, various independent groups started to organize themselves into Catholic clubs. In a short time there were several dozen throughout the country. Belonging to these clubs were not only former activists, who at this time were getting out of Stalinist prisons, but also journalists from Tygodnik Powszechny and breakaway members from PAX. There were also adult activists of the Second Republic from before 1939 and those from the new generation, who had become adults either directly after the war or during the 1950s. Young people who had not experienced Stalinism now dominated public life with their activities. The Clubs for Catholic Intelligence (KIK)27 were led by people close to Jerzy Zawieyski, which in a large part determined the composition of these clubs and their character. Yet the government authorities limited the activities of the clubs. They only obtained permission to have five clubs in the whole country, at Warsaw, Cracow, Wroclaw, Poznan and Torun. The rest were disbanded, which meant there was no longer such lively activity as at the beginning. At the same time, Zawieyski’s group obtained permission to put people forward for election to the Diet. In fact, deputies from the group—eleven people at the most—found themselves in the Diet in January 1957. In September 1957 the Warsaw branches of ZNAK and KIK received permission to produce a new monthly publication, Więź, aimed at the Catholic intelligentsia. At the same time within the Warsaw branch of KIK, a commercial business was set up, Libella, thanks to state approval.28 This group, through having an economic base, became the Communists’ strongest partner and a rival to PAX. The deputies of ZNAK wavered, during the 1960s, between the raison d’être of the Socialist state and faithfulness to the Church hierarchy.29 The group’s leaders set their hopes on the Second Vatican Council. In their opinion, changes within the Church in Poland were too slow and it was the fault of the primate, who had set himself up as spokesman for a ‘popular’ and conservative Church. At the end of the day, the political activities of the ZNAK deputies and group had little influence. On the other hand, the very existence of the group acted as security for those who worked in the editorial offices of Tygodnik Powszechny in Cracow and those who belonged to the Catholic clubs. It was especially important in Warsaw, where they organized courses for the members of the club, summer camps for young people and pilgrimages to Jasna Góra. THE CHURCH IN POLAND AFTER THE 1960S In the 1970s, the Polish government, led by Edward Gierek and his team of ‘pragmatists’, tried to open up towards the West while still keeping a centralized economic system. Policy concerning the Church became in certain respects more flexible, whereas in others


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it remained as uncompromising as in the past. The right of the Catholic Church to own property was recognized by the state in 1971, as well as its right to possess estates in northern and western Poland. Towards the end of 1972, the government had talks with the Vatican in order to renew diplomatic relations. This was possible thanks to several events which preceded this dialogue. In May 1972, the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany ratified the treaty that had been concluded with Poland in December 1970. According to the terms of this document, Germany recognized de facto for the first time since the Second World War the new German-Polish border. This allowed the Vatican to set up permanently dioceses on this territory. At the same time, the Vatican announced that the diplomatic mission of Kazimierz Papée, ambassador to the Polish government in exile, was drawing to a close. The ice was now broken between Communist Poland and the Vatican. However, almost no other progress was made. The Vatican was always informed by Primate Wyszyński of the real situation of the Church in Poland: the authorities continued to refuse the building of new churches. Clerics had to do military service and were subjected to tough indoctrination and atheism. During the 1970s, confrontations between the state and the Church were mostly about the education of young people and family issues. Controversies also arose over the subject of Communist propaganda, which was becoming more and more blatently untruthful and ignorant of the social realities. From 1974 to 1976, in a series of sermons, the primate ‘defended the rights of the Church, of Man and of the Nation’.30 In 1976, at Radom and in other towns, the workers protested against the increase in price of consumer goods. As a result of the repression imposed by the state, intellectuals and young opponents of the regime, such as Antoni Macierewicz, Piotr Naimski, Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik, stood up for the workers. Members of the clergy, especially Father Jan Zieja and Abbots Jacek Salij and Ludwik Wiśniewski, took part in this movement alongside laymen such as Mazowiecki and Chrzanowski. Organizations independent from the regime were created: Komitet Obrony Robotników (KOR), Ruch Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela (ROPCIO), Konfederacja Polski Niepodległej (KPN), Ruch Młodej Polski (RMP) and others, to help prisoners and their families, to inform public opinion on the political situation and to publish uncensored opposition literature. During the 1970s, the activity of the Catholic lay members, especially that of young people supported by the Church, grew rapidly. In church halls they organized religious songs, music festivals and, from 1975 onwards, ‘Christian Culture Weeks’, which broke the regime’s monopoly on culture. Youth camps, called ‘Oases’, multiplied, as well as other forms of organization for Catholic young people, for example the pilgrimage to Jasna Góra, which went from Warsaw to Częstochowa each year in August. In these conditions, the news that Cardinal Wojtyła had been elected as the new Pope created hope. The following year, Pope John Paul II visited his native land from 2 to 10 June 1979 and won over the population. He was an inspiration for the Solidarity movement and contributed to the fall of communism. During the period of legal activity of Solidarity between September 1980 and 13 December 1981, power fell into the hands of General Wojciech Jaruzelski and his team. The Church supported the democratic changes brought about by demonstrations and strikes, while keeping a close watch on any bloody repression. From 1981 to 1989 martial law was imposed on the population, formally only until 1983, but de facto until 1989; but equally, during the same period, the Communist


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regime was in decline. The Polish Church, after the death of Cardinal Wyszyński in May 1981, was led by his successor, Archbishop József Glemp. He was faced with serious problems. Outside of Solidarity, all other legal organizations and associations were dissolved or their activities suspended. In 1981 and 1986, the episcopate created the Primate’s Council, made up of laymen who were interested especially in the situation of certain groups of persecuted Polish people. The Church became a real sanctuary for believers and unbelievers. In all the churches in Poland, people organized aid for the prisoners and activists from Solidarity and their families. Legal council was given to teachers, journalists and others. Above all, in the churches, an alternative to the official mass media was created, an underground cultural movement that organized conferences in church halls, mostly on historical subjects. CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY SINCE 1989 Towards the end of the 1980s, the Church played the role of mediator with a view to the preparation of a ‘round table’. The discussions took place primarily at Magdalenka, near Warsaw, from February to April 1989. The Church was represented in the discussions by the Bishop of Gdańsk, Tadeusz Gocłowski, and the priest Alojzy Orszulik. According to Antoni Dudek, Lech Wałęsa’s counsellors initially believed that ‘the future of Poland could be built only on a compromise with the Communists of the PZPR’. They considered that gambling on the collapse of the system was a dangerous illusion.31 The regime in fact agreed to recognize Solidarity and organize parliamentary elections for both chambers. It was decided, however, that the Communists would have a full 65 per cent of the seats in the Diet (or Lower Chamber) and the remaining 35 per cent only would be democratically elected. It was also decided that the elections for the Senate would be completely free. The president of the republic would be elected by the Diet. The majority of the Polish people followed Solidarity leaders in welcoming the decisions of the ‘round table’. The results of the ensuing elections which took place on 4 June 1989 were catastrophic for the Communists. Almost all the contested seats in the Diet as well as 99 out of the 100 seats in the Senate were taken by Walesa’s team, henceforward called the Citizens’ Clubs of Parliament (OKP). In September 1989, the first non-communist government, led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, came into being. Mazowiecki was a long-standing KIK militant from Warsaw. He was also the editor of Więź journal. The new government had little room for manoeuvre, be it in the field of foreign policy—since the Soviet Union was still in existence and had troops stationed on Polish soil—or in home affairs, as the Communists still held the most important posts in this ministry. However, the government did have a considerable amount of freedom to improve the Polish economy, ruined by communism. Leszek Balcerowicz, the deputy prime minister, was advised by Western European experts and he designed an economic recovery plan, which was to reduce the size of the Polish debt as well as to control inflation. The Balcerowicz programme to introduce a market economy came into effect on 1 January 1990. During the first few months of this power-sharing government, the political scene in Poland was mostly controlled by the ‘round table’ participants. The Solidarity movement,


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made up of quite disparate forces in spite of its Catholic background, was represented in Parliament via the OKP. The first attempts to break the ‘two-horse race’ between the Communists and the OKP were launched with the June 1989 elections by the Christian Democratic parties led by Władysław Siła-Nowicki and Janusz Zabłocki; they ended in complete failure. Later on, in 1990, the Christian Democrats of newly formed Christianinspired parties were the first on the scene, the very first being the National Christian Union (ZChN) led by Wiesław Chrzanowski. Chrzanowski had been a member of the National Party both before and after the war; he was also a journalist for the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Warszawski until he was arrested in 1948. A close associate of Cardinal Wyszyński from 1956, he became the leader of the clandestine RMP towards the late 1970s. Second, there was the Centre Party (PC) led by the Kaczyński brothers, who had been actively involved in the Solidarity movement from 1980. The Centre Party’s ideology was based on the social values of the Catholic Church, but unlike the ZChN, anchored in the political traditions of the pre-war National Party, they wanted to be seen as a modern Christian democratic party firmly looking towards Western Europe. As for the OKP, the team that had monopolized its leadership created the Democratic Union in 1990, renamed Freedom Union in 1993. Its disparate leadership included Mazowiecki, who was closely associated with the Catholic Church; Bronisław Geremek, a representative of the liberal (lay) free thinkers; and Jacek Kuroń, a Social Democrat hostile to the Church hierarchy. The Democratic Union and the ex-Communists both had an increased influence on Polish society through the media and, in particular, the national daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. These parties were also better placed in the struggle for power than their rivals, the Christian and National Democrats. Around 1993, the ZChN and the PC ceased to matter in Polish politics. In June 1996, the right successfully regrouped the various parties still gravitating around Solidarity. Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS) was created, bringing together around 30 rightwing groups comprising liberals, conservatives, farmers, Christian Democrats (including from the old Centre Party), National Party militants, as well as a handful of personalities introduced by Radio Maryja, a radio station under the leadership of the Redemptorists. In its manifesto, AWS underlined its firm intention to take Poland ‘into Europe’. As far as home affairs were concerned, AWS emphasized its reliance on the Church’s social doctrine and promised to do away with what they saw as the continuing oligarchy set up by the old nomenklatura. Parliamentary elections took place on 21 September 1997. In order to be represented in the Diet, a party had to obtain at least 5 per cent of the vote on the national level. AWS came first with 33.83 per cent of the vote, then the reformed Communist, now Union of the Democratic Left (SLD) with 27.13 per cent and the liberal UW third with 13.37 per cent. The Peasants’ Party (PSL) obtained 7.31 per cent of the vote, and 5.56 per cent went to the ROP, Jan Olszewski’s Conservative Party. The results allowed the formation of an AWS-UW coalition. In October 1997, after difficult negotiations, Jerzy Buzek’s government was in place, lasting until 2001. The coalition of the left won the next parliamentary elections on 23 September 2001, which was dominated by the SLD, with 41 per cent of the vote. The SLD formed a coalition with the PSL, and Leszek Miller, a leading SLD politician, became prime minister. Just before the 2001 elections, AWS had given birth to two new parties: the PIS—Right and Justice led by the Kaczyński brothers, and the League of Polish Families (LPR), led by Roman Giertych and strongly supported


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by Radio Maryja, with whom it has very close links. These two parties currently form the nucleus of the parliamentary opposition, together with the Liberals in the so-called Citizens’ Platform (Platforma Obywatelska). Neither the ZChN nor the UW is any longer represented in Parliament. The main source of conflict between the various political parties having adopted Christian values was and is likely to remain their position vis-à-vis the European Union and Polish membership. The successful referendum on EU membership took place in Poland in June 2003. While the LPR campaigned against membership, PIS called for a ‘yes’ vote. The Catholic vote in the referendum was thus split despite the support of the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy in Poland for EU membership. NOTES 1 Recent key literature includes, for example, Zygmunt Zieliński, Kościół w Polsce 1944–2002 (Radom 2003); Antoni Dudek and Ryszard Gryz, Komuniści i Kośdół w Polsce (1945–1989) (Cracow 2003); Jan Żaryn, Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce 1944–1989 (Warsaw 2003); Antoni Dudek, Państwo i Kosciół w Polsce 1945–1970 (Cracow 1995); Jan Żaryn, Kośdół a władza w Polsce (1945–1950) (Warsaw 1997); idem, Stolica Apostolska wobec Polski i Polaków w latach 1944– 1958 (Warsaw 1998); Jan Kopiec, Kościół w Polsce po 1945 roku (Opole 1999); Ryszard Gryz, Państwo a Kośdół w Polsce 1945–1956, na przykladzie województwa kielekiego (Cracow 1999). See also Hansjakob Stehle, Geheimdiplomatie im Vatikan. Die Päpste und die Kommunisten (Zurich 1993). 2 Zygmunt Zieliński (ed.), Życie religijne w Polsce pod okupacją hitlerowską 1939– 1945 (Warsaw 1983); Zofia Waszkiewicz, Polityka Watykanu wobec Polski (Warsaw 1980); Waldemar Michowicz (ed.), Historia dyplomacji polskiej, vol. 5:1939–1945 (Warsaw 1999). 3 Concerning the position of the Catholics in the USSR before 1939, see Roman Dzwonkowski, Kościół katolicki w ZSRR 1917–1939. Zarys historii (Lublin 1997). See also Bohdan Cywiński, Ogniem próbowane, vol. 1 (Warsaw 1993), p. 112. 4 Michał Jagiełlo, ‘Tygodnik Powszechny’ i kommunizm (1945–1953) (Warsaw 1988); Zieliński, Kościół w Polsce, pp. 72–4; Żaryn, Dzieje Kościóła katolickiego, pp. 84– 5. 5 Concerning the history of the Labour Party, see Waldemar Bujak, Historia Stronnictwa Pracy 1937–1946–1950 (Warsaw 1988). See also Wiesław Chrzanowski, Pól wieku polityki (rozmawiali: Piotr Mierecki and Bogusław Kiernicki) (Warsaw 1997), pp. 141–87. 6 Andrzej Paczkowski, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, czyli klęska realisty (zarys biografii politycznej) (Warsaw 1991). 7 Letter from Cardinal Auguste Hlond and Cardinal Adam S.Sapieha to Bołesław Bierut, 24 June 1948, Peter Raina, Kościół w PRL, vol. 1 (Poznan 1994), p. 128. 8 Report of Minister Stanisław Radkiewicz, 23 March 1949. Aparat bezpieczeństwa w latach 1944–1956, vol. 2, prepared by Andrzej Paczkowski (Warsaw 1996), p. 140. 9 Karl Kaplan, Stat r Cirkev v Ceskoslovensku 1948–1953 (Brno 1993), p. 14; Daniel


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Lensel, Le passage de la Mer Rouge. Le role des chrétiens dans la libération des peuples de l’Est 1945–1990 (Paris 1991), p. 37; B.Cywinski, Ogniem próbowane. Z dziejów Kościóła katolickiego w Europie rodkowo-Wschodniej, vol. 2 (Warsaw 1994), p. 191. 10 Letter from Primate Stefan Wyszyński to Domenico Tardini, 15 June 1950, quoted in Jan Żaryn, ‘Nieznany list prymasa Polski Stefana Wyszyńskiego do Stolicy Apostolskiej w sprawie tzw. Porozumienia z rządem z 14 kwietnia 1950’, Polska 1944/45–1989, vol. 2 (1997), pp. 291–308 and p. 299. 11 See Jan Ksiądz Czeslaw Kaczmarek biskup kielecki 1895–1963 (Kielce 1991), p. 123. 12 Bożena Bankowicz, ‘W imię Boga i ojczyzny (Z dziejów Komisji Księży przy ZBOWID 1949–1955)’, Zderzenia, vol. 5 (1990), pp. 33–53; Jan Zaryn, ‘“Księżapatrioci”—geneza powstawania formacji duchownych katolickńch’, Polska 1944/45–1989, vol. 1 (1995), pp. 123–150. 13 Peter Raina, Kośdół w PRL. Dokumenty, Vol. 1:1945–1959 (Poznań 1994), p. 426. 14 See the biography of Stefan Kardynał Wyszyński by Peter Raina, Kardynał Wyszyński, vols 1–8 (Warsaw 1993–98), especially vol. 2: Losy więzienne (Warsaw 1993). 15 See: Andrzej Micewski, Wspólrządzić czy nie klamać? PAXiZNAK w Polsce 1945– 1976 (Paris 1978); Antoni Dudek, Grzegorz Pytel, Boleslaw Piasecki Próba biografii politycznej (London 1990); Bolesław Bankowicz and Antoni Dudek, Ze studiów nad dziejami Kościoła i katolicyzmu w PRL (Cracow 1996). See also the book, which argues against PAX: C.Naurois [Maria Winowska], Dieu contre Dieu? Drame des Catholiqies progressistes dans une Eglise du silence (Finsbourg-Paris 1956). 16 See Paweł Kądziela, Kościół a Państwo w Polsce 1945–1965 (Warsaw 1990), p. 39. 17 See for example Michel Winock, Histoire politique de la revue Esprit 1930–1950 (Paris 1975). 18 Boleslaw Piasecki, Zagadnienia istotńe (Warsaw 1954), p. 5. 19 On the case of Hungary, see also Janos M.Rainer, ‘The Road to Budapest 1956. New Documentation on the Kremlin’s Decision to Intervene’, The Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 36 (1996), pp. 24–41 and vol. 37 (1996), pp. 16–31; Döntés a Kremlben 1956. A szovjet pártelnökség vitáï Magyarországról (Budapest 1996). 20 See Jan Żaryn, ‘Ostatnie wygnanie biskupa Stanisława Adamskiego (1952–1956)’, Więż, vol. 4 (1998), pp. 164–72. 21 Jerzy Tomzinski, ‘ZP, Jasnogórska Maryja w życiu i slużbie ks. Kard. Stefana Wyszyńskiego prymasa Polski’, Studia Cl aromontana, vol. 2 (Jasna Góra 1981), pp. 5–45; see also the chapters in Przeivodniczka. Kult Matki Boskiej w Polsce od Lumen gentium do Redeptoris Mater (1964–1987) (Jasna Góra 1994). 22 See all articles in the special issue Polska 1956—próba nowego spojrzenia. Materialy sesji naukowej zorganizowanej przez Instytut Historii PAN, Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne i Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, w Warszawie w dn.21–22 October 1996, Polska 1944/45–1989, vol. 3 (1997), especially Krystyna Kersten, ‘Rok 1956—Przełom? Kontynuacja? Punkt zwrotny?’, pp. 7–18.


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23 O połitycznych wpływach i działności kleru w województwie katowickim, Posiedzenie Egzekutywy KW w Katowicach, 11 Mayl959, Archiwum Akt Nowych, Sekretariat KC PŻPR, Wydział Organizacyjny (dalej: AAN, Sekretariat KC WO), sygn. 237/VII—4155, k.9; Jan Żaryn, Dzieje Kościóła katolickiego, pp. 218–27, 242–55, 354–9. See also Antoni Dudek, ‘Krótkotrwala normalizacja w stosunkach Kościół—państwo (1956–1957)’, Polska 1944/45–1989, vol. 1 (1995), pp. 185–200. 24 Obchody milenijne 1966 roku w dokumentów Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych (Warsaw 1998); Uroczystości milenijne 1966 roku. Sprawozdania urzędów spraw wewnętrznych (Warsaw 1996). 25 Peter Raina, Kościół w PRL. Dokumenty, vol. 2:1960–1974 (Poznań 1995), pp. 356–62. See the reply to the Polish episcopate on 5 December 1965, ibid., pp. 362– 5. 26 Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Zapiski milenijne. Wybór z dziennika ‘pro memoria’ (Warsaw 1996), pp. 58–9. 27 Andrzej Friszke, Oaza na Kopernika. Klub Inteligencji Katolickiej 1956–1989 (Warsaw 1997), p. 34; Maciej Lętowski, Ruch i koło poselskie ZNAK 1957–1976 (Katowice 1998), p. 1 and following. 28 See Paweł Kądziela, Libella 1957–1997. Historia i współczesność (Warsaw 1997), pp. 7–14. 29 For example, by supporting the ‘Letter of the 34’, sent to the government, against the censure of culture and the shortage of paper for the Catholic press. The text of the ‘Letter of the 34’ can be found in Alexsandra Ziółkowska’s Proces Melchiora Wańkowicza 1964 (Warsaw 1990), pp. 7–20. 30 Andrzej Micewski, Kościół-Państwo 1945–1989 (Warsaw 1994), p. 58. 31 Antoni Dudek, Pierwśze lata III Rzeczpospolitej (Cracow 2002), p. 31.

9 ‘Rescuing the Christian Occident’ and ‘Europe in Us’: The People’s Party in Austria Dieter A.Binder

In the early phase of the 1945 electoral campaign, Alois Dienstleder from Styria defined the ideological stance of the Austrian People’s Party or Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) in a lead article in the first issue of the party newspaper.1 He called for the consolidation of all political forces to rebuild a democratic Austria. He emphasized the protection of property, even if at the same time he promoted democratic control of large banks and heavy industry in order to prevent political abuse of economic power. The People’s Party demanded protection and support for farmers, whereby a reasonable price system was expected to bring about a significant increase in production. The party promised employees job security, and the retention and extension of social security measures. This had to go hand in hand with economic planning for industry and small businesses. The party wished to strengthen an indigenous Austrian national consciousness embedded in the traditions of the Abendland, or Christian Occident. At the same time it emphasized the clear division between politics and Church as well as freedom of religion and conscience. The People’s Party saw Austria’s international position as being a bridge between East and West. The ÖVP, as an apparently new party with no predecessor, understood itself to be a socially engaged people’s party that was just as close to the British Labour Party, which won the elections in the autumn of 1945, as the Hungarian Smallholders, who were to win 57 per cent of the vote in the elections in November 1945.2 Despite the relatively left-wing stance of some ÖVP politicians, the British model was unrealistic in view of the continuities of the party with the Christian Socialists and the Austro-fascism of the 1930s, in domestic as well as in foreign policy. At the same time, the Hungarian model became rather obsolete because of the real balance of power within the Hungarian government coalition, which was increasingly controlled by the Communists. Nevertheless, the ÖVP presented itself in the 1945 electoral campaign as ‘Austria’s Labour Party’ on posters and congratulated the British Socialists who had defeated the Conservatives.3 The ÖVP distanced itself from the Austrian Socialists with anti-Marxist arguments and propaganda clichés. Together with the upholding of a ‘Christian Abendland’, their antiMarxism formed the common platform for the fusion of the regional parties in the western part of the country with the central party organization in Vienna. The authors of the party’s ‘programmatic guidelines’, or Leitsätze, which were announced in 1945, stood in the tradition of Catholic social teaching. Their more radical demands for economic and social policy were moderated by the influence of pragmatists such as Leopold Figl and Julius Raab, however. By emphasizing its anti-Marxist character, the party overcame the


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integralism of the inter-war Christian Socialists. At the same time the ÖVP also claimed a monopoly on the Catholic voters.4 With the help of the system of corporatist organizations for farmers, civil servants, etc., within the party, the so-called Bünde, the party endeavoured to overcome the confessional limits and tried to gain the support of all those who had no socialist or communist allegiances. The ÖVP likewise differed from the Christian Socialist elite of the inter-war period in terms of its Austrian national consciousness, overcoming Kurt Schuschnigg’s description of the country as the ‘second German state’. The party made Austrian identity one of its main themes, even more so than the Austrian Communists. Only in the early phase did the party make reference to Austria’s mission in Central Europe, which was reminiscent of the way the authoritarian Ständestaat had defined itself.5 THE ATTRACTION OF FRANCE AND GERMAN PRAGMATISM In the years 1945–49, the ÖVP went through a ‘French phase’.6 In the period just after the war, Austria’s Catholic intellectual milieu to a great extent assimilated the reformist ideas of French Catholicism as it was embedded in a more general francophile intellectual orientation existing in post-war Austria. In France a group was formed within the resistance from which the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) was to grow in 1944. The MRP was the ÖVP’s party contact from 1946 onwards.7 The MRP’s social reformist leaning corresponded to that of the ÖVR. The two parties certainly saw themselves as the centre-left political forces. The French example was extremely important for ÖVP thinkers in many respects, despite their disagreements about the organizational form of European party co-operation. On the one hand, the ÖVP—like the MRP—had to reorientate itself in its relationship to the Catholic Church hierarchy. On the other hand, the formative ideas on a modern Christian social policy originated in France. In 1945, the ÖVP’s more left-wing approach corresponded to that of its German sister party.8 In the first issue of the Frankfurter Hefte in April 1946, Walter Dirks already, however, claimed that ‘the opportunity to create a German Labour Party was…rapidly wasted after 1945’9 and this was also true of the ÖVP. Adolf M.Birke has written of the German development that the North Rhine Westfalian CDU’s Ahlener Programm of 1947, a mix of Catholic social teaching, socialism and liberal market economy, marked the ‘peak and at the same time end of the influence of Christian socialism’.10 In the election campaign of 1949, Konrad Adenauer called for the end of the government control of the economy and the transition to a ‘socially responsible market economy’,11 referring to the West German party’s Düsseldorfer Leitsätze programme. His economic and political success made Adenauer a shining example for the ÖVP. The new German party programme toned down the conflict over social policy within the party once again with its vision of ‘prosperity for all’, while the party laid great emphasis on how different it was from the Social Democrats. The CDU/CSU thus tried to secure a monopoly in addressing voters who were to the right of the Social Democrats. Kurt Skalnik has perceptively analysed the ÖVP’s transformation since the 1949 National Council elections: it ‘bade farewell to the feeling that a new era was about to

'Rescuing the christian occident'

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dawn’, its ‘social impetus became weaker’ and it replaced the French-inspired concept of ‘solidarism’ with bürgerlich, or bourgeois.12 The party opened itself up to the right, allowing itself to become a bourgeois people’s party about which, at its peak, an ÖVP politician could say: ‘There is no enemy to the right of us.’13 Tactics replaced principles and this enabled the ÖVP to present itself as ‘simultaneously conservative, Christian Democratic, socially concerned and liberal in the economic sphere’.14 The ÖVP wanted to pursue the path of the CDU under Adenauer’s leadership. This is why Kurt Skalnik has suggested describing this second phase of the post-war ÖVP as the German phase. It is identified with Julius Raab, the second ÖVP chancellor. Alongside the decline in importance of the programmatic principles, another characteristic of the ÖVP as a successful catch-all party became its personalization and public representation by an extremely small number of top politicians. Although the end of the Raab era was a turning-point in the history of the ÖVP, the reformers of the early 1960s did not initiate a new ideological debate within the party. Chancellor Josef Klaus was a charismatic leader with a ‘mythical belief in his own importance’ for the transformation and stability of Austria. In the election campaign of 1970, Klaus presented himself using the Austrian version of Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Me or chaos’,15 linking himself to Gaullism and not the MRP, which had been dissolved in 1967. Klaus lost the election, however, forcing the ÖVP into opposition until 1986. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF POLITICAL CATHOLICISM In France, the relationship between the Church and politics was marked by the clear separation of Church and state, dating from 1905 and continued in the Fourth Republic of 1946. In 1945, the Churches in Austria, just as in Germany, did not publicly engage in politics. In Austria this was primarily relevant for the dominant Catholic Church. In 1933 the Church’s withdrawal from day-to-day politics had already begun, but because of its close ties with the authoritarian regime of the 1930s this was not widely realized by the general public. The Protestant Church was resolute in its political abstinence after its most far-reaching identification with the German nationalist camp since the monarchy, while the relationship between the Catholic Church and the ÖVP remained extremely ambivalent. At the first special synod after the end of the war and the refounding of the Austrian republic, the Catholic bishops confirmed the ban on political party activities of priests in line with the policy implemented since 30 November 1933 and in line with post-war Vatican policy.16 Membership of the ÖVP was, however, possible. In the autumn of 1945, Pope Pius XII let Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, the chairman of the synod, know that the Vatican did not wish to be involved in party politics but that if ‘politics touches the Church, then the Church has to get politically involved’.17 The Vatican, however, basically regarded the ÖVP as the successor to the Christian Social Party of inter-war Austria, and therefore equated it with the Catholic political camp. The relationship of the Catholic hierarchy to the Austrian Social Democrats (SPÖ) was already tense as a result of the issue of the recognition of the concordat of 1933–34. It became even more tense as a result of the anti-clerical rhetoric of individual SPÖ


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politicians in the 1945 electoral campaign.18 The parties competed, on the other hand, in the ‘pastoral’ competition for souls (and votes) and the Church began this competition even earlier. The bishops absolved former National Socialists in the autumn of 1945. The National Socialists who were imprisoned in Glasenbach and defined as ‘the scum of humanity’19 by Karl Renner, the Social Democratic chancellor in the first provisional government, were received by Archbishop Andreas Rohracher in full array.20 In November 1945, the bishops appealed to the occupation forces to implement a Christmas amnesty for imprisoned National Socialists. They repeated their appeal in 1946 at Easter. Leopold Figl, the first ÖVP chancellor, stepped in and demanded, however, that the bishops should not ‘in the interests of a satisfactory settlement of the forthcoming State Treaty… in future publicly engage themselves in favour of the National Socialists, nor make appeals to the Allied Council’.21 In their efforts to rehabilitate former National Socialists, the episcopate and the official Church institutions did not cultivate the memory of the victims of National Socialism at all. In the run-up to the 1953 elections, in view of the general ‘middle-class’ character of the ÖVP, Catholic Action pressed for ‘political commitment from active Catholics’, in order to pave the way for ‘a real reform of the ÖVP based on Christian principles’.22 Emphasizing a leadership role for the Church hierarchy, Otto Mauer and his circle demanded that the Church should train and earmark suitable candidates for politics and press for an ‘evangelizing’ of already politically active Catholics. A return to political Catholicism followed shortly after the Austrian Catholic Congress of 1952 and the socalled Manifesto of Mariazell at the 1953 elections. Catholic Action succeeded in influencing the choice in different Austrian regions of ÖVP candidates who were supposed to act as representatives of the respective bishops.23 Indirectly, the Church thus attained a much greater influence on the ÖVP and Austrian politics than its formal abstention might suggest. THE ÖVP AS THE POLITICAL ARM OF THE CHURCH The relationship between the Catholic Church and the state was dominated after 1945 by the hanging question of the recognition of the concordat of 1933–34 and closely related matters. Related problems were the school question, a reform of marital law and Church financing under the National Socialist law of 1938–39. A further element leading to tension was the competition between Catholic social teaching and Social Democrat claims to sole representation of the workers, continuing the historical opposition of Church hierarchy and Austrian Social Democracy, with Innitzer for the bishops’ conference and Karl Renner and Adolf Schärf for the SPÖ as living examples of this confrontation. The ÖVP supported the Church but made efforts not to push the almost equally strong Social Democrats within the coalition government too far on the controversial points. The clearing up of the existing problems had to be preceded by measures taken by the Church to build up trust by demonstratin g that its withdrawal from day-to-day politics was not just official policy. Banning the clergy from working for a party was undoubtedly inadequate as long as indirect recommendations for how to vote were placed


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in pastoral letters. The generational change within the Austrian bishops’ conference was completed with the appointment of Franz König as Archbishop of Vienna in 1956. He was politically engaged, but refrained from simplistic agitation against the Social Democrats. The bishops progressively succeeded in detaching themselves from the previous indiscriminate attacks against socialism and Marxism. The Church clearly reacted positively to the SPÖ’s policy since 1945, which was to consciously distance itself from the anti-clerical fight of the inter-war period. The pastoral letter24 of 1956 drafted by the Bishop of Innsbruck was, for Bruno Pittermann, the SPÖ parliamentary party leader, proof that ‘the Church was, for the first time, doing justice to democratic socialism’.25 Thus the Church and SPÖ came closer on social issues and the SPÖ continued its policy of de-ideologizing its attitude to religion and Church matters.26 As a result of this development and the form of the State Treaty of 1955, the view prevailed that the concordat was indeed a valid agreement under international law. The government finally confirmed its validity in a note of 21 December 1957. In the subsequent negotiations concerning inter alia the school question and Church property, serious issues were solved flexibly and by consensus.27 The historic burden of the interwar period left the deepest impression on the school question. Regarding this, a consensus was in any case imperative because of the two-thirds majority necessary for constitutional reforms. Despite its basic willingness to support the Church in the issue of the recognition of the concordat and the questions connected with this, the ÖVP could not as a people’s party fulfil the most far-reaching individual demands of the Church, for example with respect to marital law. THE ÖVP AND ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY In the early post-war period, the ÖVP experienced controversial debates about economic and social policy. In 1947, Josef Dobretsberger, as a member of the ÖVP, wrote that Christianity and socialism had ‘survived the war’ and should consequently enter into discussions.28 In 1955, Dobretsberger’s friend Ernst Karl Winter conceded that the economic policy propagated by socialism was ‘completely compatible with Christianity in theory and in practice’.29 These sections of the party opposed those within the ÖVP who, in their efforts to create a de-confessionalized middle-class people’s party, tried to link neo-liberal ideas with Catholic social teaching, were keen to prove the incompatibility of Christendom and socialism. Wolfgang Schmitz, the future finance minister, reacted to Winter’s point of view by reconciling the personalism of Christian social teaching and neo-liberalism’s concept of freedom, drawing upon Wilhelm Röpke, Alfred Müller-Armack and Alexander Rüstow.30 The ‘freedom and dignity of man’ should not only ‘be valid in the political and cultural spheres’, according to Schmitz, but must also be the guiding principle of economic policy in opposition to the predominant collectivist currents. In the Programmatische Leitsätze of 1945, the party emphasized the common good as the most important ‘guiding principle’ of economic policy and ascertained the necessity of state intervention in certain areas, going as far as the socialization of existing large companies. At the same time, it emphasized corporatist ideas in economic policy and the


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necessity of private initiative to assist medium-sized companies. In his comparative study, Anton Pelinka has pointed to both the ÖVP and the French MRP’s embracing of ‘solidarism’ and the resulting support of ‘social democracy’ in the MRP.31 Within the ÖVP, in contrast, the same concept was entirely compatible with a strict delimitation from socialism, as it was embedded in a profession of loyalty to a ‘Christian occidental concept of culture’ and a ‘healthy federalism’, ‘in contrast to class-based and centralist policies’.32 This interpretation was linked from the outset in the ÖVP’s economic and social policy of a clear avowal of faith in private ownership’.33 The competition between neo-liberalism and Christian social teaching was overcome in the party programme with the concept of a social market economy. By aligning the socalled Raab-Kamitz course in economic policy with the successful German model of the Adenauer-Erhard policy, the ÖVP created the image of an economic miracle that it had allegedly initiated. In its 1958 programme, the party linked the idea of an economic system that had to ‘serve the well-being of all’, with the guiding principle of ‘a propertied people’. The party thus reached out to those representatives of Catholic social teaching who, like Johannes Messner in the name of the right of ownership and the principle of subsidiarity, warned against a state that in its social policy increasingly tended towards ‘interference’ in the private sphere, consequently promoting collectivism.34 As long as the basic ideological positions of political Catholicism and anti-Marxism militated against greater voter mobility, Catholic social teaching could partially compensate for the ÖVP’s theory deficit. The influence of Catholic social teaching on the ÖVP programme declined, however, as a result of continued de-ideologizing of Austrian politics from the 1960s. THE ÖVP’S NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS The ÖVP understood its programmatic Leitsätze to be based on the legacy of ‘those political groups that were rooted in Austrian tradition and that defended Austria’s independence’.35 As the party of all democratic ‘patriotic Austrians’ it devoted itself to ‘the new, free and vital Austria’. In contrast to the SPÖ, the ÖVP articulated Austrian identity from the outset. Karl Lugmayer, Karl Kummer, Alfred Missong, Felix Hurdes and Lois Weinberger, who all worked on the programmatic Leitsätze, contributed articles on this theme to the journal Österreichische Monatshefte. Kreissler has put great emphasis on the significance of Alfred Missong’s thoughts about his party and his view that the corporatist internal structure of Austria guaranteed the wide-reaching representation of all social groups.36 In contrast, Hans Pertner postulated that Austrians with a meaningful identity had to be created by cultural policy and guided towards a conscious avowal of faith in the Austrian nation.37 Missong, who had emerged from Ernst Karl Winter’s circle and had actively taken part in this debate in the inter-war years, took over the programmatic definition of the ‘Austrian identity’ and its integration in the ÖVP’s party programme.38 In the cultural sphere, the party demanded the ‘conscious nurturing of the Austrian spirit and great emphasis being placed on an independent Austrian cultural legacy’, ‘a legacy that had its roots in Christian occidental ideas and culture’.39 This declaration, the tone of which was still partially reminiscent of National


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Socialist phrases, was linked to the profession of loyalty to the concept of fundamental religious freedom, especially emphasizing Catholic interests. All educational establishments were given the task of ‘working intensively to build up the Austrian nation by moulding a strong and proud Austrian national and cultural consciousness’.40 The necessity of emphasizing the education of the Austrian ‘nation’, dramatically accentuating an independent Austrian identity, was somewhat relativized when Austria regained its sovereignty in 1955. In addition to this, public opinion began to move towards a specifically Austrian identity with the acceptance of Austria’s independence, as also postulated by the Socialists. The experience of the older generation which glorified the soldiers’ war experience as a defence of the homeland, delayed the formation of an Austrian identity. Heinz Wassermann has shown how the way National Socialist rule and propaganda in the Second World was experienced accounted for strong regional differences in the ÖVP.41 From 1948–49 on, a regional concept of Heimat was often used to camouflage the return to German nationalist ideas. At least in the regions Styria and Corinthia, the party resurrected the myth of Austria as a German border region and buffer against the Slav peoples. The federal states’ grandiose PR strategies at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s must be seen in this context. They not only offered the regional ÖVP leaders an appropriate political platform, but also raised regional identity to a markedly higher level than the identity of the nation and state as a whole. The ÖVP interpreted the terms ‘Austrian nation’ and ‘cultural nation’ as being one and the same as nation-state. The knowledge of a former, larger Austria contributed to the emphasis the ÖVP placed on its special relationship with the ‘neighbouring states in Central Europe’.42 In view of the bipolar world of the Cold War, the ÖVP saw ‘Austria’s mission’ in ‘unifying the peoples’, ‘conscious of its great past and traditions’.43 Embedded in the passage on neutrality of its 1958 party programme the party drew attention to the ‘reawakening of the century old economic and cultural contact to the peoples in the Danube region’.44 In the 1965 Klagenfurter Manifest, the State Treaty and neutrality were embedded in a brief historical digression: ‘Neutrality serves its function as a bridge, a function which Austria always had in the past and which it is prepared to continue to fulfil in the future.’45 Austria’s presentation of itself and the ‘Austrian identity’ was, from the outset, interlinked with an avowal of faith in international cooperation and European integration, however. AUSTRIA AND EUROPE In the case of Austria after 1945, the question of European integration is inextricably linked to the regaining of sovereignty and the status of neutrality.46 The ÖVP’s programmatic statements portrayed an Austria which is part of the ‘Christian occidental’ legacy’.47 The Second Republic, as the successor to the old Habsburg monarchy, had the task of bringing its historically deep-rooted ‘fund of international knowledge and culture’ into the activities of the United Nations and a Europe of the future.48 There is no doubt that Austria’s European policy and the party’s self-portrayal as ‘the protector of peace in the Danube region’, was, from the outset, part of a strategy for the rapid reinstatement of Austria’s sovereignty. These were also designed to rhetorically overcome the rigid East-


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West polarization of the Cold War. Even if the ÖVP’s ‘Christian occidental’ profile could only come into effect in Western integration, the party’s European policy concept was chiefly informed by domestic politics. In the end, the party’s orientation towards key elements of Catholic/Christian social teaching formed the basis for making contact with similar parties on an international level, thus participating in a European internationalism, something which had no strong tradition in this political camp. A rapid integration of the ÖVP with the emerging Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI), followed the earlier post-war contact to Swiss Catholic circles and to the MRP. The ÖVP representatives primarily used the NEI to advance key Austrian interests after close discussion with Foreign Minister Karl Gruber while playing their cards close to their chest regarding West European integration as put forward by Adenauer and others.49 With respect to the specific situation of Austria under occupation, Gruber saw no room for manoeuvre, as a division of the country would, for him, have meant the ‘dissolution and demise of Austria’.50 As a ‘Catholic internationalist’, Felix Hurdes, the ÖVP secretary-general, was convinced that the European parties defining themselves as Christian had to find a middle path between socialism and capitalism. Hurdes also tried to initiate discussions about South Tyrol with the Italian Christian Democrats in the context of the NEI, alongside his endeavours towards the securing of Austria’s borders and future sovereignty. Those formulating the ÖVP’s international programme who had Europe-wide contacts were increasingly marginalized in the party, however. This was also true of Hurdes, who, being self-employed, was a member of the Wirtschaftsbund, the intra-party association of industrialists and self-employed people. He did not, however, play a significant role in it and thus lacked a strong power base. The party’s leadership trio—Figl as national party leader, Raab as parliamentary party leader and Ferdinand Graf as director of the farmers’ association in the ÖVP—pushed Hurdes to the sidelines. Michael Gehler has argued as a result that the significant activity of Felix Hurdes and Alfred Maleta in the NEI actually indicates ‘that Christian democratic internationalism and European integration were rather of secondary importance to the ÖVP’.51 The restraint in questions of European integration correlated to the willingness to support neutrality as a prerequisite for the reinstating of sovereignty. In the budget debate of May 1946, the ÖVP politician Eduard Ludwig vehemently rejected prompts towards a Danube federation that would include the Soviet Union and advocated neutrality for the first time in public, based on the Swiss model. He continued to pursue Gruber’s position of 1945 in categorically rejecting any special relationship to another state or power bloc.52 Gruber’s declaration had been followed by Figl’s similar statements in the government declaration of 21 December 1945. Helmut Wohnout has interpreted Ludwig’s statements as an indication of a search for a relevant foreign policy for occupied Austria.53 These early ideas on neutrality reflect on Ignaz Seipel’s pragmatic, semi-neutral policy in inter-war Austria and his support of the European integration movement at that time.54 Expected foreign policy benefits for Austria also motivated Maleta’s proposal of 1947 for an all-European system with a mediating role for Austria.55 Within the NEI, ÖVP representatives played their cards close to their chest regarding neutrality, from 1949 onwards. Gehler concludes that at this point at the very latest, ÖVP representatives, ‘even in this most inner circle of European


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Christian Democrats’, hardly supported European integration with Austrian participation and took on the role of observers.56 In 1955, the ÖVP returned to the European integration debate directly after the conclusion of the State Treaty. Fritz Bock, the ÖVP trade minister, propagated the idea of a free trade area as proposed by Great Britain in 1956 as a preliminary step towards full West European integration. The 1958 party programme emphasized that ‘Europe will be our economic future’, and ‘We support European unification’.57 In contrast to Hurdes’ ‘primacy of ideas’, Bock believed in the ‘primacy of economics’. Against this background, he made his position clear in the debate between the European Economic Community (EEC) founded in 1957–58 and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) created in 1959–60, with Austria as a founding member state. As a matter of principle, he emphasized Austrian freedom to trade with any third country as ‘economic neutrality’ did not exist. Extending the concept of neutrality beyond international law and military matters would mean the ‘end of our economic prosperity’.58 Between 1966 and 1970, the ÖVP single-party government strove towards a bilateral association agreement with the EEC. After Bock’s maximalist hopes had failed in 1967 when Italy vetoed a possible Austrian association with the EEC, the ÖVP toned down its integrationalist ambitions and concentrated on small steps, which led to the free trade treaty concluded between Austria, now under a Social Democrat government, and the EEC in 1971.59 The foreign policy of Klaus’ era was determined primarily by the issue of Europe. It contrasted quite sharply with that of the Social Democratic chancellor from 1970, Bruno Kreisky, with his ‘active neutrality policy’; embedded in the politics of the Socialist International, he had a global orientation similar to that of the German and Swedish Social Democrats, Willy Brandt and Olaf Palme. Alois Mock, as leader of the largest opposition party, and then as vice-chancellor and foreign minister of the Great Coalition post-1987, used these differences between the ÖVP and the SPÖ over ‘Europe’ in order to distinguish himself as the ‘European trail-blazer’. FROM CRISIS TO NEW SUCCESS In 1970, the ÖVP lost its majority at the National Council election, and as a result of this its place in government. Kreisky had developed into an extremely powerful opponent of the ÖVP, a man who had reformed his party, the SPÖ, almost overnight and was able to present it for the first time as an alternative for the new middle classes. In 1970–71, together with the Freedom Party (FPÖ), which tolerated Kreisky’s minority government, a coalition of Social Democrats and Liberals could be seen to emerge and in 1983 after the loss of the SPÖ’s absolute majority, it finally became a reality. The ÖVP, which was preoccupied over a long period with internal quarrels over personnel, refused to reform its structure and its ideas. Entrenched in its intra-party corporatist system promoting politics of lobbyism, the party merely made cosmetic changes to its programme. In the 1970s and 1980s, considerable electoral success in the regions disguised the fact that the party was not managing to adjust to Austria’s changed social structure. The selfdestructive discussion about personnel began a conflict between competing party elites. The party continued to avoid any serious reform discussion in the face of their


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participation in government as the junior partner of the Social Democrats from 1987 on. The ÖVP’s electoral decline could also not be stopped after the departure of the relatively successful long-standing national party leader Mock. It avoided a reform discussion, largely because it was feared that this would reopen the leadership debate. The extension of the social market economy to include an ecological component remained an episode in Austria, despite the ÖVP’s avant-garde role in the development of such a model. Radical reform was also avoided because of the ÖVP’s continued participation in government. It remained most important to satisfy the demands of individual lobby groups, and this dominated the way the government operated. The original idea on which the ÖVP was based—that is, to overcome the divisions between different social groups and their interests through ideological ambiguity and thus secure an electoral majority,60 failed because of the change in society’s structure. An ever increasing number of middle-class voters was, in the 1990s, interested in day-to-day politics that was free of any ideology and was of use to voters. In aligning its actions with those of the corporatist social partnership institutions, the ÖVP limited its room for manoeuvre and lost appeal among the growing number of floating voters. This partial anti-modernity was stronger in those areas in which the ÖVP was guided by its old ideological reflexes and presented itself as the self-appointed saviour of the ‘Christian Occident’. Wolfgang Schüssel, the new party leader whose charismatic confidence proved to be of crucial importance, announced before the 1999 national election that should the party land in third position behind the Social Democrats and Jörg Haider’s FPÖ, it would go into opposition. Nevertheless, after having come third just behind the FPÖ, the ÖVP formed a small coalition with it, giving it the chancellorship.61 What was seen by the new ÖVP/FPÖ government to signal a ‘turning-point’62 was the ‘decline of the Second Republic’63 for the opposition of Social Democrats and Greens. Peter Ulram has also argued that the new coalition also led to ‘a new political climate’.64 The SPÖ was, for the first time since 1970, no longer the dominant political force in the government. The new government first met with the cold shoulder. This rejection ranged from the sanctions of Austria’s EU partner states to a reduction of diplomatic contacts, for example with Israel. In Austria itself, alongside the opposition of the SPÖ and the Greens, an extraparliamentary political platform established itself but by the mid-term of the Parliament, was active only in Vienna.65 These heavy attacks from outside and inside Austria undoubtedly increased the stability of the fragile government coalition in the early phase, especially with respect to the FPÖ’s role. The government progressively attained greater stability by a clearly structured work programme to legitimize retrospectively the formation of the coalition. The main reason put forward for excluding the strongest party, the SPÖ, from government, was that it was an absolute necessity to restructure the state budget, and that this had proved to be impossible in co-operation with the Social Democrats. The ÖVP also emphasized the backlog of reform within the social security system. The party wanted to increase support for families, and at the same time reform the social insurance system. Remarkably, the new government equalized legal rights for blue-collar workers and white-collar employees, something the SPÖ had not implemented. This determination to push through reforms and correct Austria’s international image also led to the creation of the so-called reconciliation fund, which


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was to benefit the former slave labourers of the Nationalist Socialist regime in Austria and the restitution of cultural goods illegally acquired during the Second World War. Schüssel’s ÖVP distinguished itself in this situation by its solidarity with the party leadership. Within the parliamentary party this was co-ordinated by the authoritarian supervision of the parliamentary party leader, Andreas Khol, and was carried by the regional party leaders despite their preference in some cases for a coalition with the SPÖ. The image of an Austria that had been unjustly treated by other countries and the claim to have ushered in a ‘new era’ combined to guarantee intra-party cohesion. The ÖVP profited within the coalition with its centrifugal forces from the way it managed to present itself as a homogenous force dominating the federal government. Jörg Haider, who had resigned as FPÖ party leader, was alarmed by the decreasing popularity of his party in opinion polls. He tried to alleviate the party’s difficulties with an ambivalent policy. While one section of the party was loyal to the government, the other section followed a course of radical opposition. In 2002, the ÖVP decided in this situation to call an early election, after the quarrels within the FPÖ had raised doubts about its reliability as a coalition partner. The changed political climate became visible in the elections in November 2002: the ÖVP won the largest proportion of votes for the first time since 1966, with more than 42 per cent. The FPÖ’s proportion of the vote sank from 27 per cent to 10 per cent. Remarkable in the rise in the number of votes for the ÖVP was that not only former ÖVP voters who had switched to the FPÖ returned to the ÖVP, but former SPÖ voters who had switched to the FPÖ now also voted for the ÖVP. This led the regional party leader of the ÖVP in Styria to speak of ‘votes on loan’. The restructuring of the programme which was originally to be prepared by a Zukunftswerkstatt and announced at the Alpbach national party congress66 gave way to the government’s pragmatism in the ÖVP/FPÖ coalition renewed at the beginning of 2003, without ever having taken shape. NOTES 1 Steirerblatt, 26 October 1945. 2 Consolidated Intelligence Report Styria no. 18, 22 November 1945, 6, Public Record Office (PRO), London. 3 Kurt Skalnik, ‘parteien’, in Erika Weinzierl and Kurt Skalnik (eds), Österreich. Die Zweite Republik, vol. 2 (Graz, Vienna and Cologne 1972), pp. 197–228, here p. 202. 4 See Wolfgang C.Müller and Barbara Steininger, ‘Christian Democracy in Austria: The Austrian People’s Party’, in David Hanley (ed.), Christian Democracy in Europe (London and New York 1994), pp. 97–100; idem, ‘Party Organisation and Party Competitiveness: The Case of the Austrian People’s Party 1945–1992’, European Journal for Political Research, vol. 26 (1994), pp. 1–29. 5 See Anton Pirchegger, Tagespost, 8 May 1946. 6 See for example Anton Pelinka, ‘MRP and ÖVP—Vorbild auf Zeit’, in Rudolf Altmüller, Helmut Konrad and Anton Pelinka (eds), Festschrift/Melanges Felix Kreissler (Vienna, Munich and Zurich 1985), pp. 139–48; Michael Gehler, ‘“Politisch unabhängig”, aber ideologisch eindeutig europäisch. Die ÖVP, die


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Vereinigung christlicher Volksparteien (NEI) und die Anfänge der europäischen Integration 1947–1960’, in idem and Rolf Steininger (eds), Österreich und die Europäische Integration 1945–1993. Aspekte einer wechselvollen Entwicklung (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 1993), pp. 291–326. 7 For the French situation see Bruno Béthouart’s chapter in this book. 8 For the developments in Germany see the chapter by Ulrich Lappenküper in this book. 9 Walter Dirks, ‘Die zweite Republik’, Frankfurter Hefte, vol. 1 (1946), p. 21. 10 Adolf M.Birke, Nation ohne Haus (Berlin 1989), pp. 110–11. 11 Konrad Adenauer, ‘Wahlrede bei einer CDU/CSU-Kundgebung im Heidelberger Schloss am 21. 7. 1949’, in Hans-Peter Schwarz (ed.), Konrad Adenauer, Reden 1917–1967 (Stuttgart 1975), pp. 137–49, here p. 140. 12 Skalnik, ‘Parteien’, p. 210. 13 Ibid.; for the developments in the Lower Austrian regional organization see Ernst Bruckmüller, ‘Die ständische Tradition—ÖVP und Neokorporatismus’, in Robert Kriechbaumer and Norbert Schausberger (eds), Volkspartei- Anspruch und Realität. Zur Geschichte der ÖVP seit 1945 (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 1995), pp. 281– 316. 14 Pelinka, ‘MRP’, p. 147. 15 Skalnik, ‘Parteien’, p. 213. 16 Maximilian Liebmann, ‘Österreich’, in Erwin Gatz (ed.), Kirche und Katholizismus seit 1945, vol. 1 (Paderborn 1998), pp. 283–315, here p. 284. 17 Austrian Synod, 28 November 1945, Archiv Institut für Kirchengeschichte. 18 Dieter A.Binder, ‘Die Stunde der Pragmatiker. Die steierische SPÖ am Beginn der Zweiten Republik’, in Friedrich Bouvier and Helfried Valentinitsch (eds), Graz 1945 (Graz 1994), pp. 109–24. 19 See Franz Langoth, Kampf um Österreich (Wels 1951), p. 295. 20 Liebmann, ‘Die ÖVP im Spiegel der Bischofskonferenzakten von 1945 bis zur Staatlichen Anerkennung des Konkordats’, in Kriechbaumer and Schausberger, Volkspartei, p. 261. 21 Ibid., ‘ÖVP’, p. 285. 22 Ibid., ‘ÖVP’, p. 265. 23 Idem, ‘Österreich’, p. 297; Heinrich Schneider, ‘Änderungen in der katholischen Kirche’, in Robert Kriechbaumer, Franz Schausberger and Hubert Weinberger (eds), Die Transformation der österreichischen Gesellschaft und die Alleinregierung von Bundeskanzler Dr. Josef Klaus (Salzburg 1995), pp. 87–118, here p. 93. 24 ‘Sozialhirtenbrief der Bischöfe Österreichs’, Wiener Diözesanblatt, 25 November 1956, pp. 4–6. 25 Bruno Pittermann, ‘Bericht des Klubs der sozialistischen Abgeordneten und Bundesräte vom 26.11.1956’, in Protokoll. 12. Parteitag der Sozialistischen Partei Österreichs vom 26. bis 28.11.1956 (Vienna n.d.), pp. 47–8. 26 For the de-ideologizing of the party see Norbert Leser, Salz der Gesellschaft. Wesen und Wandel des österreichischen Sozialismus (Vienna 1988); Peter Pelinka and Gerhard Steger (eds), Auf dem Weg zur Staatspartei. Zur Geschichte und Politik der SPÖ seit 1945 (Vienna 1988).


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27 Hugo Schwendenwein, Österreichisches Staatskirchenrecht (Essen 1992). 28 Josef Dobretsberger, Katholische Sozialpolitik am Scheideweg (Graz 1947), p. 8. 29 Ernst Karl Winter, ‘Die österreichische Wirtschaft und die Atomzivilisation’, Die Furche, 17 September 1955, p. 4. 30 Wolfgang Schmitz, ‘Neoliberalismus and katholische Soziallehre’, Die Furche, 3 December 1955, p. 4. 31 Pelinka, ‘MRP’, pp. 140–1. 32 ‘“Alles für Österreich”. Programmatische Grundsätze der Österreichischen Volkspartei, 1952’, in Klaus Bechtold (ed.), Österreichische Parteiprogramme 1868–1966 (Vienna 1967), p. 380. 33 Ibid., pp. 383 and 385; ‘Die programmatischen Leitsätze der Österreichischen Volkspartei, 1945’, in Berchtold, Österreichische Parteiprogramme, pp. 378–9. 34 Robert Kriechbaumer, Parteiprogramme im Widerstreit der Interessen. Die Programmdiskussionen und die Programme von ÖVP und SPÖ 1945–1986 (Vienna and Munich), p. 276. 35 ‘Die programmatischen Leitsätze’, p. 376. 36 Felix Kreissler, Der Österreicher und seine Nation (Vienna, Cologne and Graz 1984), p. 395; Österreichische Monatshefte, vol. 1, no. 1 (1945), p. 6. 37 Österreichische Monatshefte, no. 1 (1945), pp. 1 and 9. 38 ‘Die programmatischen Leitsätze’, p. 377. 39 ‘“Alles für Österreich”’, p. 381. 40 ‘Die programmatischen Leitsätze’, p. 378. 41 See Heinz Peter Wassermann, Und ab heute Kinder sagen wir, ‘Grüss Gott’ und nicht mehr ‘Heil Hitler!’ Nationalsozialismus, öffentliches und veröffentlichtes Geschichtsbewusstsein in Österreich nach 1945 (Ph.D. University of Graz 1998). 42 ‘Die programmatischen Leitsätze’, p. 377. 43 ‘“Alles für Österreich”’, p. 380. 44 ‘“Was wir wollen”. Das Grundsatzprogramm der Österreichische Volkspartei, 1958’, in Berchtold, Parteiprogramme, pp. 386–97, here p. 397. 45 ‘Das “Klagenfurter Manifest”, 1965’, in Berchtold, Parteiprogramme, pp. 397–402, here p. 398. 46 Alois Mock, Ludwig Steiner and Andreas Khol (eds), Neue Fakten zu Staatsvertrag und Neutralität (Vienna 1987); Gerald Stourzh, Um Einheit und Freiheit. Staatsvertrag, Neutralität und das Ende der Ost-West-Besetzung Österreichs 1945– 1955, 4th edn (Graz, Vienna and Cologne 1998). 47 ‘Die programmatischen Leitsätze’, p. 377. 48 Alfred Missong, ‘Österreich und der Weltfriede’, Österreichische Monatshefte, vol. 2, no. 7 (1946), pp. 415–18. 49 Gehler, ‘“Politisch unabhängig”’, pp. 299–300, 302–3, 308–11; for ÖVP integration policy: idem, ‘Klein- und Grosseuropäer: Integrationspolitische Konzeptionen und Wege der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Österreichs 1947/49– 1960 im Vergleich’, in Michael Gehler, Rainer F.Schmidt, Harm-Hinrich Brandt and Rolf Steininger (eds), Ungleiche Partner? Osterreich und Deutschland in ihrer gegenseitigen Wahrnehmung. Historische Analysen und Vergleiche aus dem 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart 1996), pp. 581–642.


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50 Gehler, ‘“Politisch unabhängig”’, p. 295. 51 Gehler, ‘“Politisch unabhängig”’, pp. 303–4, footnote 55, drawing on Ludwig Reichhold, Geschichte der ÖVP (Graz, Vienna and Cologne 1975), p. 174; Helmut Wohnout, ‘Frühe Neutralitätskonzepte der ÖVP 1945–1953’, Christliche Demokratie, vol. 8 (1990), pp. 111–26, here p. 117. 52 Karl Gruber, ‘Österreich zwischen Ost und West’, Neues Österreich, 18 October 1945. 53 Wohnout, ‘Neutralitätskonzepte’, p. 115. See also Oliver Rathkolb, ‘Von der Besatzung zur Neutralität’, in Günter Bischof and Josef Leidenfrost (eds), Die bevormundete Nation. Osterreich und die Alliierten 1945–1949 (Innsbruck 1988), pp. 371–405. 54 Michael Gehler, ‘Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Paneuropa und Österreich 1923– 1972’, in Helmut Wohnout (ed.), Demokratie und Geschichte. Jahrbuch des Karl von Vogelsang-Instituts zur Erforschung der Geschichte der christlichen Demokratie in Österreich (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 1998), pp. 143–93. 55 Gehler, ‘“Politisch unabhängg”’, p. 300. 56 Ibid., p. 325. 57 ‘“Was wir wollen”’, pp. 393–4. 58 Cited in Gehler, ‘“Politisch unabhängig”’, pp. 323–4. 59 Reinhard Meier-Walser, Die Aussenpolitik der monocoloren Regierung Klaus in Österreich 1966–1970 (Munich 1988). 60 Anton Pelinka, ‘Die Österreichische Volkspartei’, Austriaca, vol. 10 (1980), pp. 21–38, here p. 37. 61 For the election results see Fritz Plasser, Peter A.Ulram and Franz Sommer, ‘Nationalratswahl 1999: Transformation des österreichischen Wahlverhaltens’, in Andreas Khol (ed.), Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Politik 1999 (Vienna and Munich 2000), pp. 49–88. 62 Christoph Hofinger, Günter Ogris and Ursula Breitenfelder, ‘Das Wendejahr. Polarisierungen, Themen und Wählerströme’, in Andreas Khol (ed.), Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Politik 2000 (Vienna and Munich 2001), pp. 17–34. 63 Egon Matzner, ‘Zum Niedergang der Zweiten Republik’, in Khol, Jahrbuch für Politik 2000, pp. 35–56. 64 Peter Ulram, ‘The New Political Climate—das neue politische Umfeld’, in Khol, Jahrbuch für Politik 2000, pp. 3–16. 65 See Frederick Baker and Elisabeth Boyer (eds), Wiener Wandertage. Eine Dokumentation (Klagenfurt/Celovec 2002). 66 Thomas Köhler, ‘Die Neupositionierung der Österreichischen Volkspartei von der Wende 2000 bis zum Alpbacher Bundeskongress 2001’, in Khol, Jahrbuch für Politik 2000, pp. 339–66.

10 Towards the One-party State: Nascent Christian Democracy in Hungary Jenő Gergely ORIGINS In the period after 1944–45, Hungarian Christian democracy evolved out of three sources. First and foremost the Catholic, social, professional corporatist movements that began in the 1930s should be mentioned: the Association of Catholic Agrarian Youth Associations or Katolikus Agrárifjúsági Legényegyesületek Országos Testülete (KALOT, 1936–46), the Parochial Departments of Workers or Egyházközségi Munkásszakosztályok (EMSZO, 1937–45) and the National Vocational Organization of Hungarian Workers or Magyar Dolgozók Országos Hivatásszervezete (1939–46). The combined membership of these associations reached a total of nearly half a million. They were widespread, with local organizations, especially those of the KALOT, covering the whole country.1 The membership and electoral basis of Christian democratic politics grew in response to the encyclical Quadragesimo anno, and mainly out of the social corporatist movements influenced by the Jesuits. A distinctive ideological programme was founded on this organizational basis. Catholic social teaching with its coherent ideology offered a firm base for the formulation and implementation of the concrete political programmes of Christian democratic and Christian social parties. On 26 August 1943, representatives of the different groups secretly met at the bishop’s palace in Győr. The leaders of Catholic Action and the Catholic societal movements were also present at this meeting, which was presided over by the diocesan Bishop of Győr, Baron Vilmos Apor. All 23 participants agreed that Germany’s military defeat was imminent and that this would mean a historic turning point for Hungary, as well as for others. They realized the great potential of the societal mass organizations under Church leadership, above all the KALOT and EMSZO. Concentrated political action was necessary to allow Christian principles and the social teaching of the Pope to come into their own. The old party, Egyesült Keresztény Párt, was deemed no longer capable of this action, and consequently the founding of a new Catholic party was proposed.2 The second source of post-1945 Christian democracy was a theoretically interested group of mostly young intellectuals and journalists, professing to French neoCatholicism, the so-called progressive Catholics. They turned against conservative political Catholicism, which supported the Horthy regime. Their reform programme fused Christian social teaching with the traditions of liberal Catholicism. Although they did not call themselves Christian democrats, they acted on the principles of Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and Gilbert Dru. Their ideological inspiration came from Ottokár


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Prohászka and Sándor Giesswein.3 The Wesselényi Reform Club and the journalists Jenő Katona, Zsolt Aradi and Borisz Balla provided them with the necessary publicity. From the end of the 1930s onwards, they were able to publish their ideas in Jelenkor, István Barankovics’ Az Ország Útja, and Sándor Pethő’s daily newspaper, Magyar Nemzet. The history professor Gyula Szekfű, who did not want to play a political party role, was a member of the group, as were the sociologist Vid Mihelics, the publicists Jenő Katona and István Barankovics, the writer György Rónay, the priest Miklós Griger, a legitimist supporting the return to the monarchy, and the deputy Count György Széchényi.4 The group formulated the programme of a modern Christian democracy with a European orientation. Although there were many interconnections between this group and the aforementioned social movements, closer co-operation between them was hindered by their different interpretation of corporatism. The new Christian democratic intelligentsia saw the corporatist movements as being linked with anti-democratic tendencies ultimately leading to corporatist-clerical dictatorships, as in Austria or Portugal in the 1930s. The third source of Christian democracy was political Catholicism, which had been in existence since the turn of the century and was regarded as the official Catholic Party, and the Christian social tradition.5 In 1944–45, its democratically inclined leaders and voters tried to create a new Christian political party together with the above-mentioned groups. The Church initiated co-operation between the different groups, which diverged, however, in their attitudes over the recent past. Barankovics and his followers did not want to allow those compromised in the Horthy era to work for the party. They decisively rejected the Christian politics of inter-war Hungary.6 THE FORMATION OF THE CHRISTIAN DNP In 1943–44, the feeling grew that the formation of a new, dynamic, progressive Catholic party was imperative in order to protect the interests of the Church and to realize Christian democratic aims in society.7 The Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) was founded on 13 October 1944.8 On this occasion, József Pálffy announced that he had made contact with several leading progressive Catholics who were in hiding from the Gestapo, and who had verbally confirmed that they were joining the party. On Pálffy’s initiative, those at the meeting unanimously elected the journalist Barankovics, who was in hiding, as leader of the party. Against the background of his experience in the resistance coalition the Magyar Front, Pálffy was convinced that Barankovics was accepted there as the true representative of progressive social Catholicism.9 He thought that without Barankovics it would be difficult to fend off the anti-Church prejudices of the political left and disperse the suspicion that the new party still had a clerical character. Pálffy went on to announce that the well-known historian Gyula Szekfű, who was also in hiding, had also given him the go-ahead to say that although he still did not want to join any party, he identified with Christian social democratic ideological legacy and aims.10 The leaders of the illegally founded KDNP went underground in occupied Budapest. On 23 December 1944, a provisional national government was formed in Debrecen in the eastern part of the country, which was occupied by the Soviets. The leading figures of

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KALOT, the Jesuits Jenő Kerkai and Töhötöm Nagy, managed to win the government’s approval of the unrestricted activities of KALOT and the KDNP.11 Kerkai then began to organize the party with Sándor Bálint and the KALOT leader József Ugrin at the inaugural meeting in Szeged on 21 January 1945. The programme they drew up there and made public laid down that the KDNP, together with the Hungarian National Independence Front, Magyar Nemzeti Függetlenségi Front (MNFF), wanted to participate ‘in the reconstruction of the ruined Hungarian homeland’.12 They emphasized that the people’s party is founded on a solid ideological basis: the recognition of God and Christ and respect for the Church, leading to the upholding of human dignity, the valuing of work and the worker, protection of property, the sanctity of family life, love within the family and serving the homeland.13 The programme demanded democratic rights and general, fair elections with a secret ballot. At the end of February 1945, the new party developed around Pálffy and Margit Slachta, Béla Kovrig, Barankovics, the priest and politician József Közi-Horváth, Vid Mihelics, Szekfű, and the lawyer László Varga. The party then suffered a severe blow, however. On 18 April 1945, the Budapest National Commission banned the KDNP.14 Despite their work in the resistance, Pálffy and the party’s inner circle were regarded with some mistrust. Thus the KDNP leadership decided at the Christian Democratic Party committee on Kerkai’s initiative that Barankovics, who had a good relationship with the political left, should take over the position of secretary-general from Pálffy. Pálffy and his supporters were far from pleased. In the summer of 1945, the new electoral law made it possible for new parties to stand for election, at least in theory. At a meeting on 17 September, however, the hastily formed National Committee of Hungary, which had some government functions, gave Barankovics authorization and dismissed Pálffy. The decision had been made, and Barankovics announced the DNP programme. He erased the word ‘Christian’ at the party’s inaugural meeting.15 Barankovics made a clear distinction at first between the party’s conservative politics prior to the Second World War and the Christian democracy, which he advocated. According to Barankovics, the People’s Party’s programme was ‘directed at the guarantee of natural law’. Referring to the popes, the Atlantic Charter and the foundation of the United Nations in San Francisco, he demanded that natural law should ‘determine future international relations with the aim of promoting common well-being, love and justice’.16 The DNP aimed at good relations with the Churches, above all the Catholic Church. Barankovics said: One of the most important points in our programme is that the state should respect the ordaining, preaching, educational and organizational freedom of the Church and guarantee religious education. Violating any of these rights would mean a serious violation of freedom of religion.17 Thus the DNP was officially founded on 25 September 1945 with Barankovics as its leader. The DNP did not take part in the local elections in Budapest in October, however, nor in the national parliamentary election in November 1945. This was partly because of


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the short time it would have had in which to prepare for the elections. More importantly, however, it wanted to uphold a unified bourgeois front. Instead of participating itself in the elections, it gave its support to the Independent Smallholders’ Party.18 CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN THE INDEPENDENT SMALLHOLDERS’ PARTY In September 1945, the Catholic Church realized the fragmentation of Christian political forces and tried to get Dezső Sulyok of the Independent Smallholders’ Party to form a new Catholic Party. Sulyok was a well-known anti-fascist and committed advocate of bourgeois democracy.19 He convinced Archbishop József Mindszenty that it was in the common interest of the bourgeois and the Catholic Church to form a unified bourgeois front against the left-wing communist political forces and that the appropriate and already well-functioning framework for this was the Independent Smallholders’ Party. Christian values and bourgeois democracy were equally represented in this party. The circular published on 18 October 1945 in the name of the episcopate implicitly demanded support from the church-goers for the Smallholders’ Party. Their support contributed decisively to the majority the party achieved, with 57 per cent of the vote and 245 seats.20 Between 1944 and 1949 the Christian Democratic Party, which existed between October 1944 and August 1945, and its successor, the DNP, professed allegiance to Christian democracy. This was clearly evident in both the choice of name for the parties and their programme. The DNP was not very active politically between the autumn of 1945 and the summer of 1947. It was mainly concerned with making sure that it was not regarded as the successor to the party which had existed prior to 1945, a force of the far right. Being a Catholic party, it was loyal to the Church, but did not want to become the political instrument of Mindszenty. As a result, the leadership of the Catholic Church supported the Independent Smallholders’ Party and no longer the DNP.21 The range of parties with Christian democratic or Christian social values was much wider, however. Among these parties was the Christian Camp of Women, Keresztény Női Tábor (KNT). It had come into existence in 1945 after the dissolution of the Christian DNP, and was led by Margit Slachta, a nun who led a Hungarian women’s order. This party was part of the conservative-legitimistic currents in Christian politics, but was very committed to social issues.22 By far the most important party of this period was the Independent Smallholders’ Party, however. The so-called ‘Catholic Group’ was one influential force within the party. This was despite the fact that the Independent Smallholders’ Party had Protestant roots and the majority of its leadership and membership was Protestant. Its aim was the creation of non-ideological agrarian bourgeois democracy.23 The Catholic Group tried to win over members from the various Christian-Catholic organizations for the party. The EMSZO was disbanded in February 1945, KALOT and the Christian social organizations in June and July 1946.24 The Christian Socials had the support of strong unions in Budapest whose members were white-collar workers in the communal administration and companies. The most important of these was the railwaymen’s union, with which the Catholic priest Béla Varga, the leader of the Budapest Independent Smallholders’ Party,


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negotiated. They came to an agreement that the railwaymen would support the Independent Smallholders’ Party at the Budapest local elections, and would be represented on the party list in return.25 Attempts were also made with the help of KALOT to create a Christian national youth organization that would be linked to the Smallholders. The party’s youth organization, the Independent Youth Organization, Független Ifjúsági Szövetség (FISZ), was founded in Debrecen in 1945. Its basis was formed by KALOT, the Protestant Christian youth organization, Keresztyén Ifjúsági Egyesület (KIE), and the Scouts. An example of KALOT’s relationship to the Independent Smallholders’ Party is the journalist Ferenc Pethe’s career. Pethe had been leader of the FISZ up until 1947 when he became a DNP deputy.26 The political parties at that time, especially the middle-class parties, had no membership lists, so that membership numbers are always only estimates. The existing data about deputies will help to establish the link between the Independent Smallholders’ Party and the DNP, however, including their common as well as different roots. The Independent Smallholders’ Party had in total 342 deputies in 1944–49, that is, in the interim national assembly during 1944–45, in the first national assembly during 1945–47 and in Parliament during 1947–49, a figure that includes replacement deputies from the party list.27 Of the 342 deputies, including four clerics and one nun, 26 had close and lasting links to Catholic organizations, movements and societies. Only 12 of the Independent Smallholders’ Party deputies were members of or leaders in the Catholic social movement. Three deputies were elected from the party’s workers’ section, whose members came from the EMSZO and the corporatist association. They were the farmer József Csépány, leader of the local branch of the Christian social organization of rural workers in Gyöngyös, the craftsman István Csurgay, secretary of the corporatist organization, and Ferenc Juhász, a locksmith and blacksmith who was one of the leaders of the Christian social union and the EMSZO. Several deputies were KALOT members: the civil servants Gyula Belső and Tibor Horányi, the lawyer Imre Bencze, the farmer Bálint Czupy, the KALOT leader György Farkas, the farmers Kálmán Hajdú and Lajos Németh and the theology professor István Kiss. Many of the aforementioned were active simultaneously or consecutively in KALOT, in the corporatist organization in the EMSZO and in the Farmers’ Association, which was a mass organization within the Independent Smallholders’ Party, rather than a Christian organization. Some of the clerics who were the party’s deputies had no links to these movements. Béla Varga, for example, joined the Independent Smallholders’ Party as a legitimist supporting a restoration of the monarchy in 1939 and stayed in the party for good. Viktor Perr from Pécs or Lajos Ledniczky, deacon of the diocese of Veszprém, were also legitimists. Anna Veress, a social worker and teacher, worked closely with Margit Slachta. It is also remarkable that noteworthy deputies such as Sándor Bálint and Sándor Eckhardt, who were professors from Szeged and Budapest, the teacher Géza Komlós, the lawyer György Eszterhás, or the farmer József Pécsi, who were important politicians in the DNP, did not participate in these various movements. Some Independent Smallholders’ Party deputies joined the Catholic movement in the course of time. The doctor Tibor Hám was, for example, active in the association of former Piarist pupils. József Gróh, the lawyer from Esztergom, was, prior to 1945, a member of the EKP. After


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1945, he transferred his allegiances from the Smallholders to Margit Slachta’s movement. Quite a number were influenced by personal contacts. The teacher Géza Komlós, for example, who was a follower of Béla Varga, joined the Independent Smallholders’ Party, and then the DNP in 1947. The historiography of the Independent Smallholders’ Party is almost unanimous in ascertaining that a so-called Catholic group existed within the party from the spring or summer of 1945 on as the divisions between the emerging Christian DNP and the Independent Smallholders’ Party were, by and large, overcome. After the DNP and the Christian Democratic People’s Party had not independently taken part in the Budapest local elections or in the elections for the national assembly, the various groups aligned themselves in the interests of a unified middle-class front to the next closest parties. The more conservative combination, Pálffy-Slachta-János Tobler, joined forces with the opposition Bourgeois Democratic Party, or Polgári Demokrata Párt. The DNP, whose programme was more closely related to that of the coalition’s middle-class currents, came to an agreement with the Independent Smallholders’ Party that the party and its followers would support the Smallholders. In return for this support they were each given places on the lists for the Budapest local elections and the national elections, the latter being taken up by the professors Bálint and Eckhardt. It is debatable which other deputies from the Smallholders’ Party could be counted as linked to Christian democratic, Christian social or Catholic groupings.28 Some authors maintain that Smallholders’ deputies included at least 17 politicians who supported the DNP and its programme and who only joined the Independent Smallholders’ Party because the DNP did not take part in the elections.29 It is almost impossible to draw up a complete list due to the lack of written records. The fact that some of those mentioned had already taken part in the formation of the Christian DNP at the end of 1944 and beginning of 1945, and joined the DNP in 1947, proves that there was a considerable Christian democratic group in the heterogeneous Independent Smallholders’ Party. The party can thus not be called Christian democratic, but its principles and programme were very close to those of Christian democracy. THE HUNGARIAN FREEDOM PARTY AND CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY The disintegration of the Independent Smallholders’ Party was accelerated by the Communist Party’s so-called salami tactic. In March 1946, 20 deputies who had been branded ‘reactionary’ were expelled from the party. Sixteen of these founded the Hungarian Freedom Party (MSZP) under the leadership of Dezső Sulyok. Sulyok’s party openly defined itself as a middle-class party of opposition.30 The party leader had a reputation in Hungarian public life of being the most ‘bourgeois’ of bourgeois politicians. His reputation rested on the role he had played in the resistance and his experiences in administration, and he also enjoyed the trust of Cardinal Mindszenty. Sulyok and his followers called themselves ‘national democrats’, combining nationalist positions with Christian values. In the summer of 1946, after the formation of the Alliance of the Left of the Communists, the Social Democrats and the National Peasants’ Party, the Church once again suggested the organization of a new Catholic Party. The deputy Tibor Hám negotiated with Mindszenty in Esztergom on behalf of the Catholic group in the


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Independent Smallholders’ Party. Most Smallholders’ Party politicians did not support the idea, as they feared their further weakening in relation to the left.31 Despite the danger of a split of the political right, the Church readily supported the Hungarian Freedom Party led by Sulyok. Its policy statements show that of all the bourgeois parties it was closest to Christian democracy. It is no coincidence that Cardinal Mindszenty in the summer of 1945 and again in 1946 had repeatedly tried to win Dezső Sulyok over to organize and lead an exclusively Catholic Party.32 After the founding of the Hungarian Freedom Party, those Christian democratic and Christian social politicians who joined it after the split in the Christian DNP no longer wanted to be active in the Smallholders’ Party but wanted to be outside of the coalition. Pálffy, the former leader of the Christian DNP, was one of these politicians, as was János Tobler, leader of the Christian socialists. Pálffy declared that their programme was ‘Christian democracy’.33 The party did not, however, combine the adjectives democratic and national in its name. This was most likely because the Horthy regime had called itself Christian-national, and Sulyok and his followers wanted to distance themselves from any connection to it. Those various middle-class parties based on Christian values took up Hungary’s participation in international collaboration in their programmes and gave their support to the United Nations Charter. They held peaceful relations with neighbouring countries, as well as good relations with the Great Powers, to be important. Their programmes did not yet include the idea of European integration, however: most important was the reestablishment of national independence and sovereignty.34 Among those parties based on Christian principles, only Sulyok’s party included co-operation with Christian democratic parties from other countries in its programme.35 In the DNP, the group around Barankovics had an ideological affinity rather than actual relations with European Christian democracy. When they had to defend their programme against the conservatism of the Church they often referred to the French MRP, the Italian DC and the Austrian ÖVP. The inaugural congress of the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI) took place in late February 1947, before the Hungarian elections in August of that year. The largest party at that time, the governing Independent Smallholders’ Party, was invited to cooperate with the NEI.36 Although there is inadequate archival evidence about this, the decision can perhaps be explained by the fact that the DNP was not really a wellorganized political force at that time. It existed rather unofficially with its two deputies in the national assembly. It is also possible that those responsible in the NEI were informed of the conflict between the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the DNP leaders. Sulyok’s party was probably not invited to take part because it was only beginning to expand and was represented by ‘reactionary’ politicians excluded from the Independent Smallholders’ Party for being too right-wing. THE ‘TRIUMPH’ OF THE DNP IN 1947 The disintegration of the Independent Smallholders’ Party took place in the summer of 1947, before the general election at the end of August. Those deputies and voters who defected from the Smallholders formed two large opposition parties. One was the


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Hungarian Independence Party, Magyar Függetlenségi Párt (MFP), whose leader was the lawyer Zoltán Pfeiffer. The Hungarian Independence Party defined itself as an ideological party. Central to its programme was national and bourgeois, Western-style democracy, the principle of individual freedom and ‘socialism based on Christian values’.37 Pfeiffer’s party was also joined by the politicians and supporters of the dissolved Hungarian Freedom Party. The party increased its influence in Protestant and industrially more developed areas. The DNP, as the second of these parties, became the driving force of bourgeois opposition in the spring and summer of 1947. The DNP’s electoral campaign was led by former KALOT activists and members of the farmers’ association. The Catholic Group of the Independent Smallholders’ Party and those masses supporting it in the western and southern regions of Hungary, as well as SzabolcsSzatmár, Heves and Nógrád, finally joined up almost completely—including the local organizations—with the DNP.38 As a result, the DNP evolved from a small group of intellectuals to a proper people’s party. The DNP’s electoral programme was announced by Secretary-General Barankovics on 10 August 1947. After an exposition of the Christian conception of the state, Barankovics maintained that ‘We are not a Church party, not even in the sense that priests, of any Christian persuasion, influence our political programme, and also not in the sense that we want to attract voters in the name of the Church.’ At the same time, the DNP recognized that ‘one of the main obligations of Christian politics is to ensure the worldly prerequisites for a successful fulfilling of the Church’s mission, to protect it and fight for it’.39 Barankovics went on to declare that the DNP’s aims in foreign policy included ‘a Hungarian state that maintains peaceful relations with the world’, and domestically, ‘our ideal of democracy based on freedom and equality’.40 The DNP’s economic programme wanted to ‘replace monopoly-based capitalism with socialism based on Christian values’. The catchphrase of socialism based on Christian values ‘means the right to private ownership which is so important for the independence of the individual’.41 On 30 August, on the eve of the election, Barankovics summarized his programme in a radio speech in one phrase: ‘an independent state, Christian Democracy and Socialism based on Christian values’. Those voting for the DNP were voting for this ideology of a Christian state, and hoped that its deputies would protect Christian moral values and Church institutions that were already at that time openly threatened.42 The Communist Party won the last parliamentary elections in which several parties took part, with a partially manipulated 22 per cent of the vote. The DNP was the second largest party, with 16.4 per cent and 60 deputies; 75.8 per cent of their votes came from farmers.43 More than 40 per cent of the voters voted against the Communist takeover of power with the help of the Alliance of the Left and voted for Barankovics’ and Pfeiffer’s and other opposition parties. The DNP had been supported by the majority of the Catholic bishops and priests. THE DNP’S COMPOSITION IN 1947 Indications of the origins of the DNP and its relationship to the Independent Smallholders’ Party can be found in the 1947 election data of the 60 DNP deputies, or 71


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including those who entered Parliament from the party list up until 1949, replacing others.44 Regarding confession, one of the deputies belonged to the Reformed Church (Imre Bús, a farmer) and one was a Lutheran (János Zomborszky, also a farmer); all the others were Catholic. The professions of the deputies reflected to some extent the social backgrounds of the voters. Twenty-nine were originally farmers. In addition there were four estate managers who participated in the management of agricultural production. These 33 constituted almost one half of the deputies. As the party’s electoral success was mainly in the west and south of the country, that is to say in Catholic regions, which traditionally voted for Christian parties, it is clear that in 1947 the DNP was the party of the Catholic provinces and land-owning farmers. The second main group of deputies was composed of intellectuals, also numbering 33. Seventeen of them were public employees (teachers, soldiers, civil servants), 14 of them were self-employed (lawyers, solicitors and journalists) and two were priests. Lawyers and solicitors were over-represented within the group: there were eleven and they were only second in number to the farmers. These figures point to the fact that they were the political representatives of the rural farmers and lower middle class who had already previously had connections to the various Catholic movements. The high number of teachers showed that the provincial Catholic intelligentsia also embraced the party’s programme. The data also indicate that the traditional Christian educated middle class in the small and large towns of Catholic western and southern Hungary were also drawn to the party after the disintegration of the Independent Smallholders’ Party. The DNP’s roots can also be traced by considering the deputies’ links to Catholic associations and movements. According to the available data, 46 of the 71 deputies were members of or belonged to the leadership of the different Catholic organizations. Information about the other deputies’ links is either not available or they first became involved in politics in 1945–46 or at the 1947 elections—that is, after the dissolution of the various Catholic organizations. Twenty-one of all the DNP deputies were members or in the leadership of KALOT, nine were active in the corporatist organization and six in EMSZO. In the case of the aforementioned, it was sometimes the case that as well as being KALOT members, they were members of both other organizations. Five were members of Foederatio Emericana, the Catholic student association at the universities. They represented the party’s academic elite. Another five deputies were members of other Catholic organizations until their dissolution in 1945–46. In terms of the parties to which the deputies belonged before joining the DNP, nine had been deputies of the Independent Smallholders’ Party immediately prior to the 1947 elections: Sándor Bálint, Gyula Belső, János Bodnár, Sándor Eckhardt, György Eszterhás, Kálmán Hajdú, Ferenc Kováts, Lajos Nagy and József Pécsi. At the time of the elections, the two professors, Bálint and Eckhardt, were only formally Smallholders deputies. Immediately afterwards they became DNP deputies. Bálint Czupy and Lajos Hajdu Németh had been excluded from the Independent Smallholders’ Party in the summer of 1947, even before the dissolution of the national assembly. They also joined the DNP, but emigrated shortly afterwards and did not take part in the next elections. Forty-one DNP deputies had been, for shorter or longer periods, members of the Independent Smallholders’ Party before 1947. Very few of them had been members of the latter since the 1930s, however. The majority had joined the Smallholders in 1945 and


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went over to the DNP at some point in 1947. Thus the majority of DNP deputies were former members of the Independent Smallholders’ Party. It would be an exaggeration, however, to maintain that the DNP became a kind of successor to the Independent Smallholders’ Party as a result of this process. Twenty-seven of its deputies had not been active in any other political party. Some had already joined the Christian DNP in 1944– 45. Several others only joined in 1946–47. In summary, the DNP, which was so successful in 1947, emerged out of co-operation between the groups of intellectuals and members of the educated middle class led by Barankovics and the Catholic groups from the Independent Smallholders’ Party. Christian democracy in Hungary was clearly based on the support of the Catholic farmers and the Christian educated middle class in rural areas and in the towns. Following the self-dissolution of the Hungarian Freedom Party in the summer of 1947 and the outlawing of the second largest opposition party, Pfeiffer’s Hungarian Independence Party, for its alleged manipulation of the election results, the DNP was the only party to represent Christian democratic or Christian social ideas after the 1947 elections.45 Between 1947 and 1948 it tried to continue with its constructive opposition politics. However, in the summer of 1948 and in the following months, serious middle-class-based, Christian democratic opposition politics was made impossible by the complete takeover of power by the Communists.46 The arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty on 26 December 1948 and the Communist show trial to which he was subjected came at the same time as the dissolution of the DNP, a party Mindszenty had never respected or openly supported. On 2 February 1949 István Barankovics fled to Vienna, where, in a statement, he announced the dissolution of the Democratic People’s Party in Hungary. On 4 February a small group of party representatives who had remained in Hungary declared the party’s ‘self-dissolution’. Eleven DPP representatives were subsequently forced to leave the country. Barankovics, who settled in New York, became the leader of the party-in-exile. It was there that, in 1950, the Central European Christian Democratic Union was formed, comprising Christian democratic party representatives who had fled the Soviet sphere of influence. The DPP became a member organization of the Union, and in 1958 István Barankovics was elected as chairman of the Union.47 At the time of the 1956 revolution, Sándor Keresztes and the sociologist Vid Mihelics—both former DPP representatives— began to reorganize the party. It officially functioned from 30 October 1956 onwards. After the suppression of the revolution (4 November), however, the party was banned and its leaders were imprisoned. CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC POLITICS SINCE 1989–90 The dismantling of the one-party Communist dictatorship and the peaceful establishment of a multiparty constitutional parliamentary democracy were achieved at roundtable negotiations between the reform Communists and the democratic national opposition. A prerequisite for this was the establishment of political parties. Political parties began to form once more in 1987. They fell into two categories: new parties developing out of the existing opposition movements: Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF); Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ); League of Young Democrats (FIDESZ); and re-established parties


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that had operated between 1945 and 1949. The latter included the Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKgP), the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), and the post-communist Hungarian Freedom Party (MSZP). In terms of how they defined themselves politically, the six parties gaining parliamentary seats at the elections of 1990 constituted three separate political groupings. The MDF, the FKgP and the KDNP were on the centre-right of the political spectrum. The social liberal SZDSZ and the radical liberal FIDESZ called themselves parties of the political centre. All of these ‘regimechange’ parties were fervently anti-Communist and united in their opposition to the Socialists. The left wing of the political spectrum was occupied by the MSZP, which had been established by the reform Communists but whose aim was to transform itself into a Social democratic party.48 As well as being anti-Communist, all of the centre-right parties were nationalist parties—although they also wished to participate in the process of European integration. These parties adhered to a conservatism that sought to preserve traditional values, and to a social and democratic political system based on private ownership. The first party to establish itself—in September 1987—was the MDF. József Antall became party leader. The party was a national democratic people’s party (and movement), with populist nationalist, national liberal, and Christian democratic wings. The weakest of these tendencies within the party was the Christian democratic, which made no attempt to define itself at an ideological level. The FKgP was re-established in November 1988. It was a right-wing, anti-liberal party of special sectoral interests—an agricultural party whose programme focused upon defending the interests of private farmers. The party’s slogan—God, Fatherland and Family—may have expressed Christian values, but the party had no links either with the Churches or with post-1945 European Christian democracy. In this latter respect, the Smallholders saw themselves as the heirs of a part of the DPP of 1947, however. Just one party expressly called itself a Christian democratic party—the KDNP, which was launched in September 1989 as the last of the six new political parties. Its ideology was based on ideas borrowed from modern European Christian democracy, supplemented with conservative ideals and a firm opposition to communism and liberalism. The KDNP was committed to constitutional democracy and desired the establishment of a social market economy. It had close relations with the Catholic Church, the party’s members and leaders were Catholics, and most local branches of the party were established either in the capital city Budapest or in Catholic areas of the country. The party’s declared policy aims contained far-reaching social demands, which were almost Christian socialist in nature. In the light of such demands, the party’s self-definition as a party of the centreright appears somewhat unjustified. The KDNP founders were politicians of the former Barankovics-led party: Sándor Keresztes, József Ugrin, as well as the returning emigrants K.Zoltán Kovács, László Varga and others. The new members of the party—mainly Catholic intellectuals and professionals who had not found a place in the other five parties—were forced into a secondary role. The party’s leadership, headed by the physician László Surján, and its deputies were rather elderly in comparison with those of other parties. The party declared István Barankovics and the DPP to be its ideological and political predecessors, but in no sense did it implement a modernized version of Barankovics’ policies.49 Compared to the KDNP after 1989, Barankovics’ party had been


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detached from the Church, open to left-wing and social values, and much closer to contemporary European Christian democracy.50 At the time of Hungary’s transition to democracy, European Christian democracy provided assistance to its Hungarian supporters. In June 1989 the European Committee of the European Democratic Union (EDU)—the organization combining many Christian democratic parties from the European Union as well as Christian democratic and conservative parties from outside it—met in Budapest. In December 1989 a MDF delegation even took part in an EDU executive meeting in Munich. In August 1990 EDU party leaders met in Helsinki. It was at this meeting that the Hungarian parties—the MDF, KDNP, and FKgP—were awarded full membership of the organization.51 The MDF won the first free elections held in 1990. In order to ensure the ‘governability’ of the country, it agreed a ‘pact’ with the second largest party, the opposition social liberal SZDSZ. The KDNP was the smallest parliamentary party, with just 22 seats. The government consisted of a coalition of the MDF, the FKgP and the KDNP. Each of the coalition partners espoused Christian values, the establishment of national independence (with the withdrawal of the occupying Soviet forces completed only in June 1991), the creation of a democratic state based on the rule of law, and the reintroduction of a market economy. Nevertheless, the new centre-right governing coalition failed to pursue Christian Democratic policies. In the MDF, the party’s national liberal wing determined policy, while the FKgP pursued conservative agrarian interests without any firm ideological basis. For its part, while the KDNP stressed ‘pure’ Christian democratic principles and values, it was unable to translate them into the language of practical everyday politics and thus became the ‘grey party’ of Hungarian politics. Several factors hindered the political success of Christian democracy. Its politicians failed to account adequately for the effects of 50 years of atheistic, anti-ecclesiastical and anti-religious ‘education’ and propaganda after 1945—as a result of which the main body of Hungarian society had lost interest in religion. The Christian faithful had no knowledge of Christian democracy and had grown accustomed to political passivity. A direct role of the Churches was not necessarily helpful for the centre-right parties as a whole, or for the KDNP. Prime Minister Antall and his supporters espoused a liberal Catholicism. The KDNP, on the other hand, was too much bound by its own traditions and unable to break away from its old habits. It was almost as if the party had shut itself away in the ‘ghetto’ of rural Catholicism under the close control of the Church leadership. The voters gained the impression that the KDNP was a ‘clerical’ rather than a modern Christian democratic people’s party. Moreover, the senior leaders of the Catholic Church put their faith in the stronger MDF. For the KDNP participation in the coalition brought few benefits. Its role in the coalition was minimal, and yet it had to share the burden of government responsibility and of its failures. Before the 1994 elections the MDF collapsed, losing much of its popular support. The populist nationalist faction had already broken away to form the nationalistic and occasionally anti-Semitic Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), headed by the writer István Csurka. Committed liberals within the party also departed, establishing their own party, the Hungarian Democratic People’s Party. The KDNP hoped that it might be able to replace the MDF as the new focus of centre-right political forces, but it gained only 23 seats. The voters placed their faith in the Socialists, who had promised to resolve social


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issues and to support the losers of the regime change and economic transition. Having been forced into opposition, the centre-right parties saw their strength rapidly erode. The FKgP and the KDNP became embroiled in ferocious political and personal battles, all of which greatly damaged their credibility in the eyes of voters. The KDNP now sought an alliance in opposition with both the FKgP and the newly founded MIÉP. The main proponent of this rightwing orientation was György Giczy. In 1995 his supporters toppled Surján, the party leader, and replaced him with Giczy. From then onwards, party members who opposed the KDNP’s shift towards the extreme right either left the party or were expelled by the new leadership. Meanwhile, in 1996, under the leadership of Viktor Orbán, FIDESZ, which had begun as a party of young intellectuals, made a dramatic aboutturn in party policy. Party members acknowledged that, as a liberal party, FIDESZ was in danger of suffering the same fate as the social liberal SZDSZ—which, on gaining power, had quickly become little more than a ‘satellite party’ of the Socialists. FIDESZ thus made efforts to extend its influence to other groups in society, changing its name to Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party. Its newly adopted programme called for the establishment of a ‘civic Hungary’, focusing on a strengthening of the middle classes, small and medium enterprises, and private farms. The party professed national, Christian and conservative values. Its dynamism proved attractive to many of the Christian democratic politicians who were active in the other centre-right parties, which were now in a state of crisis and collapse. Thus, even before the elections that were due in 1998, the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party became the leading force on the centre right of Hungarian politics. Orbán was a young charismatic leader who emphasized the party’s Christian democratic values and its commitment to European integration. Giczy’s KDNP and the Torgyán-led FKgP were now expelled from the EDU, and their place in the international organization was taken by the FideszHungarian Civic Party. In 1996 the party became a member of the EU-based European People’s Party, which then elected Viktor Orbán as one of its deputy leaders.52 At the 1998 elections the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party was victorious in an alliance with the FKgP and the MDF, while the KDNP failed to reach the 5 per cent parliamentary threshold, while Csurka’s MIÉP managed to gain parliamentary representation. The newly formed centre-right coalition achieved an economic upturn and also managed to accelerate Hungary’s European integration. However, the FideszHungarian Civic Party leadership took a rather aggressive stand against the opposition— the Socialists and the Social Liberals—and it failed to use the economic achievements to compensate the losers of the difficult process of economic transition. The staunchly nationalist rhetoric of the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party, its commitment to the Churches, as well as its demand that it should be the exclusive defender of middle-class values, placed much of society in opposition to the centre-right government. Among the coalition partners, the FKgPbecame embroiled in numerous corruption scandals; Torgyán left the government and thereafter the party more or less ceased to exist. In the end, the FideszHungarian Civic Party lost the elections in 2002, albeit by the smallest of margins. Neither the KDNP nor the FKgP won any parliamentary seats, and the MIÉP was also ousted from parliament. The Socialists and Social Liberals formed the government once more, and in the spring of 2003 it signed the Treaty of Accession to the European Union.


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NOTES 1 See Félbemaradt reformkor. Miért akadt el az ország keresztény humanista megújulása? Szerk.: a Szerkesztőbizottság (Rome 1990), pp. 19–88; Jenő Gergely, A politikai katolicizmus Magyarországon 1890–1950 (Budapest 1977), pp. 195–231; idem, A katolikus egyház töténete Magyarországon 1919–1945 (Budapest 1977), pp. 155–76. 2 Leslie László, Le Parti Populaire Démocrate-Chrétien de Hongrie (1944–1949) (Rome 1982), pp. 15–16. 3 Ottokár Prohászka (1858–1927), Archbishop of Székesfehérvár from 1905, renewer of Hungarian Catholicism; Sándor Giesswein (1856–1923), papal prelate, theoretician and leader of the Christian Social Movement. 4 Jenő Gergely, A keresztényszocializmus Magyarországon 1924–1944 (Budapest 1993), pp. 144–55; László László, ‘Adatok a magyar katolikus ellenállás történetéhez. III. Szellemi honvédelem’, Katolikus Szemle, no. 1 (1979), pp. 19–24. 5 Jenő Gergely, A keresztényszocializmus Magyarországon 1903–1923 (Budapest 1977); idem, A keresztényszocializmus Magyarországon 1924–1944. 6 István Barankovics, ‘Programbeszéd a Demokrata Néppárt 1945. évi szeptember hó 25-i értekezletén’, quoted in Lajos Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik Magyarországon 1944–1956 (Budapest 1994), p. 227. 7 Lászlo, Le Parti Populaire, p. 17. 8 Ibid., p. 20; other sources and contemporaries such as László Varga cite a later date for its formation. See Zoltán K.Kovács, ‘A Demokrata Néppárt alapítása’, in Félbemaradt reformkor, pp. 154–76; The first monographic study of the formation and history of the party is Lajos Izsák, A Keresztény Demokrata Néppárt és a Demokrata Néppárt 1944–1949 (Budapest 1985). 9 The resistance movement Magyar Front was formed in May 1944. The Independent Smallholders’ Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Communist Party, the Democratic Peasants’ Party and József Pálffy representing the Catholic Social People’s Movement, Katolikus Szociális Népmozgalom, took part. 10 Lászlo, Le Parti Populaire, p. 20. 11 The validity of this decision was later not recognized by the coalition parties. 12 Cited in József Ugrin (ed.), Indul a KALOT (Debrecen 1945), p. 6. 13 Ibid. 14 The national commissions were made up of delegates from the four parties in the coalition. They were the power centres of the ‘People’s Democratic Revolution’. 15 László, Le Parti Populaire; Lajos Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik, p. 43. 16 Barankovics, ‘Programbeszéd’, p. 228. 17 Ibid. 18 The local elections took place on 7 October and the National Assembly elections on 4 November 1945. The Independent Smallholders’ Party won respectively 50.5 and 57 per cent of the vote. 19 Károly Szerencsés, A nemzeti demokráciáért (Sulyok Dezső biográfiája) (Pápa 1997).


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20 For the circular see József Vecsey (ed.), Mindszenty Okmánytár, vol. 1 (Munich 1957), pp. 70–6. 21 Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik, p. 85. 22 Ibid., pp. 99–102. 23 The only monograph on the party is István Vida, A független kisgazdapárt politikája 1944–1947 (Budapest 1976). More recently see József Varga, ‘Az alapítástól a második világháború végéig’, in Félbemaradt reformkor, pp. 256–308. 24 Gergely, A keresztényszocializmus Magyarországon 1924–1944, pp. 190–200. 25 Vida, A független kisgazdapárt, p. 86. 26 Mária Csicskó and Róbert Szabó, ‘A Demokrata Néppárt képviselői’, in Zoltán K.Kovács and Pál Rosdy (eds), Az idő élén jártak. Kereszténydemokrácia Magyarországon 1944–1949 (Budapest 1996), pp. 119–88. 27 See István Vida and Vice Vörös, A Független Kisgazdapárt képviselői 1944–1949. Életrajzi lexikon. Történeti elitkutatások (Budapest 1991). The data are from this source. 28 See the previously mentioned works by István Vida and Lajos Izsák. 29 Lászlo, Le Parti Populaire, p. 31. Catholic authors have used his interpretation. See for example, István Elmer, ‘A Keresztény Demokrata Néppárt, majd a Demokrata Néppárt története (1944–1949)’, in Az idő élén jártak, p. 105. 30 Szerencsés, A nemzeti demokráciáért, pp. 169–225. 31 Vida, A független kisgazdapárt, pp. 188–9. 32 József Mindszenty, Emlékirataim (Toronto 1974), pp. 119–20. 33 Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik, p. 76. 34 Ibid., documents 1–12. 35 Ibid., p. 247. 36 Archives Archdiocese Esztergom, 5258/1948. See also Wolfram Kaiser’s chapter in this book. 37 See Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik, p. 274. 38 Lajos Izsák, ‘Az 1947. évi országgyûlési választások’, in György Földes and László Hubai (eds), Parlamenti képviselöválasztások 1920–1990. Magyarország 20. századi választási atlasza. Tanulmányok (Budapest 1994), pp. 243–66. 39 István Barankovics, ‘Keresztény demokrácia. Mit akar a DNP? Az 1947. augusztus 10-i beszéd’, in Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik, p. 262; Zoltán K. Kovács, ‘A győri kiáltvány’, in Félbemaradt reformkor, pp. 181–98. 40 Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik, pp. 264–5. 41 Ibid., p. 271. 42 László, Le Parti Populaire, p. 37. 43 Vida, A független kisgazdapárt, p. 329. 44 For biographical data see Az idő élén jártak, pp. 119–90. 45 The Hungarian Independence Party was dissolved on 20 November 1947 by the Electoral Court because of alleged cheating at the elections. Zoltán Pfeiffer emigrated on 4 November. See Izsák, Polgári pártok és programjaik, pp. 117–4. 46 Ibid., pp. 125–30. Zoltán K.Kovács, ‘A Demokrata Néppárt küzdelme az országgyûlésben és a közéletben 1947–1948’, in Félbemaradt reformkor, pp. 198– 241.


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47 Niels Arbol, A kereszténydemokrácia Európában (Budapest 1990). 48 András Körösényi, Pártok és pártrendszerek (Budapest 1993). 49 Ferenc Szakál, Tanuljuk a kereszténydemokráciát (Budapest 1994). 50 Gábor Bagdy, Miklós Gyorgyevics and József Mészáros (eds), Kereszténység és közélet (Budapest 1999), pp. 165–270. 51 Franz Horner, ‘Parteieinkooperation der europäischen Christdemokraten’, in Michael Gehler, Wolfram Kaiser and Helmut Wohnout (eds), Christdemokratie in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 2001), p. 748. 52 Tamás Fircz, A magyarországi pártrendszer 1987–1995 (Budapest 1996).

11 A Missed Opportunity to Oppose State Socialism? The People’s Party in Czechoslovakia Christiane Brenner

In May 1946, the first parliamentary elections after the Second World War took place in Czechoslovakia. The only non-socialist party to stand at this election was Československá strana lidová (ČSL), or Czechoslovak People’s Party. It presented itself to the voters as a Czech nationalist, Christian, social-reformist and anti-communist party and mainly appealed to small businessmen, non-socialist intelligentsia and civil servants.1 Its leadership hoped to win a large proportion of the farmers’ votes as the Peasant Party, which had been its greatest rival in rural areas in the inter-war period, was prohibited from being refounded.2 This hope was not, however, fulfilled. The People’s Party won 20 per cent of the vote. Only the Social Democrats had a poorer result, with 15 per cent of the vote.3 While the non-socialist Democratic Party had relegated the Communists to second place in Slovakia, the latter were the clear winners in the Bohemian Lands in this election. Around 40 per cent of the voters voted for the Communists, among them a large proportion of the farmers, whose support the People’s Party had banked on. In fact the People’s Party managed to influence Czechoslovak politics even less in the three years between May 1945 and the Communists’ takeover in February 1948 than its 1946 election result and the three ministerial posts that it attained might have suggested.4 The People’s Party had managed to attain growing influence on domestic and foreign policy in the First Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1938, participating in almost all government coalitions.5 It refuted the disloyalty of which it was initially accused by active co-operation and a great readiness to compromise. This was above all the achievement of the party leader Jan Šrámek. Contrary to expectations, the integration of political Catholicism into the markedly anti-clerical state was already successfully accomplished in the first years of the Republic.6 In the 1930s, in contrast to its Slovakian sister party, the People’s Party, which was essentially a Czech party, turned against far right anti-democratic currents in its ranks. After the dissolution of the Republic by National Socialist Germany in 1938–39, they could thus justify their claims to participation in the government in exile. The People’s Party was one of the main pillars of the system in exile as well as later in the so-called ‘people’s democracy’ of 1945–48. In this period it participated in all the most important decisions, including those that represented a clear break from the principles to which the party had been committed prior to the war. In contrast to the inter-war period, the party hardly managed to use its active participation in government for pushing through any of its aims. What hopes did the party leadership nevertheless place in the post-war coalition? What were the reasons for the People’s Party to help carry this system for three years after 1945, despite its dwindling


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influence and its opposition to the economic and political transformation of Czechoslovakia? THE PEOPLE’S PARTY IN THE ‘THIRD REPUBLIC’ The ‘Kaschau Programme’, with which the provisional government under President Edvard Beneš started its work in liberated Slovakia, reflected the future development of Czechoslovakia, as it had been determined in exile.7 After the violent end of the first Czechoslovak democracy and the brief intermezzo of the so-called ‘Second Republic’ in the shadow of National Socialist Germany, the ‘Third Republic’ was to come into being without the weaknesses of the first two. The state was to be strengthened by the simplification, standardization and concentration of societal and political life.8 This affected the ethnic structure of the country, which was to be made as homogenous as possible by the expulsion of the Germans and Hungarians. A restructuring of the economy was also agreed on. The government wanted to give the liberal capitalism of the inter-war period a more social basis and at the same time make it easier to control politically by a comprehensive programme of nationalization. Foreign policy was also redefined: while pre-war Czechoslovakia had been clearly orientated towards the West, at the end of 1943, Beneš signed an agreement in Moscow about ‘friendship, mutual support and co-operation’, which bound the new Republic to the Soviet Union. This turnaround was justified with the traumatic experience of the Munich Agreement of 1938 and was accompanied by a wave of Slavophilia. The changes in the political structure of the country were also dramatic:9 the number of parties allowed was limited to four in the Bohemian lands and two in Slovakia.10 This had the effect of shifting the political spectrum dramatically to the left. More than half the voters found that the parties for whom they had voted prior to the war no longer existed on the electoral list after 1945.11 The changes to the party system had even more farreaching consequences. All parties that were allowed participated in the government and were members of the National Front. All the most important issues were to be dealt with unanimously in this body in which the most important societal organizations also had a place. Parliament was thus greatly curbed in its political decision-making power. Facilitated by a new press law, the parties achieved far-reaching control over public opinion.12 The important posts in the mass organizations, which were likewise streamlined in the large factories and administration, were distributed among the parties. The battle between the parties regarding this distribution of posts seeped through to all spheres of society, while the principle of the division of power was undermined and civil freedoms such as the right to assemble and form organized groups were silently suspended. Even this brief characterization of the Czechoslovak ‘people’s democracy’ in the first three years after the war makes it clear that this system showed marked democratic deficiencies and from the outset ‘bore a totalitarian tendency’.13 For many years there was a tendency in historiography to emphasize the predominant acceptance that this ‘Czechoslovak path to socialism’ met with in the population.14 Contemporary sources do seem to confirm this to a great extent. One should not forget, however, that the possibility of voicing criticism was severely limited, due to the lack of

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an opposition and a public outside of the National Front.15 Those opposing the system consequently stood outside the ‘national community’ and were often the victims of repressive measures. In the context of the National Front, criticism of the ‘new reality’ was to be most expected from the People’s Party. After the short, harmonious, initial phase in which the parties of the National Front showed great cohesion, the People’s Party made its top priority combating the further transformation of the system towards a ‘socializing democracy’ and the protection of the traditional Christian culture of the country.16 The representatives of the People’s Party had already been allotted a special role during the war. Their inclusion in the government in exile was not only due to the fact that they were unblemished by collaboration with the German occupiers.17 It was also the result of tactical consideration: President Beneš, whose critical attitude to Catholicism was no secret, hoped that the extension of the Czechoslovak exile leadership—which was regarded as too ‘left-wing’ especially by French and American politicians—to include Christian Social politicians would benefit Czechoslovakia’s image in the West. František Hála thus became the second Catholic clerical member of the Czechoslovak State Council in London, alongside Jan Šrámek, who was the leader of the Czechoslovak government in exile between 1940 and 1945.18 The allies’ estimation that the People’s Party would be a ‘right-wing’ counterbalance in Czechoslovak politics was, at least partly, based on a misunderstanding, however. The People’s Party did distance itself from socialism, but at the same time, the party and its leaders clearly moved towards the left. In the period just after the war, the People’s Party programme differed in only a few points from that of the Communists, the National Socialists and the Social Democrats, which temporarily joined forces to form a ‘socialist bloc’. The party was overtly Czech nationalist. Šrámek increasingly drew on references to Czech national history and Slav solidarity in his speeches.19 The People’s Party competed with the other parties as to which of them had contributed most to the ‘national revolution’ of 1945–46, that is to say in the expulsion of the Germans.20 The deputy and journalist Ivo Ducháček wrote that Šrámek had already fought against the multi-national state in the 1920s while the communists in exile had still pleaded for the German minority to be allowed to remain.21 In Lidová Demokracie, the party’s daily newspaper, Arnošt Malovský-Wenig expressed outrage at suggestions that German professionals and children from mixed marriages should be allowed to remain. The necessity of ensuring security for the Czech nation demanded a comprehensive ‘cleansing’ of the country from Germans—even if this went hand in hand with economic sacrifice.22 While the party presented itself as being reliably nationalist, it called for moderation in the reorganization of the economy and the social structure of the country.23 The People’s Party supported a programme of redistribution and supported the nationalizations of 1945. It justified its support for the ‘social revolution’ with ‘the unstoppable march of progress’, and with Christian social teaching. Bohdan Chudoba wrote in a popular handbook on ‘Christian politics’ that the Communists had basically taken over the claims to social justice from the Christians.24 The party had already in the inter-war period been convinced that ownership carried with it obligations and that people had a right to work and a secure wage.25 In contrast to capitalists and communists, however, they recognized other, higher, values than material values.26


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All the parties in the National Front supported the idea of a ‘mixed economy’. Their ideas diverged, however, in concrete terms. While the speed of nationalization was too moderate for the Social Democrats, and the Communists planned further socialization measures in the medium term, the People’s Party insisted on retaining private companies. The majority of the People’s Party were convinced that the economic reforms carried out directly after the end of the war were sufficient.27 Economic reform was to have ended with the conclusion of the first, very far-reaching wave of nationalization in the autumn of 1945. The party opposed the further harmonization of incomes, which was mainly being pushed by the Communists. This commitment to the interests of the former middle class did not always make things that easy, as the party did not want to go against the anti-capitalistic consensus of the ‘Third Republic’, whose rhetoric was reminiscent of much that was made binding after the Communist usurpation of power in 1948. The People’s Party differed most from the other Czech parties represented in the National Front in the Christian basis of their entire programme and ideology. The emphasis that the party placed on its Christian character gave rise to problems after 1945. In the inter-war period, the People’s Party had been a purely Catholic party. It had its origins in the tradition of Christian reformism, which was very strong mainly in Moravia.28 After the war, the People’s Party was expected to take an inter-confessional character, but made only half-hearted efforts to do so. It was agreed, for example, within the party, that the leadership should remain in the hands of Catholic clerics.29 Efforts made to extend the party membership to Protestant circles came up against great difficulties. The People’s Party gained new members and voters,30 but these were looking not so much for a Christian party as a non-socialist one. The strongholds of the People’s Party lay, as they always had done, in Moravia, where the local party organizations in rural areas were involved in often far more intense disputes with the Communists than their leadership in the National Front. All the same, the party became much more heterogeneous.31 THE INTRA-PARTY CRISIS This heterogeneity led in due course to serious conflicts in the People’s Party. Just after the end of the war, Šrámek’s position appeared invincible. Thanks to his involvement in the government in exile, his authority had grown, not only in his own political camp, but also among the other parties in the National Front. He believed that the revolutionary mood just after the end of the war, which benefited the Left all over Europe, was just temporary.32 The party had to survive this time, undamaged. It should not waste its energy on fighting the Communists, but should avoid all unnecessary confrontations. From the very start, Šrámek’s attitude and the subsequent holding back of the People’s Party in the National Front met with resistance from within the party. Mainly younger party members rebelled against Šrámek’s leadership. Under the aegis of Helena Koželuhová, Ivo Ducháček and Pavel Tigrid they demanded more of an individual profile for the People’s Party.33 This was mainly to be realized by a more decisive delineation from the KSČ. They aimed at transforming the People’s Party into a non-socialist massappeal party and a real alternative to the three Czech socialist parties. They wanted to


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emphasize its Catholicism less and the defence of traditional values and institutions of parliamentary democracy much more. The lawyer and journalist Koželuhová emerged as the leading figure in the intra-party opposition. In her journalistic work she continuously called the ‘new reality’ into question. She was one of only a small number of journalists just after the war who did not imbue the term ‘liberality’ with negative connotations and among the first to make efforts towards a rehabilitation of the Republic of the inter-war years. Her demands for legal security and for the persecution of those who had committed crimes against humanity in the May Revolution of 1945, were, for that time, unusually clear.34 After the 1946 election, the result of which was the logical consequence of the missed confrontation with the KSČ in the eyes of the intra-party opposition, Koželuhová demanded a special party congress. Following this, she was excluded from the party by a procedure that went against all rules of intra-party democracy. Her mandate for the Constitutional Assembly was withdrawn because of ‘violation of party discipline’. The party leadership described Koželuhová’s demands for course correction as ‘rebellion’, and an attempt to force the party to ‘the right’.35 THE PEOPLE’S PARTY BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE The leaders of the People’s Party also tried to prevent the public discussion of the difficult issue of the position of the Church in the ‘people’s democracy’. At first, the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state, which had been extremely conflict-ridden after the First World War,36 was quite relaxed. At the end of 1945, the Catholic bishops solemnly professed their allegiance to the newly founded republic and gave their support to the revolutionary changes in the country.37 Not least importantly, they held the expulsion of the Germans to be a necessary and correct step. While the clerics in Slovakia had discredited themselves by active collaboration with the fascist state, the Czech Catholic Church had resisted collaboration with the German occupiers as far as possible. The number of victims was correspondingly high.38 The growing respect for the Church in Czech society is reflected in the manifold honours bestowed upon Catholic clerics for their dedication to the resistance against National Socialism. In return, the Catholic Church made a great number of resistance fighters, including Communists, honorary priests.39 In the first months after the end of the war, as the euphoria about the regaining of freedom erased differences of interest, the Communists emphasized their respect for the Catholics who had passed the test of the occupation ‘with flying colours’, as the Communist Education Minister Zdeněk Nejedlý put it.40 They announced that they welcomed everyone who honestly wanted to participate in the creation of a new democracy.41 There was a tendency among both Communists and Christians to emphasize what they had in common.42 As late as 1948, the minister Václav Kopecký, who was a Communist hardliner, spoke about the common struggle for social justice and solidarity which united Christians and Marxists despite their differences.43 Despite mutual demonstrations of respect between the state and the Catholic Church, the tendency to marginalize Catholicism in the official culture of post-war Czechoslovakia


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could not, however, be overlooked.44 This tendency had its origins in the nineteenth century and had become a firm part of the identity of the First Republic. Although the majority of the Czech population were members of the Catholic Church,45 the Czech nation’s image was anti-clerical or non-religious. In the delineation from AustriaHungary, Catholicism was portrayed as being hostile, repressive and reactionary and the Protestant, democratic-liberal line in Czech history emphasized. After the Second World War, when the socialists ruled over cultural life and their interpretations were dominant, this image gained a strengthened strong social-revolutionary note.46 The country’s Catholic tradition rapidly faded into the background. The efforts initiated by the People’s Party to breathe new life into the St Adalbert cult and other efforts to bring back the forgotten side of the Czech tradition into the public consciousness changed very little.47 The relationship between the Church and the state was, however, not only clouded by the struggle over the cultural orientation of Czechoslovakia in which the Catholics began to raise their voices only late on and very reservedly.48 After 1946, there were tangible conflicts of interest in which the three socialist parties opposed the People’s Party as parliamentary representative of the Church. These conflicts were about the planned separation of Church and state, which the People’s Party had already prevented in 1920. Connected to this was the discussion about an amendment to the school law which was to be directed primarily against the Catholic schools. The People’s Party was also called to defend the material interests of the Church, which were affected by the expulsion of the Germans and the land reform. The People’s Party at first reacted very defensively. Later it chose informal politics to defend Church interests. The decision not to carry on this struggle in public was due among other things to the fact that, as an at least nominally inter-confessional party, it was afraid of defending Catholic interests more openly.49 It also reflected the experience of the early years of the First Republic when anti-clericalism had been made a cornerstone of the identity of the new state. The People’s Party wanted to avoid a second ‘culture war’ (Kulturkampf) at all costs.50 The Church and the People’s Party were not able to prevent the land reform, which greatly affected the interests of the Church. The Church’s financial position was undermined by the nationalization of all real estate over 50 hectares, which was carried out in three stages between 1945 and 1948. The confiscation of the Church’s property and real estate in the areas previously inhabited by German speakers drove the Church out of these areas to a great extent. The Church, supported by the People’s Party, defended its interests. One of its arguments was the universality of the Catholic Church, but it also often used the nationalist argument. Just as the Czech nation had ‘reclaimed’ the border regions from the Germans, the Czech Catholic Church wanted to ‘reclaim’ the property of which they had been robbed by the Germans.51 The relationship between Church and state deteriorated as a result of these differences, as well as others, in the years 1946–47. The political situation in Slovakia, where the law about the nationalization of schools had been implemented and the Church had been snubbed by the execution of the clerical dictator Josef Tiso, was observed by the Bohemian Lands with concern. There was no open conflict before the communist coup d’état, however. This was primarily because the Communist Party had still not decided how to deal with the Church in the medium term. Despite the newly founded Communist Information Office expressively placing the Catholic Church among the enemies of


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communism in 1947, and in so doing effectively declaring war on the Church, the Communists kept the option of friendly co-existence with the Church open. Only after February 1948—after the Czech and Slovak bishops had made clear that they rejected the reorganization of politics and society along Soviet lines as incompatible with the traditions of Christian ‘occidental culture’—did the Communists give up the rhetoric of tolerance and begin the systematic repression and persecution of the Catholic Church. CZECHOSLOVAKIA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST The leadership of the People’s Party regarded Czechoslovakia’s attachment to the Soviet Union as crucial. In keeping with the new informal rules regarding what could be said in Czech politics, Šrámek, already during exile in London, characterized the hierarchy in the Republic’s future foreign relations: Czechoslovakia would cultivate friendly co-operation with the West, while being deeply bound to the East. The new alignment with the East was initially bound to the firm hope of lasting co-operation between the Allies and a reconciliation between East and West, not only in terms of foreign relations. This cooperation between the two worlds—a popular idea not only in the ranks of the People’s Party—was also to lead to a synthesis of both political systems. Its realization would be first possible in a country between the two worlds, namely Czechoslovakia.52 Soon after the end of the war, this hope proved to be very unrealistic. The first tensions between the Great Powers in the negotiations about the post-war order gave rise to great concern in Czechoslovakia.53 As criticism of Soviet policy was forbidden by an unwritten law, the People’s Party’s daily newspaper, Lidová Demokracie, limited itself to comprehensive reports about international developments. These ended more and more frequently, however, with demands for Czechoslovak independence, and respect for its culture and political system. Many Catholics feared that the formation of the blocs would narrow the room for manoeuvre in foreign policy as well as domestic politics. This fear was not explicitly given voice but was implicitly ever present. The frequency with which Stalin’s phrase that there was more than one way to socialism was quoted was a mark of this uneasiness.54 While Lidová Demokracie—in unison with the party leadership, which continued to make efforts to avoid conflicts—exercised restraint, the weekly newspapers Obzory and Vyvoj published uncommentated quotations from the Western press.55 Their readers were thus able to see the Soviet Union and the Soviet position at the beginning of the Cold War from another angle. They could glean the extent to which any sympathy for the socialist experiment in their country was continuously decreasing in the West. It became ever clearer that Czechoslovakia, as it was becoming more ‘Eastern’, was set on a course leading to isolation from the West. ‘The dominant impression about Czechoslovakia is that it definitely belongs in the Eastern bloc,’ reported Pavel Tigrid in the autumn of 1946 from the Paris Peace Conference, ‘and that no other possibility lies open to the country.’56 An opportunity to avoid isolation appeared to present itself in the summer of 1947 when the USA with its Marshall Plan offered the European states aid to reconstruct their economies. The People’s Party supported the Marshall Plan almost euphorically.57 Lidová Demokracie greeted the Czechoslovak government’s decision to accept the Plan


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as a first decisive step for Czechoslovakia out of its isolation and towards an overcoming of the East-West divide. They were thus very depressed when the Soviet Union forced the Czechoslovak government to withdraw its acceptance.58 This embarrassing scenario showed that although the nation might feel it belonged to the West, this was no longer a political reality. The second foreign policy perspective in which the People’s Party had placed great hopes, a treaty with France, was dashed in the course of 1947.59 The planned settlement was not totally unproblematic for Czechoslovakia. France had already declared the Munich Agreement of 1938 invalid during the war, but even after this a certain restraint still existed on the Czech side. Nevertheless, the People’s Party and the National Socialists put the pressure on to bring the rather lamely led negotiations, which had been going on since 1946, to a successful conclusion. The once close relationship of the Czech nation with France had, in 1938, been deeply shattered, wrote Ivo Ducháček in the prologue to the Czech edition of the memoirs of André François-Poncet, the French expert on Central European politics. France’s image was clouded for the Czech nation, he wrote, not only by its betrayal but also because of the sympathy expressed by the French bourgeoisie for National Socialism. What the French and the Czechs still had in common, however, was the passion-ate experience of century-long antagonism with their German neighbour. Ducháček believed that this part of the past would determine the future relationship between the two countries.60 The argument about defence against the ‘German threat’, which usually dominated all foreign policy debates, somewhat shifted into the background, however. Fear of a renewed threat from Germany did still play a role, as Britain and the USA had already expressed interest in rebuilding the German economy shortly after the end of the war, causing great anxiety both in France and in Czechoslovakia. Most important for the People’s Party, however, was its wish to have a partner in the West to counterbalance the treaty system with Czechoslovakia’s Eastern neighbours. After the confrontation about Czechoslovak participation in the Marshall Plan, there was no realistic chance of the conclusion of a treaty with France. Nevertheless, the People’s Party politicians committed themselves doubly to the negotiations with Paris and in the party newspapers the Franco-Czechoslovak relationship was given increased coverage. It was important to demonstrate to the world that the one-sided Eastern orientation and the complete integration into the Soviet sphere of influence was not accepted without resistance in Czechoslovakia. The People’s Party had never let there be any doubt that as an anti-communist party it rejected the USSR’s political system—at least for its own country. The Catholics expressed their criticism of communism in a roundabout way with their arguments with the local Communists. They not only attacked communism’s atheism and materialism but criticized the concept of a ‘totalitarian society’, whose roots they traced back to the German philosophical tradition.61 Communism, just like National Socialism, was thus a ‘German phenomenon’. Neither of the ideologies, because of their intolerance, the absolute authority of the state, the emphasis on the collective rather than the individual and the disregard of constitutional principles, was compatible with the traditions of the Czech nation.62 The undesired, one-sided link with the Soviet Union under the pressure of unfavourable international developments was for this reason only an outward


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reconciliation. Political swaying between East and West had, according to Pavel Tigrid, been characteristic of Czech history for centuries. Having said that, the Czechs, though Slavs, were clearly part of the West because of their cultural history.63 THE CRISIS OF SOCIETY In the discourse about the crisis of society, which was initially mainly carried out in Catholic cultural journals such as Akord and Vyšehrad, but soon extended beyond them, direct reference to political events was mostly avoided. Based on the assumption that individual as well as public morality was in a constant state of decay, extremely strong criticism of society and politics in the so-called ‘new reality’ could nevertheless be found in these media. Vladimír Hellmuth-Brauer, for example, complained that ‘the present time is much worse than that of our fathers and grandfathers’. Europe had been in the grip of desperate lack of direction, decay of values and extreme nervousness since the beginning of the century. This general crisis was most apparent in Germany, where it led to fascism and war, which resulted in a deepening of the symptoms of decay and brutalization and an increase in the people’s despair.64 In a situation in which people were confronted with countless fundamental decisions, the legacy of the recent past had fatal effects, argued Aloys Skoumal, giving voice to what many believed.65 The German occupation had not only robbed the people of the courage and trust to believe they could achieve something politically, but increased their tendency to accept simple solutions and totalitarian societal systems. The Hitler in Us—the title of a book by the Swiss author Max Picard that was widely read in post-war Czechoslovakia—examined what resulted from people giving up traditional values, denying any transcendence, the worship of power and unconditional subordination under state authority. The Christian journalists viewed the majority of the Czech intelligentsia especially critically. According to these writers, a large number of artists and intellectuals profited from the political situation and completely forgot their true duty, namely to foster the Christian roots of Czech culture and the democratic traditions of the country.66 The perception of crisis initially related to the individual but soon extended to the political elite and ‘their’ state. ‘What sort of democracy do we have today?’ asked the magazine Akord: ‘Does it really correspond to Masaryk’s ideals which we stand by, or is it actually very limited? Did the democracy of the past not place more trust in people and their moral strength?’67 Koželuhová wrote that the politicians did not trust the people and this was the reason why they made all the important decisions without them. They evaded their obligation to have their power legitimated and scrutinized.68 Comparisons between the ‘new reality’ and the National Socialist regime of occupation became more and more frequent in the weekly magazines Obzory and Vývoj.69 They argued that those now in power had simply adopted the methods of those formerly in power.70 The political system as a whole, wrote Bohdan Chudoba, is ‘more or less ailing nowadays’. The separation of power was riddled with holes and the state controlled the economy and the judicial system more and more. It restricted ever more liberties, while at the same time guaranteeing ever fewer rights for the people.71 The discrepancy between such assessments and the Communists’ optimistic slogans about the glorious future could not


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be bridged. The ideas that both ‘poles’ of the Czech political spectrum between 1945 and 1948 had about the direction that their country should take in future were no less divergent. While the Communists called for a systematic implementation of radical reforms and a merciless persecution of their enemies in order to overcome the system’s teething problems, the Catholics saw the only way out of the crisis in a return to the thinking of the past. In order to fend off both right- and left-wing totalitarianism, Czechoslovakia, along with the whole of Europe, needed to return to its Christian roots.72 THE CRISIS OF FEBRUARY 1948 The growing critical attitude towards the ‘people’s democracy’ in the Catholic press and in the People’s Party, including its party leadership, became increasingly evident in the course of 1947. The People’s Party’s ministers denounced the restrictions in freedom of opinion and belief and the accumulating legal violations by state authorities.73 They criticized the Communists’ efforts to gain ever more control over the state, the economy and society. They expressed doubts about the validity of the one-sided orientation towards the East in Czechoslovak foreign policy and called for a stop to the economic and social transformation of society.74 Despite the clearer dissociation from the Communists, who were now openly attacked for being ‘totalitarian’, systematic cooperation with the other two parties did not come about. This was not only because of the declared anti-clericalism of the National Socialists and the split within the Social Democratic Party, which had a pro-Communist wing. It was more that all the parties had set their sights on the elections, which were scheduled for 1948.75 What neither the members of the People’s Party nor the National Socialists reckoned with was that the struggle for power between the parties in the National Front would not be resolved in the elections and also not, as some feared, in a bloody coup with direct Soviet intervention. The ongoing government crisis actually came to a head in February 1948. The ministers from the People’s Party, the National Socialists and the Slovakian Democratic Party handed in their resignation in protest against the unauthorized and illegal reshuffle in the leading position of the security organizations. They hoped that the Social Democrats would join in the protest and President Beneš would dismiss the government, making way for early elections.76 The three parties thus took the classic parliamentary way out of the crisis. What they overlooked, however, was that the parliamentary system according to whose logic they were thinking no longer existed in Czechoslovakia at the beginning of 1948. The People’s Party leadership was extremely shocked about the government crisis. They were hardly to be seen in public at this crucial time. This was not only because the Communists had successfully isolated their opponents. The party leadership rested all their hopes in the president and essentially limited themselves to appeals to the population to keep calm until he had made a decision.77 In contrast, the Communists became extremely active on all levels while this was going on. Beneš agreed with the Communists’ suggestion for the solving of the crisis under the influence of huge demonstrations and a strike and after having been put under pressure by Prime Minister Klement Gottwald, Interior Minister Václav Nosek and Antonín Zápotocký, the leader of the unified trade union (ÚRO). He accepted the


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resignation of twelve ministers and replaced them with representatives chosen by Gottwald from the ‘action committees’ of the non-communist parties and mass organizations that had sprung up in the interim. Two politicians loyal to the Communists—Josef Plojhar and Antonín Petr—took up posts for the People’s Party and in the government of the ‘renewed National Front’.78 The Communist Party had already begun to persecute actual and supposed opponents during the ‘gentle’ assumption of power. This ‘cleansing’ continued on a large scale after their victory. Many members and active politicians of the People’s Party were among the victims. Šrámek and Hála were arrested shortly after February 1948 while attempting to escape together. They spent most of the years until their deaths in monasteries used as prisons without ever having had a proper trial. Only in 1968, in the liberal atmosphere of reformist socialism, did Šrámek’s name crop up again in public debates.79 The People’s Party continued to exist in the political system that was established after 1948, but it was no longer independent from the Communists, whose leading position was constitutionally guaranteed.80 After the failure of the attempt to turn the People’s Party into a strong opposition party, in a confrontation with the new leadership who were loyal to the Communists, the process of reorganization was geared towards forming a bloc party at the turn of 1948 and beginning of 1949. The once mass appeal party, which could formerly claim to be a real ‘People’s Party’, had become an unimportant little cog in the Stalinist apparatus.81 IN THE AFTERMATH OF COMMUNISM Only after November 1989—when the state socialist system was dissolved within the space of a few days—were the prerequisites for the establishment of pluralistic structures re-established. It became apparent, however, that the authoritarian system that had dominated since 1938 had to a great extent destroyed the political party system that had existed up to that time. The formation of parties distinguishing themselves more clearly from one another began rather hesitantly in post-socialist Czecho-slovakia.82 The dominant protagonists in the time of upheaval and up until the first elections were two citizens’ movements: the Czech ‘People’s Forum’ (OF) and the Slovakian ‘Public against Violence’ (VPN), whose success lay in not being political parties.83 The old bloc parties existed alongside them, among them the People’s Party.84 The latter had succeeded in retaining a portion of its members and long-standing voters over four decades of socialism,85 but it did not have too good an image beyond a relatively small circle of Christian followers. It had had the reputation of being especially subservient to the Communists in power. Their support of Communist family policy—even including the question of abortion—and their close link to the priests’ association Pacem in Terris, which had been created by the regime, had even led to the loss of support of many church-goers. The most serious conflicts within the People’s Party were caused by the process of its transformation from being a bloc party to becoming an electoral party in the usual sense and the necessary distancing from the politics and leading figures of the time prior to November 1989. These conflicts led to the splitting away of a group of deputies who had compromised themselves by collaborating with the former state security


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organization to form the ‘Christian-Social Union’ in 1992. While political Catholicism has once again become a very important factor in Slovakian politics as a result of quite different traditions,86 the ČSL election results have remained at around 4 to 6 per cent since 1990.87 The party has joined the Christian Democratic Union (KDU), a group which evolved out of the Christian wing of Charta 77, to form the ČSL/KDU and was up until the end of the Conservative Václav Klaus’ government in autumn 1997 part of all governmental coalitions. They came back to power in 2001 in a coalition with the Socialists. The party presents itself as conservative and as a driving force in the transition to capitalism, but with a social component. As a Christian party it sees itself as being especially committed to the Church and supports the latter’s claims in the negotiations for restitution.88 The ČSL is also one of the most outright opponents of ‘Prague centralism’ and demands administrative reform in order to strengthen Moravia and Silesia.89 The party has its electoral strongholds in Moravia, mainly among the farming population and among groups with average and below average education, just as it did prior to the war. A line of tradition can be traced back to the time before February 1948 in this strong anchoring in Moravia, the closeness to the Church and the Christian basis of the demands for social reform. On the whole, discontinuity seems to outweigh all of this, however. The People’s Party is now part of a new political party landscape. The old party names cannot disguise how much things have changed. If the Czech party spectrum once tended clearly to the left, then today this has been reversed and a large proportion of Czech parties now see themselves as being ‘right-wing’.90 Among the conservative parties, including the People’s Party, there seem to be very substantial differences over policy. The great number of parties that have come into being does not, even today, correspond to an intra-party pluralism. Meanwhile, as a legacy of the last decades Czech society has retained a certain reservation towards parties as such. This is also reflected in the strong emphasis being placed on personalities rather than programmes in the ČSL/KDU as well as in other parties. CONCLUSION The ideological development that the Czechoslovak People’s Party underwent during and after the Second World War can only be described as a ‘special path’ development with certain reservations. The support for far-reaching reforms—partial nationalization of industry and of large land-ownership included—and the wish to effectively combat the party fragmentation temporarily existed in many Christian democratic parties in Europe as a reaction to the economic and political crises of the inter-war period. That these tendencies were stronger in the Czechoslovak People’s Party than elsewhere was mainly because of the specific conditions out of which Czechoslovakia emerged in 1945. The Czech political elite tacitly assumed that the allocation of Czechoslovakia to the Soviet sphere of influence would have political consequences for or domestic as well as foreign policy. On the other hand, the reconciliation of the People’s Party with the three socialist parties in the National Front and its readiness to help carry its policies continued a development that had begun in the inter-war period. Šrámek achieved the integration of


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political Catholicism in the public life of the First Republic which had as one of its basic principles a disassociation from Catholicism, as a result of his great ability to compromise. He tried at all costs to avoid a repetition of the marginalization the party had experienced directly after 1918. The great desire for a consensus and the aversion to conflicts was thus partially a consequence of the experiences of the ‘culture war’, first in the nineteenth century and then after 1918. At the same time, a certain consensual orientation was characteristic of the entire Czech political spectrum. The leaders of the large parties had already in the inter-war period favoured informal patterns of decisionmaking. The remarkable stability of the inter-war democracy was not least the result of a strategy of consciously avoiding conflicts by means of deals made outside of parliament.91 In the ‘people’s democracy’ of the years 1945–48 the control of political decisionmaking became institutionalized in the ‘National Front’. Issues regarding the political system received extremely little attention due to the principle of unified decision-making and the denial of societal conflicts of interest.92 People’s Party politicians tried to pin the deficits of the ‘new reality’ on ‘lower moral standards’ rather than on the system itself. They had little understanding for the weaknesses in the ‘people’s democracy’ that arose from the system they themselves had taken an active part in establishing. This also explains why they argued and acted as an electoral party up until February 1948.93 It is questionable whether there could have been another course for Czechoslovakia after the Second World War than that determined by Soviet interests. The Czechoslovak People’s Party was part of the system after 1945. In its self-appointed task of preventing changes leading towards socialism, which went beyond the ‘revolution of 1945’, it failed not only as a result of the strength of the socialist parties and the talent with which the Communists extended their influence in the state and in society as a whole. It was also defeated as a result of its own weaknesses, which were essentially identical with the deficiencies in Czech political culture before and after the Second World War. NOTES 1‘Volby rozhodnou, jaký bude náš stát’, Lidová demokracie, 7 May 1946; ‘Méně agitace, to je naše propagace’, Obzory, 11 May 1946, no. 19, p. 289. 2 For the party spectrum of the First Czechoslovak Republic see Josef Chmelař, Die politische Gliederung der Tschechoslowakei (Prague 1926). 3 Jiří Sláma and Karel Kaplan, Die Parlamentswahlen in der Tschechoslowakei 1935– 1946–1948. Eine statistische Analyse (Munich 1986), p. 40. 4 Jan Šrámek was one of five deputy prime ministers. In the first two governments of 1945 and 1946, Minister for the Postal Service František Hála and Health Minister Adolf Procházka were also members of the People’s Party. The third government, from July 1946 to February 1948, had another member of the People’s Party in its ranks—Alois Vošahlík—minister for technology and—after his death—Jan Kopecký. 5 For the development of the People’s Party during the First Republic see Miloš Trapl, Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People’s Party in Czechoslovakia,


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1918–1938 (New York 1995). 6 Jaroslav Pecháček, ‘Die Rolle des politischen Katholizismus in der ČSR’, in Karl Bosl (ed.), Die Erste Tschechoslowakische Republik als multinationaler Parteienstaat (Munich and Vienna 1979), pp. 259–69. 7 Program československé národní fronty Čechů a Slováků přijatý na prvé schůzi vlády dne 5. dubna 1945 v Košicích (Prague 1945). 8 Edvard Beneš, Demokratie heute und morgen (Zurich and New York 1944), p. 281. 9 For the post-1945 history of Czechoslovakia, see the work of Karel Kaplan quoted in this chapter, especially Der kurze Marsch. Kommunistische Machtübernahme in der Tschechoslowakei 1945–1948 (Munich and Vienna 1981). 10 The Communist Party (KSČ), the Party of National Socialists, the Social Democratic Party and the People’s Party were refounded. There were two parties in Slovakia—the Communist Party (KSS) and the Democratic Party (DS). 11 Dějiny zemí koruny české II. Od nástupu osvícenství po naší dobu (Prague 1993), p. 249. 12 Karel F.Zieris, The New Organisation of the Czech Press (Prague 1947), pp. 30–7. 13 Vilém Prečan, ‘Probleme des tschechischen Parteiensystems zwischen München 1938 und dem Mai 1945’, in Bosl (ed.), Die Erste Tschechoslowakische Republik, pp. 529–52, here p. 549. 14 For the political factors within the country that favoured the KSČ’s assumption of power see Peter Heumos, ‘Die grosse Camouflage? Überlegungen zu Interpretationsmustern der kommunistischen Machtübernahme in der Tschechoslowakei im Februar 1948’, in Eva Schmidt-Hartmann (ed.), Kommunismus und Osteuropa. Konzepte, Perspektiven und Interpretationen im Wandel (Munich 1994), pp. 221–41; idem, ‘Der Februarumsturz in der Tschechoslowakei 1948. Gesichtspunkte zu einer strukturgeschichtlichen Interpretation’, in Bernd Bonwetsch (ed.), Zeitgeschichte Osteuropas als Methodenund Forschungsproblem (Berlin 1984), pp. 121–35. 15 Karel Kaplan and Dušan Tomášek, O cenzuře v Československu 1945–1956 (Prague 1994), pp. 8–12. 16 Jaroslav Kladiva, Kultura a politika 1945–1948 (Prague 1968), p. 205. 17 Kaplan, Der kurze Marsch, p. 57. 18 František Hála (1893–1952) was a colleague who had worked closely with Šrámek since the 1920s. From 1933 to 1938 he was secretary-general of the People’s Party in Moravia, one of the organizers of the resistance after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, and active in exile after 1940. After 1945, he was once again in the ČSL leadership, a deputy and minister for the Postal Service. In 1948, he was arrested while attempting to escape and died in imprisonment. 19 Jan Šrámek, Projevy doma (Prague 1947). 20 Helena Pánková, ‘Strana a skutečnost’, Lidová Demokracie, 4 July 1946, no. 152, pp. 1–2. 21 Ivo Ducháček, Naše účast v zahraničním odboji (Prague 1946), pp. 11 and 15. 22 Arnošt Malovský-Wenig, ‘Prišel jsem z německého kriminálu’, Lidová Demokracie, 24 August 1946, no. 194, pp. 1–2. 23 Jindřich Sedláček, ‘Právo svobodného člověka’, Lidová Demokracie, 5 April 1946,


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no. 81, p. 1; ‘Projev ministr post Fr. Hály v Ostravě. Politickou svobodu nutno doplnit hospodářskou’, Lidová Demokracie, 15 April 1947, no. 81, p. 1. 24 Bohdan Chudoba, Co je to křes’anská politika? (Prague 1947), p. 10. 25 Ibid., p. 50. 26 Ibid., pp. 26 and 65. 27 Bohdan Chudoba, ‘Křest’anský pohled na společnost’, in Otázky dneška. Křest’anský realismus a dialektický materialismus (Brno 1946), pp. 157–86, here pp. 175–8. 28 Miloš Trapl, Politika českého katolidsmu na Moravě 1918–1938 (Prague 1968), pp. 10–14. 29 Karel Kaplan, Stát a církev v Československu v letech 1948–1953 (Brno 1993), p. 11. 30 Kaplan cites membership numbers as 350,000 for the end of 1945. Kaplan, Der kurze Marsch, p. 57. 31 Peter Heumos, ‘Konfliktregelung und soziale Integration. Zur Struktur der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik’, Bohemia vol. 30 (1989), pp. 52–70, here pp. 59– 61. 32 ‘Novoroční poselství předsedy Dr. Jana Šrámka čs. straně lidové’, Lidová Demokracie, 1 January 1947, no. 1, p. 1. 33 Helena Koželuhová (1907–67), lawyer and journalist, became a deputy in May 1946, but was expelled from the party in the same year. No further articles by her were published in the party press. In 1948, Koželuhová went into exile; Ivo Ducháček (1913–88), journalist und co-editor of the journal Obzory, People’s Party deputy until February 1948; Pavel Tigrid (1917–2003), co-founder of Obzory und Vývoj and after 1948 editor of the journal Svědectví, while in exile. After 1989 he was once again active in Czech politics, from 1994 to 1996 as minister for culture. 34 Koželuhová’s journalistic work from just after the war appeared in book form: Helena Koželuhová, První kroky. Novinářské črty okolo našeho osvobození (Prague 1945). 35 Jaroslav Opat, O novou demokracii. Příspěvek k dějinám národně demokratické revoluce v Československu v letech 1945 (Prague 1966), pp. 186–7. 36 Helmut Slapnicka, ‘Die Kirchen in der Ersten Republik’, in Ferdinand Seibt (ed.), Bohemia Sacra. Das Christentum in Böhmen 973–1973 (Düsseldorf 1974), pp. 333– 44. 37 Kaplan, Stát a církev, p. 12. 38 Bohumil Černý, ‘Die Kirche im Protektorat 1939–1945’, in Seibt, Bohemia Sacra, pp. 345–54, here p. 351. 39 Ludvík Němec, Church and State in Czechoslovakia. Historically, Juridically and Theologically Documented (New York 1955), pp. 203–4. 40 Černý, Die Kirche im Protektorat, p. 354. 41 Ladislav Štoll, ‘Komunisté a náboženství’, in Umění a ideologický boj, vol. 1 (Prague 1972), pp. 30–3, here p. 30. 42 Dominik Pecka, ‘Útěk před metafysikou čili o dialektickém materialismu’, in Otázky dneška, pp. 1–45, here p. 12. 43 Kaplan, Stát a církev, p. 20.


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44 This is an indication of how the debate about cultural policy was received by the Catholic journals in these years. Catholic intellectuals were almost never present in these debates, however. See Milan Drápala, ‘Spisovatelé na rozcestí. Na okraj prvního sjezdu Českých spisovatelů’, Soudobé dějiny, vol. 4–5 (1994), pp. 450–62, here pp. 451–2. 45 In 1921, around 80 per cent of churchgoers were Catholic (10.9 million people), by 1950 this figure had sunk to 76.4 per cent. This was not only because of Communist politics but was also due to the expulsion of the Germans who were predominantly Catholic. See Karel Kaplan, Staat und Kirche in der Tschechoslowakei. Die Kommunistische Kirchenpolitik in den Jahren 1948–1952 (Munich 1990), p. 9. 46 Bedřich Loewenstein, ‘České dějiny a národní identita (Sedm tezí)’, Svědectví, vol. 83/84 (1988), pp. 567–74, here pp. 571–2. 47 Němec, Church and State, p. 201. 48 Peter Drews, ‘Zur Orientierungsdebatte in der tschechischen Kulturszene 1945– 1948’, in Hans Lemberg (ed.), Sowjetisches Modell und nationale Prägung. Kontinuität und Wandel in Ostmitteleuropa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Marburg/Lahn 1991), pp. 342–56. 49 Kaplan, Stát a církev, p. 12. 50 Ibid., p. 6. 51 J.Pondělník, ‘O církevní majetek v pohraničí’, Vyšehrad, 1 January 1947, no. 1, pp. 9–11. 52 Josef Doležal, ‘Třicet let Sovětského svazu’, Lidová Demokracie, 7 November 1947, no. 258, p. 1; Vladimír Hellmuth-Brauner, ‘Svět, který jsme zdědili a který tvoříme’, Vyšehrad, 31 October 1945, no. 6, pp. 1–3, here p. 3. 53 Ivo Ducháček, ‘O mír mezi velmocemi’, Lidová Demokracie, 1 September 1946, no. 201, p. 1. 54 ‘Stalin o dvou cestách socialismu’, Lidová Demokracie, 3 September 1946, no. 202, p. 1. 55 Milan Drápala, ‘Na ztracené vartě Západu. Poznámky české politické publicistice nesocialistického zaměření v letech 1945–1948’, Soudobé dějiny, vol. 1 (1998), pp. 16–24. 56 Pavel Tigrid, ‘Válka o mír’, Lidová Demokracie, 15 October 1946, no. 237, p. l. 57 ‘Co se vlastně stalo’, Obzory, 12 July 1947, no. 28, p. 397. 58 ‘To by byla škoda’, Obzory, 19 July 1947, no. 29, p. 409; ‘Potřebujeme okolní svět jako sůl’, Obzory, 30 July 1947, no. 30, pp. 427–8; ‘Acanthus, Před bojem o Marshallův plán’, Obzory, 6 September 1947, no. 36, pp. 533–4. 59 Wilfried Loth, Sozialismus und Internationalismus. Die französischen Sozialisten und die Nachkriegsordnung Europas 1940–1950 (Stuttgart 1977), pp. 49–50, 94 and 125. 60 Ivo Ducháček, ‘Doslov’, in André François-Poncet, Berlin 1931–1938, Vzpomínky Diplomata (Prague 1947), pp. 340–5, here pp. 340–2. 61 ‘O komunismu’, Vývoj, 22 January 1947, no. 4, p. 90. 62 Chudoba, Co je to křest’anská politika?, pp. 96–7. 63 Pavel Tigrid, ‘Rozdíly’, Lidová Demokracie, 15 October 1946, no. 237, p. 1. 64 Hellmuth-Brauner, ‘Svět, který jsme zdědili’, p. 3.


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65 A.S. [Aloys Skoumal], ‘Editorial’, Vyšehrad, 3 July 1946. nos 35–6, p. 24. 66 Miloš Dvořák, ‘Ke kořenům kulturní krise’, Akord, December 1946, no. 4, pp. 121– 6, here p. 122. 67 Miloš Dvořák, ‘Poznámky’, Akord, January 1947, no. 5, pp. 185–90, here p. 187. 68 Koželuhová, ‘První kroky’, pp. 8–9. 69 Pavel Tigrid, ‘Je to fašismus?’, Lidová Demokracie, 22 January 1948, no. 17, pp. 1–2. 70 Miroslav Skácel, ‘Podstata a úkol státu’, Obzory, 21 February 1948, no. 7, pp. 106– 8. 71 Chudoba, Co je to křest’anská politika?, p. 47. 72 Marie Voříšková, ‘Základy evropského společenství’, Vyšehrad, 10 October 1945, no. 3, pp. 3–6, here p. 6. 73 Vojtěch Mixa, ‘Není civilisace bez úcty k zákonům’, Lidová Demokracie, 1 February 1948, no. 26, p. 1. 74 A.Janáček, ‘Chvála soukromého podnikání’, Lidová Demokracie, 4 October 1947, no. 231; ‘Průmyslová politika lidové strany’, Lidová Demokracie, 31 October 1947, no. 253, p. 3; ‘Krok z krokem ke kolektivisaci?’, Lidová Demokracie, 15 November 1947, no. 265, p. 2. 75 Pavel Jedlička, ‘Volby nejspolehlivější projev vůle lidu’, Lidová Demokracie, 14 February 1948, no. 37, p. 1. 76 Lidová Demokracie, 21 February 1948, no. 43, p. 1. 77 The same was true for the Party of National Socialists: Ladislav Feierabend, Prague-London, vice-versa. Erinnerungen 1938–1950, vol. II: 1941–1950 (Bonn, Brussels and New York 1973), p. 495. 78 Josef Plojhar was a Catholic priest and was already active in the People’s Party before the Second World War. After 1945 he was one of the critics of the left course in the party but simultaneously maintained contacts with the KSČ, which seemed to be a paradox. The KSČ had already established its ‘parallel system’ in the noncommunist parties before February. In August 1948, Plojhar was suspended from the priesthood. Alois Petr und Antonín Pospíšil were, among others, People’s Party members who were also members of the KSČ. 79 Miloš Trapl, ‘Jak se dívat na dr. J.Šrámka’, Lidová Demokracie, 23 April 1968, no. 112, p. 3. 80 Josef Pokstefl, Verfassungs- und Regierungssystem der ČSSR (Munich and Vienna 1982), pp. 25–6. 81 Karel Kaplan, Utváření generální linie výstavby socialismu v Československu (Prague 1966), pp. 78–81; Pavlíček, Politické strany po únoru, pp. 192–3. 82 Margaditsch A.Hatschikjan, ‘Von der “sanften Revolution” zur “sanften Scheidung”. Politik, Parteien und die Wahlen in der ČSFR 1989–1992’, in idem and Peter.R.Weilemann (eds), Parteienlandschaften in Osteuropa. Politik, Parteien und Transformation in Ungarn, Polen, der Tschecho-Slowakei und Bulgarien 1989– 1992 (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1994), pp. 83–126, here p. 93. 83 Karel Vodička, ‘Das Parteiensystem Tschechiens’, in Dieter Segert, Richard Stöss and Oskar Niedermayr (eds), Parteiensysteme in postkommunistischen Gesellschaften Osteuropas (Opladen 1997), pp. 90–134, here p. 97.


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84 People’s Party announcements from the time of the crisis in Deset pražských dnů. 17–27. listopad 1989. Documentace (Prague 1990), pp. 146–8 and 474–6. 85 According to Heinrich Kuhn, in 1968 the ČSL had around 80,000 members, in 1984 there were still 66,000 and in 1987 around 50,000. Heinrich Kuhn, Materialien zur Nationalen Front und den Parteien in der Tschechoslowakei, Unpublished material in the Collegium Carolinum in Munich. 86 See Soňa Szomolányi and Grigorij Meseznikov, ‘Das Parteiensystem der Slowakei’, in Segert, Stöss and Niedermayr, Parteiensysteme, pp. 136–56. 87 Vodička, ‘Das Parteiensystem Tschechiens’, pp. 103 and 124. 88 Christiane Brenner, ‘Vergangenheitspolitik und Vergangenheitsdiskurs in Tschechien 1989–1998’, in Helmut König and Andreas Wöll (eds), Vergangenheitsbewältigung am Ende des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, special issue of Leviathan (1998), pp. 195–232, here pp. 205–7. 89 Hatschikjan, Von der ‘sanften Revolution’ zur ‘sanften Scbeidung’, p. 116. 90 Doležal rightly questioned the validity of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’, pointing to the pattern of thought behind this polarization. Bohumíl Doležal, ‘Mytus české pravice’, in Nesamozřejmá politika, Výběr z publidstických statí 1991/1996 (Prague 1997), pp. 55–8. 91 Peter Heumos, ‘Die Struktur der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik im Verhältnis zur Grundidee der westlichen Demokratie’, in Peter Glotz, Karl-Heinz Pollok, Karl Schwarzenberg and John van Nes Ziegler (eds), München 1938. Das Ende des alten Europa (Essen 1990), pp. 1–26, here p. 4 and pp. 16–18. 92 Peter Heumos, ‘Der Diskurs der politischen Eliten und die Struktur der Gesellschaft. Rudolf Bechyněs Memorandum an Stalin vom 8. Januar 1945’, in Stránkami soudobých dějin. Sborník státí k pětašedesátinám historika Karla Kaplana (Prague 1993), pp. 110–22, here p. 117. 93 Kaplan, Der kurze Marsch, p. 243.

12 European Christian Democracy in Comparison Anton Pelinka

The political parties in Europe can be typologically classified in a great variety of ways. The following classifications are based on Maurice Duverger’s ideas.1 In an organizational typology, a distinction is first made between membership parties and voters’ parties. Both correspond to the integrational mass party type that developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The deciding criterion for whether a party is a membership party or a voters’ party is the density of the organization: the greater the proportion of followers bound to the party in an organized way, the more such a party corresponds to the membership party type. A second distinction concerns parties with claims to represent specific groups and standpoints and those whose representation is of a more general nature. Further distinctions can be made in the group of parties representing specific interests, between class-based parties and confessional parties or those based on a philosophical premise. Parties with claims to general representation are basically people’s parties, whose claims to represent the entire electorate justify the term catch-all party. Third, in a traditional two-dimensional typology of programme or ideology, a distinction is to be made between ‘right’ and ‘left’ parties. This concept, which has its roots in the bourgeois revolution (especially that in France) is geared to social equality or national solidarity: Equality and internationalism determine the concept ‘left’ and freedom and nationality the concept ‘right’. Finally, a distinction can be made between ‘materialistic’ and ‘post-materialistic’ parties in a traditional programmatic and ideological typology. The ‘materialistic’ parties emphasize the aim of representing material, that is to say mainly economic, but also security-linked interests, while the ‘post-materialistic’ represent mainly ecological interests as well as gender-specific or general cultural interests.2 In a comparison of the Christian democratic parties in Europe, the following typological distinctions can be made, based on the dominant hypotheses in political science: first, Christian democratic parties are less mass membership parties than most social democratic parties. They are characterized, as are liberal and conservative parties, by a comparatively low level of organization typical of voters’ parties. Second, Christian democratic parties are a priori limited in their claims to representation. The label ‘Christian’ expresses an exclusive representation, excluding non-Christians. Christian democratic parties tend nevertheless to the people’s party type in those countries in which Christian democratic parties have taken up positions right of centre in place of the conservatives as the dominant party as, for example, in Germany. Third, on the left-right spectrum Christian democratic parties can be placed in the centre or the moderate right. A more precise positioning is dependent on the concrete competitive situation in the


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individual countries and also on whether Christian democrats have replaced the traditional conservative parties or are in competition with them. Fourth, Christian democratic parties are not easy to place in the materialism-post-materialism spectrum. They stand in any case between the traditionally materialistic social democratic and the specifically post-materialistic green parties. The chapters in this book, which describe and analyse a total of ten case studies in the history of Christian democratic parties, should be examined with these criteria in mind. Additionally, the essential ‘cleavage’ theory used in comparative party research should be used as an analytical instrument. The basis from which to distinguish parties developed mainly by Stein Rokkan and Seymour Martin Lipset is that of lines of conflict (cleavages). The following cleavages can be determined:3 first, the cleavage of religion: Christian democratic parties are more or less the embodiment of a deep contradiction in society either between different confessions (mainly Catholic versus Protestant) or between a primarily secular and confessionally motivated understanding of society and politics. Second, the cleavage of class: Christian democratic parties are based on a concept that essentially rests on the cleavage between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—this means that Christian democratic parties can act either as primarily middle-class parties or parties with an appeal across all classes. Third, the cleavage of position: Christian democratic parties stand between the centre’s claim to dominance and the corrective claims of a peripheral position; Christian democratic parties can therefore be seen as either part of the traditional hegemony of the political centre or of an anticentrist protest stance. European Christian democrats can be classified by the following hypotheses: first, Christian democratic parties are very strongly influenced by the cleavage of religion. There are strong variations, however, in how decisive the differences between the Christian confessions are as the Christian democratic party type mostly evolved from within the Catholic sphere. Another view is that the Christian democratic parties primarily came into existence out of opposition to secularism and anti-clericalism. The decisive context for the one or other variation is the confessional structure of a country: does the Catholic Church have a historic and current quantatively dominant position over other confessions or not? Second, Christian democratic parties as people’s parties tend, at least in their own image, to emphasize their cross-class character. The degree to which this image corresponds to the reality of how the party acts, especially at elections, depends on the specific situation regarding competition, especially with the traditional workers’ parties, but also with other ‘bourgeois’ parties. Third, Christian democratic parties have no specific role to play in the tension between the political centre and the periphery. CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTIES AND THEIR TYPOLOGY Among the Christian democratic parties taken as case studies in this book, it is mainly the Italian DC and the Belgian CVP/PSC that have the characteristics of a membership party. Carlo Masala cites a membership of 1,612,730 for the DC in 1963. The DC was undoubtedly an especially efficiently organized large-scale party. It succeeded in creating

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great organizational density out of the leading role it had in the government over a long period and a strong presence in society inter-linked with a close relationship to the Catholic clergy. The DC became a prototype for the Parantela relationship, the Italian variant of the Dutch ‘pillars’ and the Austrian ‘camps’.4 The Belgian CVP/PSC had, as Emiel Lamberts shows, the ambitious aim of an organizational density of 30 per cent, attaining, however, only 10 to 15 per cent. Even with this percentage, however, the CVP/PSC had at least as high an organizational density as the DC—and one clearly higher than that of the German CDU. In the 1950s its membership, as detailed by Ulrich Lappenküper, remained under 300,000, corresponding to an organizational density of well under 5 per cent. Only in the 1960s did the CDU begin to develop in the direction of a membership party, without ever reaching the actual number of members that the DC had or proportionally those of the CVP/PSC. It was actually the Austrian ÖVP that had the highest organizational density of all the Christian democratic parties. The Austrian People’s Party reached—by way of its organized social structure, which had arisen from a corporatist tradition—an organizational density of 30 per cent, something the CVP/PSC had never succeeded in achieving. Dieter A.Binder does not go more deeply into this organizational aspect of the ÖVP, but makes clear that the ÖVP’s corporatist basis enabled it to have an extremely high organizational density. The ÖVP shared its indirect organization with the Swiss SKVP. Thomas Gees explains that the SKVP, as a mere organizational roof governed by highly autonomous cantonal party bodies, was constituted not by individual members but by its membership of the territorially defined party sections. In the case of the ÖVP the actual membership, i.e. the sub-sections of the organization comprising individual members in accordance with their age or gender, were what carried and what still carry the ÖVP as a whole. Individuals become members of the sub-sections of the organization and only indirectly become party members. In the case of the SKVP, individuals are members of the cantonal parties. These parties indirectly pass on their members to the party as a whole. Christiane Brenner describes a special path to organizational density in her chapter on the Czechoslovak People’s Party. The ČSL, after the ‘cleansing’ of its leadership, who wanted its independence, became a bloc party in the single-party system of the communist KSČ, which was established in 1948. The CDU suffered a similar fate in the Eastern part of Germany occupied by the Soviets. The function of the ČSL after 1948 was also very similar to that of the Pax group, which Jan Zaryn analyses in his chapter on political Catholicism and the Catholic Church in Poland. Groupings, which were also called parties in the case of the (East) CDU and the ČSL and Pax helped to construct a façade of tolerance and plurality behind which the communist dictatorship could be hidden. The Christian democratic parties are doubly challenged in their claim to popular representation. The first question is to what extent do they remain parties of a particular Weltanschauung and do not even try to reach voters outside. The second is whether Christian democratic parties—even if they are in a position to cover the entire social spectrum of society in their electorate—de facto remain class parties limited to certain segments such as the middle class and/or farmers. One example of a party’s claim to have cross-class appeal is Christian democracy in early post-war Hungary, which is analysed


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by Jenő Gergely: Catholic agrarian youth organizations and various organizations for Catholic workers underlined the (social) people’s party character with a distinct social programme of integration. At the same time, however, the broad social base went hand in hand with confessionalism. The organizations that formed the basis for the Christian Democratic Party in Hungary, which only partially came into existence, demonstrated Catholic exclusivity. The combination of a claim to people’s party status combined with a strong ideological-confessional profile is a typical starting point for Christian democratic parties. At the 1946 elections, the Czech ČSL were confronted with another limit of the claim to being a people’s party: the relative electoral victory of the Communists was also a result of the fact that the Christian Democrats could not win sufficient votes from farmers in Bohemia and Moravia (in contrast to Slovakia). A large part of the farmers’ vote went to the Communists, as Christiane Brenner shows. They were more successful as a social people’s party than the Christian democratic ČSL. The gradual retreat from the exclusivity of a Weltanschauung party began earlier for some Christian democratic parties and later for others. The Belgian CVP/PSC is an example of this process of opening up and de-confessionalization. The model was, as Emiel Lamberts writes, at first a ‘technical’ distancing from the Catholic hierarchy, the Catholic bishops, and then an invitation to all those who did not define themselves primarily as Christians or Catholics—but with the condition that ‘Christian values’ were central to their political activities. In the eyes of the CVP/PSC, these values were the fundament of ‘Western civilization’. The MRP, which was in many respects the actual ‘model’ of modern Christian democracy, had the characteristics of a social people’s party and claimed to be, in Bruno Béthouarts’s words, ‘an inter-class’ party. The French MRP wanted to distance itself not only from the ‘class parties’ of the left but also from the traditional ‘middle-class’ right-wing parties. According to the statistics from 1952, the MRP electorate was made up of 19 per cent workers, 15 per cent other employees, 18 per cent farmers and 20 per cent self-employed. The other voters could not apparently be categorized by profession. The West German CDU had, from the outset, a special position among Christian democratic parties. It wanted to combine the traditions of German Catholicism and Protestantism. This was to be achieved only by the Dutch CDA decades later. While the other Christian democratic parties examined in this book developed in countries that were predominantly Catholic, or as in the case of Switzerland and initially the Netherlands actually excluded the Protestant faith and remained Catholic through and through, the CDU was constructed from the outset as an inter-confessional, integrationalist party. That is why the CDU, as defined by Ulrich Lappenküper, was ‘not a party of a particular Weltanschauung but a Christian, social, conservative and liberal people’s party’. This range of representation, of course, tends to require very general party programmes. Dieter A.Binder refers, when writing about the ÖVP, to this danger of ‘ideological ambiguity’. It results from the attempts to reach a majority of voters, but can also backfire and prevent electoral success if the impression of ambiguity becomes too strong. If the Christian democratic parties emphasize their anchoring in the Church milieu too much, then they can not go beyond the perimeters of this milieu. If Christian democratic parties forget this milieu, however, then they are threatened by the danger of lack of distinction from other parties.


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The Swiss and Dutch Christian democrats found themselves in a completely different situation in 1945. The Dutch KVP was, after all, the party of protest against Protestant dominance, as had originally been the case with the Swiss SKVP. Both parties had developed their identities according to what distinguished them from Protestantism. Jac Bosmans shows that in the years after 1945, 80 to 90 per cent of Dutch Catholics voted for the KVP, with the percentage of Catholics in the electorate as a whole being between 35 and 36 per cent. The KVP was thus the party of a large Catholic ghetto in a Protestantdominated society. That is why the SKVP and the KVP could not at first come out with inter-confessional rhetoric. Despite the programmatic rejection of the SKVP’s (in the meantime transformed into the CVP) image as a ‘Catholic’ party, as described by Thomas Gees, 84 per cent of the CVP’s voters were in fact Catholic. The officially interconfessional Christian democratic SKVP/CVP had in reality remained a Catholic party. The situation was not that different for the Christian democratic parties in the predominantly Catholic countries. The Belgian CVP/PSC did not succeed in changing its image as a Christian party, that is to say a Catholic party—the two being synonymous in Belgium. The decline of the MRP in the course of the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic, and the absorption of the KVP into the inter-confessional CDA, demonstrate the limits to development of Christian democratic parties. When they reached these limits, they either broke apart—like the MRP—or attempted a fresh start. In 1944–45, the European Christian democratic parties saw themselves as being new parties. Despite their roots in the German Centre Party, in the Italian Popular Party and in the Austrian Christian Socials, most Christian democratic parties wanted to start from scratch. The clearest signs of this were the attempts at dissociation from the discredited ‘right’. They did so not only in relation to the parties of the extreme, anti-democratic right and not primarily to cover up historical mistakes, such as when the Centre Party and the Bavarian People’s Party’s voted for Hitler’s ‘Emergency Decree’ of 1933. The dissociation from the ‘right’ served mainly to propagate a fresh start in social policy. In 1945–46 the ÖVP had two main international models: the Labour Party in Britain and the Hungarian Smallholders’ Party, as Dieter A.Binder shows. The ÖVP wanted to follow on from the success of both of these parties at the elections in 1945 and 1946. Just as apparent is the attempt at bringing Christian democracy closer to non-Marxist socialism as in the North Rhine-Westfalian CDU’s Ahlener Programm of 1947. Ulrich Lappenküper calls this programme a central course ‘between liberal individualism and Christian socialism’. ‘Christian socialism’ soon became obsolete as a role model mainly for the West German CDU but also for other parties. Most Christian West German democratic parties in fact occupied the centre-right positions in the party spectrum, independently of their centrist programme. The CDU became the party not of the Ahlener Programm but of Ludwig Erhard’s social market economy. The ‘Raab-Kamitz course’ was its complement in Austria. Christian democratic parties became the standard-bearers of a market economy freed from socialist ideas. The linea Einaudi prevailed in Italy, parallel to Erhard and Kamitz. Christian socialist rhetoric was still allowed to be articulated in the DC, especially in the trade union wing, but the DC-led government followed another course, as Carlo Masala demon-strates. Central to this course were control of inflation, credit restrictions for banks and measures promoting industry in the south.


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The MRP represented another understanding of a new beginning for Christian democracy. It took up the tradition of French reform Catholicism from the beginning of the twentieth century, opposed the models of clericalism discredited by the Vichy regime and used the term ‘progressive’ to describe not only societal progress, but also progress within the Church. The MRP, as the party of responsible laymen, anticipated theoretically and practically the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council, especially in its constitution Gaudium et Spes concerning Christians in politics: that laymen have to completely emancipate themselves from the clerics. Bruno Béthouart cites an article in La Croix from the year 1946 in which this new approach to politics was formulated. The Church—as a clerical body—should be politically neutral and politically abstinent. The Church—as a body of laymen—should, on the other hand, be politically active. Similar, if less programmatically developed, was the Austrian clerics’ retreat from party politics in 1945, and the renaming of the Christian Socials’ successor party as the Austrian People’s Party, a party without a ‘capital C’. Christian democratic parties in the countries that had a Soviet military presence, such as Hungary or the ČSR, confronted with an ever-powerful KP, had special problems to overcome. They had to position themselves after 1945 under the constant threat of a communist usurpation of power, without, in the end, being able to prevent regime change. In Hungary, the Christian democratic beginnings in 1944–45 were, as Jenő Gergely shows, very much influenced by French reform Catholicism. They distanced themselves from the conservative politics of the Christian parties prior to the war. Christian politics in Nikolaus Horthy’s shadow should not be confused with Christian democratic politics after the end of fascism. The Hungarian Christian democratic beginnings, which were soon to be absorbed into the inter-confessional Smallholders’ Party, were likewise marked by efforts to prevent Christian democracy from appearing to be right-wing, whatever that might mean. The Czechoslovak ČSL was in a partially different situation. Under the leadership of Jan Šrámek, who had returned from exile, the ČSL shifted, as Christiane Brenner explains, ‘clearly to the left’. This meant the assimilation of a nationalism with clear anti-German and anti-Hungarian tones, but at the same time a nationalism under the banner of pan-Slavism with a pro-Russian orientation, if not a pro-Soviet one. On top of this came the ČSL’s support of the nationalizations. In Switzerland, there was hardly any need to make a new beginning and reposition Christian democracy. The years 1944–45 did not carry the weight in Switzerland that they did in other countries, where a turning-point was reached. The SKVP experienced the withdrawal of the clerics from politics without any great break and without a change in its programmatic rhetoric. The SKVP set new accents through a growing interest in promoting neo-corporatism in society and the economy in the form of patterns of social partnership arrangements. Similarly, the Austrian ÖVP’s policy was also guided by the ideas of ‘solidarity’ and ‘subsidiarity’ that had come from Catholic social teaching, and wanted to turn them into practical policies. In this respect, the role model for Christian democratic parties in Europe was the Dutch KVP. The latter did have terminological problems—the term corporatism was discredited in the Netherlands by experiences with the fascist version of the ‘corporatist state’, as Jac Bosmans shows. Nevertheless the KVP emphasized the need to institutionalize the shared responsibility of employer and employee, according to the principle of subsidiarity. The Netherlands became the leading


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example of social partnership in the post-war period, mainly because of the collaboration between the KVP and the Social Democrats. The individual countries’ cases show that Christian democratic parties in Western Europe after 1945 were seldom, as in Belgium, Italy and Austria, membership parties. Instead they tended towards being voters’ parties, above all in Germany, but also in Switzerland and in France; Christian democratic parties try to shed their ideological exclusivity, thus corresponding to the people’s party type. In their attempt to address all sections of the electorate they often came up against certain boundaries, which the CDU has perhaps most successfully overcome. Between 1944 and 1945 Christian democratic parties positioned themselves, in the name of ‘a new beginning’, mainly in the centre, in any case not to the right of the party spectrum, but in the course of their evolution, they mostly did become centre-right or right-wing parties. The last typological hypothesis cannot be checked on the evidence of the case studies at hand. For post-war Europe, typologizing along a ‘materialism-post-materialism’ axis is not possible. Voters and parties became conscious of ‘post-material’ issues and articulated them only from the 1970s—a trend that was reflected in the analysis of political parties only in the 1980s.5

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTIES AND SOCIETAL CLEAVAGES The cleavage of religion comes up in three ways in the case studies: first, in the confrontation between a Catholic and a Protestant subculture—mainly in Switzerland and the Netherlands, partially also in Germany; second, in the confrontation between a Catholic or inter-confessional Christian subculture and a secular one—mainly in Belgium, Austria, France and Italy, but also in countries in the expanding Soviet sphere of influence, Poland, the ČSR and Hungary; third, in the confrontation between a traditional clerical understanding of politics and a progressive non-clerical understanding within the Christian democratic parties. In the post-war period there were three confessional parties in the Netherlands, in continuation of the constellation prior to 1940: two protestant parties—the AntiRevolutionary Party (ARP), the Christian Historic Union (CHU), and the Catholic People’s Party (KVP). The Catholic pillar equally distanced itself from protestantism and secularism as articulated politically by the Social Democrats and the Liberals. The liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) was the protestant party in Switzerland. Its dominance on a national level, which could be traced back to 1848, was opposed by the SKVP. The dividing line between both of these confessional parties became blurred in the post-war period, as did that between the FDP and SKVP on one side and the social democratic SPS on the other. The distinction between the confessional pillars became less important in the Netherlands and the three confessional parties joined forces to form the interconfessional Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) in 1980, as an answer to the secularization of society and (according to Jac Bosmans) as a consequence of an ‘emancipation of the electorate, which had withdrawn its allegiance to the Church in a very short period of time’. In contrast, the dividing line between the protestant FDP and the de facto Catholic SKVP/CVP remained intact. The political integration of both confessions was successful only in a limited way, however. The West German CDU as


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well as the CSU was, according to Ulrich Lappenküper, ‘obviously predominantly Catholic’. Under-representation of protestants did decrease, but without ever completely disappearing. In the ČSR, the ČSL had made efforts to appeal to the protestant minority after 1945, with various degrees of success. The ČSL strongholds lay in Catholic Moravia, where the local party sections in rural areas were often involved in far more serious quarrels with the Communists than their party leadership in the National Front. The ČSL thus mainly opposed the specific secularism which the communist parties of Poland, the ČSR and Hungary articulated directly in the run-up to the transformation to a communist system. This was mainly true for Poland. After 1956, the Catholic Church and its organizations in Poland took on the function of a semi-legal sort of opposition as a result of the specifically Polish, relatively liberal Communist policy towards the Church. At that time no Christian democratic party was able to profit from this, as was the case in 1980–81 and again after 1989. The Catholic intelligentsia (KIK) and the group Znak, which (in contrast to the group Pax) did not have the reputation of being a pawn of the Communists, as well as the magazine Tygodnik Powszechny could, however, as Jan Zaryn shows, maintain a Christian democratic position without actually having party status. The antagonism provoked by secularism took different forms in liberal democracies to that in countries under Soviet dominance. In Austria it was initially the Concordat question in which the ÖVP together with the Vatican and the bishops opposed the Social democratic SPÖ and its ideas about a far-reaching separation of Church and state. The situation was similar in Italy at a later point, and likewise was connected to a concordate which was an anachronism in the eyes of the secularist parties, but defended by the DC. In Belgium, the opposition between Christian democracy and secularism represented by the socialists and the liberals became concrete in the ‘School Question’. The CVP/PSC did its utmost to try to get the public allocation of funds to private (mostly Catholic) schools raised while the left wanted to get rid of this financial support if at all possible. The ‘School Question’, as Emiel Lamberts demonstrates, was central to the parliamentary elections of 1954 and 1958. A special concrete example of the cleavage of religion concerned the role of the clerics. ‘Catholic progressivism’ as embodied mainly by the MRP after 1944, and most consequentially carried out in France, foresaw the complete withdrawal of the clerics from party politics and thus also from all functions in the Christian democratic parties. This was, at first, not the case for all of these parties. Clerics remained in leading party positions mainly in Hungary and the ČSR. The Smallholders’ Party had four priests and a nun in the first National Assembly. In the ČSR, the priest politicians Jan Šrámek and František Hála had the leading positions in the ČSL. Paradoxically, the ČSL, which was ‘cleansed’ after 1948 and completely dependent on the KP, had a priest in one of its two allocated positions in government, Josef Plojhar. In Italy, the question of whether a priest should be politically active as Luigi Sturzo had been before fascism was not an issue. However, there was concern about the Vatican’s attempts to directly control the DC without using priest-politicians. Carlo Masala writes about these attempts in the 1950s, interventions that were essentially designed to strengthen the right wing of the DC. As in the case of Austria, these attempts at intervention decreased dramatically after the end of


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Pius XII’s pontificate, in 1958. The class cleavage can be examined by looking at the social structure and political articulation of Christian democratic parties: just how ‘bourgeois’ or middle-class were the Christian democratic parties in the post-war period? The MRP’s manifesto appealed to men and women ‘of all classes’. But did the Christian democratic parties really succeed in overcoming the class distinctions that were inherent in European society? The relationship of the parties to the unions became very important. Emiel Lamberts indicates the great importance that the development of a specifically Christian union tradition had for Belgium at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Christian democratic parties generally wanted to continue this tradition in 1944–45. The MRP had a close relationship with the CFTC (later to become the CFDT), the umbrella organization of Christian democratic trade unions. A similar example of the close link between party and union— again in the sense of the Parantela relationship —was the relationship between the DC and CISL in Italy. In 1945, the Austrian ÖVP did not attempt to bring about a resurrection of Christian unions. The representatives of the Christian union tradition in which the ÖVP felt most at home participated in the formation of the inter-party Austrian Trade Union Congress (ÖGB). The ÖVP was (and still is) bound to the Christian group within the ÖGB, which sees itself as the successor to the former, independent Christian unions. These union links could not prevent the Christian democratic parties in any of the countries being seen as middle-class and pro-farmers, with just cause. Blue-collar workers voted for the socialists and communists. This all-European phenomenon resulted from a process of secularization among industrial workers and was significantly different only in countries where the Church as a carrier of national identity was at one with the workers, in Poland and Ireland for example. Despite all programmatic rhetoric, Christian democratic parties had (and still have) a ‘bourgeois’ image. As a result, the Christian democratic parties’ contribution to the reduction of the class cleavage is less to be seen in the structural dynamics of these parties in terms of their membership and voters. The independent contribution of Christian democracy to the reduction of class friction in Europe after 1945 is mainly to be seen in their complete support of corporatist structures of social partnership, as it is called in Austria. The Christian democratic parties were not alone in thinking along these lines, however, and in many countries co-operated with reformed social democratic parties. The Christian democratic parties became the most important ‘bourgeois’ carriers of social partnership and consociational democracy, however. The centre-periphery cleavage, finally, is of great importance for the different country cases. In the first two decades after 1943 or 1945, the DC was clearly the party of the centre, of a centrist state. It opposed demands for autonomy, for example in the province of Bozen (South Tyrol). The MRP was likewise just as little a party of the periphery in the 20 years of its existence: neither the regional periphery, nor the societal. The CVP/PSC’s position was different. It was completely in the grip of the conflict between Flanders and Wallonia. The development that was to lead to an official separation of the party into a Flemish and a francophone party started in the period just after the war. The underlying conflicts had already played a role in the inter-war period. The Belgian situation did not, however, allow for the clear identification of a ‘centre’ that a periphery


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would set itself against. In Emiel Lamberts’ analysis, the various perceptions of the centre-periphery problem within the CVP/PSC become clear. The Flemish CVP, which was the traditionally dominant party in Flanders, became the anti-centralistic champion of Flemish efforts at federalizing Belgium. The Wallonian PSC, which in the Frenchspeaking parts of the country traditionally formed a minority in opposition to the socialists, tended, on the other hand, to represent the status quo and centralism. The situation in Switzerland was not dissimilar to that in Belgium. The SKVP did not represent any specific linguistic-ethnic position, and the German-, French- and Italianspeaking Christian democrats were not divided along any line of ethnic conflict. The historic perception of Switzerland as a state determined by the constitution of 1848 and a product of an urban, liberal protestantism made an anti-centralist party, the SKVP, out of the Catholic- dominated, mainly rural cantons and their parties. In the urban centres Zurich, Basle, Geneva and Bern, which were dominated by the FDP and the SPS, the Christian Democrats perceived a centralism that was liberal and protestant, in any case not Catholic. The SKVP saw itself as the protector of the rights of the periphery against latent centralism. The German Christian Democrats, finally, had a special approach to the tensions between centre and periphery. The CSU’s independence from the CDU, which could build on the earlier independence of the Bavarian People’s Party from the centre in the Weimar Republic, provided the anti-centralistic forces in Germany’s most important periphery, Bavaria, with a political focus. The division of the German Christian Democrats into two parties, helped to channel the potentially centrifugal forces in Bavaria and thus to dilute centre-periphery tensions. A FUTURE FOR CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTIES? The case studies in this book throw light on the real prerequisites for Christian democratic parties: not Christianity and the Christian Church, but Catholicism and the Catholic Church were the base from which the Christian democratic parties were able to develop after the Second World War. Christian democratic parties were mainly a phenomenon of predominantly Catholic countries; Italy, France, Belgium and Austria fulfilled the necessary conditions. The Christian democratic potential of Poland, the ČSR and Hungary—likewise predominantly Catholic countries—is also addressed in this book. Christian democratic parties were, however, also a phenomenon of the Catholic protest against real or supposed protestant supremacy; the Netherlands and Switzerland are examples of this model. Christian democratic people’s parties did not develop or play a major role in predominantly protestant countries, or as a specifically protestant phenomenon in the countries with a balanced mix of protestants and Catholics. It was only in Germany that something like a breaching of the confessional divide occurred, shortly after 1945. The CDU (in the West and the East) and the CSU gradually grew away from the Catholic connection. In the period just after the war, the CDU and CSU were the only Christian democratic parties with significant support in the protestant population. In Catholic societies or partly Catholic societies such as the Netherlands and


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Switzerland the Christian democratic parties fulfilled the political functions that were taken care of by traditional conservative parties (in protestant Switzerland by the liberal FDP) in protestant societies or part-protestant societies, before and after 1945. In a multiparty system, they formed the most important opposition to the left. Perhaps the most obvious exception to this pattern is Ireland. The Irish party system is, despite predominant Catholicism, marked by a historically important anti-British Irish nationalism. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are less Christian democratic, conservative or liberal parties, and more Catholic-nationalistic.6 With this one interesting exception, we can discover a clear pattern in the party systems of Western Europe. In Catholic societies, Christian democratic parties replaced the traditional conservative parties. The rhetoric of a ‘new beginning’ of Christian democracy after the Second World War drew a clear dividing line between itself and the traditional right and gradually made room for a fusion of Christian democratic and conservative positions. Over time, Christian democracy became less clearly separated from conservatism. The clearest example of this trend is the break-up of the MRP in the course of the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic. The MRP tradition continued, either within the centralist-Gaullist majority, which dominated up until 1981, where it could no longer attain the character of a larger independent party, or as a part of the socialist-dominated political left of François Mitterrand, but only represented by individuals.7 Christian democracy in France was a victim of the reorganization of the French party system in and after 1958. A similar development in Italy more than 35 years later led to the dissolution of the Italian DC. The development of a European party system is also interesting as regards the relationship between Christian democracy and conservatism. The transnational integration of the national parties, which was pushed by the European Parliament, helped enormously to iron out differences between Christian democratic and conservative parties. In the European People’s Party (EPP) and in the EPP parliamentary party in the European Parliament, the difference between the two groups of parties has become one of history and semantics and much less of substance. In contrast to the programmatic image of the time just after the war, it has become inherent to parties such as the CDU/CSU and the ÖVP to describe themselves as democratic and conservative. In doing so, they have, however, given up an essential part of their identity and image. What made Christian democracy distinct has, in the sixth decade since the ‘new beginning’, rather paled. This paling is the price of its success. The Christian democratic parties have—in collaboration with the social democratic parties to which they are bound as rivals—a decisive influence in Western Europe as an ensemble of stable, liberal democracies. The Christian democratic parties in Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux states also contributed significantly to the formation of an integrated Europe and its evolution into the current European Union. They have become the catch-all parties of the moderate right—just as social democratic parties have evolved into catch-all parties of the moderate left. As such they have drawn on almost all positions between the extreme right and the moderate left and have done so with great success. For this to work, they had to make compromises, cover up differences, repress special characteristics. They had to sacrifice a great deal of what distinguished them from competing parties in 1945 and shortly afterwards.


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NOTES 1 Maurice Duverger, Die politischen Parteien (Tübingen 1959), pp. 23–148. 2 Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization. Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ 1997), pp. 108–30. 3 Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics (Baltimore, MD 1981), pp. 230–78; Peter Flora (ed.), State Formation, Nation Building, and Mass Politics in Europe. The Theory of Stein Rokkan (Oxford 1999), pp. 275–340. 4 Joseph La Palombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven, CT 1977), p. 210; Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies. A Comparative Exploration (New Haven, CT 1977), pp. 41–4; Anton Pelinka, Austria. Out of the Shadow of the Past (Boulder, CO 1998), pp. 23–4. 5 See Fritz Plasser, Parteien unter Stress. Zur Dynamik der Parteiensysteme in Österreich, der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten (Vienna 1987). 6 Rheinhard R.Doerries, ‘Irland und Ulster’, in Frank Wende (ed.), Lexikon zur Geschichte der Parteien in Europa (Stuttgart 1981), pp. 257–78. 7 Wende, Lexikon zur Geschichte der Parteien in Europa, pp. 90–191.

13 The Geneva Circle of West European Christian Democrats Michael Gehler MOTIVATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE The so-called ‘Geneva Meetings’1 involving leading politicians from West European Christian democratic parties took place regularly from 1947 to 1956. This was a closed circle that held confidential talks about issues that needed to be kept secret. The idea of having periodic meetings of politicians originated in Switzerland. The notion of forming a confidential circle was the result of a German-French initiative.2 Johann Jakob KindtKiefer3 and Victor Koutzine provided the inspiration.4 The main topic of the discussions was the Franco-German relationship. In addition, they wanted to create a common platform for leading Christian democrats to co-ordinate their views regarding the Marshall Plan.5 Along with the wish for a post-war rapprochement within Western Europe, the point of departure for the initiative was the desire for German emancipation from the occupation forces to take place as swiftly as possible.6 In 1948, Kindt-Kiefer and Koutzine created the organizational and financial preconditions for the meetings. Their personal friendship contributed to creating a trustful and open atmosphere for the discussions. Alongside the Geneva Circle, the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI) were founded at practically the same time as the formalized Christian Democratic Party organization, which would work in public. The connection between it and the Circle remained informal.7 The fact that the Geneva Circle did not have a clearly defined mission manifested itself in the various ways in which the members referred to themselves. If on occasion it was spoken of as the ‘Coordination Committee of the Christian Democratic Parties’8 or the ‘NEI Contact Committee in Geneva’,9 at other times it was known as the ‘Information Circle’10 or the ‘Political Circle of the NEI’.11 Kindt-Kiefer, a ‘convinced European’, according to Philippe Chenaux,12 had available (as a result of his marriage to a prosperous Swiss industrialist) the necessary financial means to assist Catholic political refugees in Switzerland during 1933–45 and to follow his own journalistic inclinations. During the war, Kindt-Kiefer’s thoughts centred on the creation of a Germany that would be based on Christian and corporatist ideas and on its integration into the world of European nations.13 He was one of the patrons of Joseph Wirth, the Centre Party politician and former chancellor of the German Reich during 1921–22, who had emigrated to Switzerland.14 Kindt-Kiefer acted as a member of the board of directors of the so-called Christian Democratic Union and was co-founder of the association ‘Democratic Germany’ in Switzerland. He was also a member of the board of


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directors and vice-president of the supervisory committee of the organization Christian Emergency Aid, or Christliche Nothilfe (CNH). Kindt-Kiefer was the chairman of the Geneva Circle.15 The ideological differences between those in exile led, after the end of the war, to considerable personal tension. In 1947, Kindt-Kiefer and Wirth broke off their friendship.16 At the same time, Kindt-Kiefer established contacts with France for Konrad Adenauer, who at that time was chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the British zone of occupation in Germany. In 1952, he also established such contacts with the Francophile Christian People’s Party under the leadership of Johannes Hoffmann in the Saar region, which was at that time still under French control and united with France in an economic and monetary union.17 Victor Koutzine was a personal adviser to Georges Bidault, the leader of the French resistance from 1943 and subsequently a leading politician of the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) and long-time prime minister and foreign minister in Fourth Republic France.18 Koutzine was the head of protocol of the Geneva Circle, as well as director of its tiny secretariat, established in 1950.19 Born in Charkow in Russia, he completed his higher education in Paris, qualified as a lawyer in 1932, and was awarded a degree in literature in 1937. In July 1932, he was able to gain experience in international relations as an aid to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. As a French citizen, he was drafted in 1939 and after the ceasefire in June 1940, he became a prisoner of war of Germany in East Prussia and Silesia. After 1942, he was registered as a political refugee in Switzerland. From 1945 on, Koutzine worked as a correspondent for several newspapers in Switzerland and also for the French Foreign Ministry under Bidault’s leadership. He acted as ‘political informant’ for Bidault and enjoyed the ‘full trust’ of West European Christian Democrats.20 In 1947, he was appointed to the French delegation under the leadership of Bidault at the Conference of Foreign Ministers in Moscow.21 Kindt-Kiefer and Koutzine organized an initial, informal meeting for 16–17 November 1947 in St Niklausen on the Vierwaldstätter See. The second meeting took place on 21– 22 March 1948, with the German Christian Democrats formally participating for the first time.22 Switzerland, as a neutral state, was the preferred site for confidential meetings. Because of its central location, Geneva was geographically convenient. As the seat of the inter-war League of Nations and the International Labour Organization, it also had international flair. Moreover, after 1945 the occupation forces in Germany formally did not allow the authorized political parties to engage in any activity beyond German borders. Switzerland appeared to be the ideal place to evade the control of the military governors. The German participants were willing to accept their historical and moral responsibility for the crimes committed in the name of National Socialism. At the same time they wanted to advance German interests, especially wanting to make West Germany once again a member of the community of European nations with equal standing, to win over allies for this purpose and to ensure constructive collaboration on the economic, social and political reconstruction of Europe. Koutzine felt that all Europeans who shared the Christian democratic idea had to keep in close contact.23 The French desire to avoid official public contact with the Germans also played a role, since French public opinion was still very hostile towards Germany. In addition, the French

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were keen to strengthen the Christian democratic and Western-oriented political forces in Germany. The Geneva meetings fulfilled the clearly expressed French need for security in relation to Germany and were designed to help solve the bilateral Saar problem.24 Closer co-operation with the ‘arch enemy’ was also seen as necessary for resisting the Soviet threat. Thus the formation of the Geneva Circle was also a result of the onset of the Cold War. The deepening East-West conflict made the inclusion of West Germany in the Western world a categorical imperative.25 The leading principle of Adenauer’s policy not to submit to Soviet demands was perhaps the Circle’s most important strategic objective. In addition to the French MRP and the German CDU/CSU, the political parties that participated in the Geneva Circle included the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), the Belgian Parti Social Chrétien (PSC/CVP), the Italian Democrazia Cristiana (DC), the Dutch Catholic People’s Party (KVP) and the Swiss Conservative People’s Party (SKVP). On average, from two to four representatives from each country attended the meetings, although the Germans were an exception: up to five delegates travelled to Geneva because of Christian democracy’s split into the CDU and the regional Bavarian CSU. The Circle was a male-dominated club. The only female participants ever to attend were the Italian DC representative Lina Morino and the Dutch KVP politician Margaretha Klompé. The number of participants per meeting varied between twelve and eighteen. Koutzine and Kindt-Kiefer prepared and organized the meetings. They had to co-ordinate the dates with party functionaries from the seven countries. The main language was French, and Koutzine, who was fluent in German, acted as interpreter. The future of the information circle was first discussed in 1949. There were two opposing concepts: first, the desire to proceed by improving and intensifying the existing activities; and second, the creation of an official and publicly visible organization. Bidault, with the agreement of the Dutch KVP politician P.J.S.Serrarens, favoured the first option, while Austrian ÖVP Secretary-General Felix Hurdes, with the support of Swiss SKVP Secretary-General Martin Rosenberg, recommended a stronger formalized connection between the political parties.26 Bidault was afraid that the creation of an official permanent office would mean the loss of the secret character of the meetings, an attitude that, in the course of the normalization of bilateral and international relations at the end of the 1940s and in the early 1950s, led in no small part to the loss of importance of the Geneva Circle. For Adenauer, there was no question of changing its working method, but he proposed the creation of a permanent secretariat in Geneva, however. The further course of the debate underlined the diverging ideas. Hurdes argued for a stronger institutionalization of party co-operation within the framework of the NEI, while the MRP politician Albert Gortais reaffirmed that the NEI should remain an association of personalities, not a party international, and that the Geneva Circle should continue to operate in secret. Koutzine followed his like-minded MRP colleagues and, from then on, strictly differentiated between ‘co-ordination of policy between our parties with regards to specific questions’, a task that should fall to the NEI, and ‘discussions at the highest level between our political friends’, especially between the French and the Germans, which should take place in the Geneva Circle.27 After a lengthy debate, the French partially gave up their position of resistance and agreed that co-operation within the NEI should intensify and that ‘the Geneva Circle


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[should] be used as a kind of consultative committee within the NEI’.28 From the summer of 1949 on, however, Adenauer no longer attended the meetings, either because he took advantage of the possibility of direct talks with the French governments or because he was visited by Koutzine in Bonn on a regular basis.29 When a direct meeting with the chancellor was not possible, contact occurred at lower levels. Koutzine and Bidault’s MRP colleagues were in permanent contact with Adenauer’s advisers Herbert Blankenhorn and Otto Lenz. Adenauer’s presence in Geneva no longer seemed necessary as his representatives totally advocated his views.30 In November 1952, the German representatives pushed once again for stronger cooperation between the parties. The MRP representatives again opposed ‘too strong links’ between the Christian Democrats: ‘We would then immediately be accused of being a “Vaticaninform”…controlled from Rome.’31 The Circle increasingly served to assure loyalty between the West Germans and the French. The internal political weakness of the MRP, the differences between Bidault and Robert Schuman, who did not initially take part in the Geneva Circle, and the growing influence of the Gaullists on the debate about the European Defence Community contributed, in spite of Koutzine’s best efforts, to the Geneva Circle’s further diminution in relevance. At that point in time, the West German chancellor depended neither on the Geneva Circle nor on the MRP to push through his policy of Franco-German rapprochement. The Benelux representatives began to have doubts about the value of the Geneva meetings, which, having become more and more a Franco-German forum for discussion, hardly dealt with their own interests any more.32 Koutzine made an attempt to involve the Dutch and the Belgians more again when in the summer of 1953 he relocated one meeting to Baarn in the Netherlands,33 but this had little effect. TOPICS OF DISCUSSION The topics of discussion in the Geneva Circle included regular reports about the internal political situations in the participating countries; the political events behind the Iron Curtain; the activities of Kominform and Soviet policy; the political organization of Western Europe, and the German problem. The desired inclusion of Germany in the Western defence system in order to strengthen Western Europe led to an early rejection of a Europe as a ‘third force’, a ‘bridge between East and West’.34 Common guidelines for Christian democratic policy were discussed, as well as questions of organization. After the end of 1950, there was talk of creating larger offices in Geneva that could provide a constant link between party leaderships and organize the confidential exchange of information. The relationship with the NEI was close inasmuch as many members of the Circle also attended NEI congresses. At the institutional level, however, the connection was much looser. The open attitude of the French participants in the Circle with respect to Germany is quite remarkable. The MRP did not only, as Jean-Marie Mayeur has maintained,35 contribute to a large degree to the renewal of the French political elite at the end of the war, but it also paved the way for a new mentality in relation to Germany. The Geneva Circle would have been unthinkable without the MRP representatives. In particular,


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Bidault played a crucial role in initiating the Franco-German rapprochement within the framework of European integration, a fact that is often underestimated as a result of the exclusive concentration on Schuman’s policy. In December 1948 and in March 1949—more than a year before the publication of the French Pleven Plan—Adenauer already favoured a German contribution to European defence. He emphasized that there could be no compromise with the Soviet Union and raised the question of whether Europe would be able to withstand an attack from the East. Half of Germany was already occupied by Russia, the other half lay ‘defenceless before the Russians’. Great Britain did not recognize the danger, and France had the enormous task of acting as the ‘protector of Europe’.36 At the same time as preparing the ground for West German rearmament, the Circle was an important forum for talks concerning the Schuman Plan for a European Coal and Steel Community and its institutional implementation.37 At a meeting with Koutzine in March 1950, Adenauer presented a proposal intended for Bidault for the unification of German and French coal, steel, and chemical sectors,38 which coincided with the interests of Jean Monnet and Schuman. In May of the same year, they brought French public opinion around to the idea of forming the European Coal and Steel Community out of the six ‘core Europe’ nations. In October 1950, Koutzine informed Lenz that the negotiations on the Schuman Plan had run into ‘great difficulties with the Belgian delegation’. He expressed his confidence that the governments could resolve the problem. In the event of the complications ‘appearing serious, however, we will organize an extraordinary session in order to clear up the matter’.39 The Geneva Circle also served as a forum for the confidential exchange of important information on security policy. In October 1950, Koutzine sent material to Dörpinghaus about the ‘creation of special troops in France in order to keep the “enemy within” in check in the event of war’.40 Yet, after the failure of a Europe-wide constitutional and federalist movement at the end of the 1940s, what followed in the beginning of the 1950s was an institutional and ‘functional’, pragmatic beginning of the unification of the West European economic sectors. Technocrats and those who favoured a small ‘core Europe’ now had the say. The Federal Republic increased its efforts in order to bring about economic and military integration with the West. ‘Third ways’ and ‘bridge’ concepts were out of the question for the West German chancellor. There should be no doubt about this in the minds of his French partners either. In a report entitled ‘The Tactics of Chancellor Adenauer’ forwarded to Bidault, Koutzine set out in clear terms the Chancellor’s foreign policy concept: The Chancellor has set everything on his plan for a European federation. His entire foreign policy is essentially directed towards achieving this objective. He believes that the Franco-German entente which is the guiding idea of his approach, cannot be realized other than in the context of a larger Western Europe. Adenauer thus consciously sacrifices German unification.41 Such straightforward declarations served to instil faith in the French leadership that French security needs would be safeguarded. Lenz referred to the Soviet ‘Stalin note’ on Germany of 10 March 1952, which envisaged the unification of Germany on the basis of


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non-participation in blocs and a national army, ‘as a new problem’. He reassured his interlocutors in Geneva that ‘Adenauer is determined, as before, to integrate to the utmost. Russia ought first to prove its honest intentions by receiving the United Nations and by holding free elections.’42 Adenauer’s representatives repeatedly made clear that the West should steer clear of Stalin’s offer. The unshakeable loyalty of the German chancellor towards the West, above all towards France, remained, however, without recognizable reward in one important respect. It was already apparent in 1952 at the Geneva talks that the plan for a European Defence Community (EDC) would probably fail. In June, 1952, Lenz again rejected negotiations with the USSR before the ratification of the Western treaties about the EDC and the ‘General Treaty’ about West German sovereignty as step-by-step, controlled substitution of the occupation statutes. He insisted that in his and Adenauer’s view the Soviets were ‘not ready to make concessions’. They would agree to German unity only ‘if they have the upper hand’. Stalin’s notes ‘thus are only aimed against the West forming a bloc’. Lenz went on to say that the Soviet goal was merely a stalling tactic. The Federal German government intended to ‘ratify the treaties swiftly’. The ‘game with a Four Power Conference’ was ‘not without its dangers’. The leading French MRP politician Pierre Henri Teitgen agreed with the West Germans that the Soviet attempts should be countered by forcing the ratification of the treaties. Even if there were still difficulties, the treaties would ‘logically lead to the accession of Germany to the Atlantic community’.43 Not only were the common actions of Christian Democratic Party representatives in the Council of Europe considered and prepared in the Geneva Circle, but suggestions for institutional reform were also discussed. As the European idea was threatened from different sides, Teitgen spoke in favour of a new treaty between the six ECSC and future EDC member states with the nomination of a Community chairman who would rotate regularly every two years. The chairman would appoint the leading minister and four other ministers for finance, defence, and two for foreign affairs: one for general matters and one for the Schuman Plan. They would be answerable to two chambers.44 Teitgen’s idea was to form (similar to the US model) a senate with four representatives per country and a house of representatives as the second chamber whose membership would be in proportion to the respective population of the six member states. Teitgen’s ideas, which matched De Gasperi’s about establishing a common political authority above the EDC, were approved of by the Geneva Circle and led to the famous Article 38 of the FrancoItalian European Political Community initiative, which was accepted by all six countries on 10 March 1953.45 In November 1952, the German representatives pushed once again for stronger co-operation between the parties and emphasized the urgency of ratifying the EDC in France. Robert Bichet drew attention to the internal political difficulties and the time factor: it would take months ‘until we have gone through all articles of the treaty’.46 In Baarn the debate centred on the popular uprising in the GDR on 17 June 1953. Their reaction once again proved the West German representatives’ loyalty to the Western alliance. Blankenhorn exhorted those in attendance that it was ‘absolutely necessary’ for the West Germans and the CDU/CSU to continue their solidarity with the Western Powers and their allegiance to Western integration.47 Blankenhorn showed his dissatisfaction with the hesitancy of France’s policy towards Western Europe. As a result


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of the dragging out of the discussion about the ratification of the EDC Treaties in France, the German representatives were, at the latest in 1953, increasingly critical of the Geneva Circle. With regard to the European army, the MRP representatives had delivered overly optimistic assessments generating doubts about the reliability and political influence of Bidault’s closest advisers, especially after the MRP had suffered massive losses in the elections of 1951.48 Koutzine could not do anything against the increasing bilateralization of the Christian Democratic discussion forum, which the representatives of the remaining countries were recognizing with growing discomfort. The Belgians and the Dutch had already often stayed away from meetings of the Circle. The Austrians and the Swiss were preparing to bale out. The MRP representatives were too late in showing some flexibility with regards to a policy of closer co-operation within the framework of the NEI. They were ready to yield for demands for closer and more formalised co-operation only after internal political opposition had increased. Koutzine seems to have predicted the negative vote of the French National Assembly on the further debate of the EDC Treaty. He subsequently became a resolute advocate of the relance européenne, or renewed attempts at economic integration after the failure of the EDC, which he strongly tried to support journalistically. In February 1955, he reported with satisfaction that his media strategy had taken effect regarding European policy, without his having retreated from his intransigent anti-Russian position: ‘It is crucial to achieve concrete successes, even humble ones, at the “European” level, in order for the public not to get the impression that this idea has already been put on the back burner.’49 His plan went no further, however. The next meeting of the Geneva Circle planned for Rome had to be cancelled because tension within the Italian DC had peaked, and Giuseppe Pella, along with his followers, seemed intent on leaving the DC to found their own new party. According to Koutzine, a reconciliation between Pella and the more left-wing Amintore Fanfani was ‘hardly thinkable’.50 SUCCESSES AND LIMITATIONS OF TRANSNATIONAL COOPERATION The founder of the Pan-European Movement, Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi, believed that the European movements for which they had fought so strenuously were ‘hit hard’ by the French rejection of the EDC. The division of the European movement into ‘core Europe’ and ‘greater Europe’ Europeans, with the former vehemently supporting the ECSC/EEC projects and the latter advocating a more loosely organized larger Western Europe, led to its chronic split.51 This was not too great a problem for the development of the Geneva Circle, however, since, with the exception of the Swiss and Austrians who were becoming increasingly reserved, it was primarily made up of advocates of a tightly knit ‘core Europe’. Lenz made it clear to Teitgen ‘that with regard to the type of European integration desired by us, the Paris Treaties [concerning the inclusion of West Germany in NATO and the founding of the Western European Union (WEU) after the failure of the EDC] are only an imperfect substitute’. The Germans were prepared for close co-operation among the WEU general staff, without creating a special


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authority between the NATO High Command and any WEU military units. Adenauer also welcomed common military training schools.52 Bidault and Teitgen went even further. They perceived the Paris Treaties as ‘one step back on the road to European integration’ and rejected them. Aside from the formation of a common general staff ‘in loose form’ and of military training schools, they suggested common aircraft production for civilian aviation and a common institution for the peaceful use of atomic energy. With regard to the latter two fields, they were of the opinion that no European country alone was in a position to allocate the necessary capital for the purpose. Lenz believed that he could win the chancellor over to this proposal.53 Thus the idea of a European nuclear energy authority was already anticipated within the framework of the Geneva Circle. Concrete suggestions for its implementation did not initially follow, however. When the USSR began to make concessions in its policy towards Austria in early 1955 and was prepared to sign the Austrian State Treaty in May of the same year it gave Koutzine headaches. After several talks with Antoine Pinay, the MRP politicians Pierre Pflimlin, Teitgen and Bidault assured Koutzine ‘that a new European start is in all seriousness being prepared’. It was ‘high time, since the Austrian example is very dangerous and we have to prepare ourselves for a difficult psychological battle’.54 In 1956–57, Koutzine recognized the growing weakness of the Soviet satellite system. He alerted the Geneva Circle to the danger of war. In December 1956, in the course of the suppression of the Hungarian uprising by the Warsaw Pact, he showed ‘a pessimistic attitude’ and believed in ‘a very high risk of war’. The crisis in the Eastern bloc was Very serious and the Russians could be tempted to strike at the moment when Europe is completely vulnerable and could be overrun’.55 Against the background of this depressing threat scenario, Koutzine was aware of the necessity of intensifying transatlantic co-operation first before any major new European initiative. Were the goals associated with the Geneva Circle reached? The high level of mutual trust and conviction in the democratic development of (Western) Europe was considerable. During the meetings, there was a series of informative talks that portrayed conditions in the member countries. They contributed to promoting mutual understanding of the respective domestic political situations, and they presented, reinforced and defended common ideological and political concepts. The Circle was probably most successful in raising the spectre of the communist peril and the Soviet threat to Europe. The image of a common enemy contributed in no small part to its internal cohesion. In this way, the debates confirmed common attitudes and toughened joint positions, especially towards Soviet policy on Europe in general and Germany in particular. The rounds of talks occasionally led to preliminary discussions, for example on concepts and plans for the Council of Europe. The Circle discussed possible solutions to the Saar question and supported the Schuman Plan—the draft was circulated and discussed at the meetings. There were also points of disagreement to which the meetings contributed nothing, however. One such example was the South Tyrol question, in which the ÖVP and the DC could not find a solution on a bilateral level, nor was the problem multilateralized in the framework of the Geneva Circle or the NEI. Moreover, neither the Geneva Circle nor the NEI formed a solid basis for the construction of a more integrated Christian Democratic party organization at international level. What were the main causes of the loss of importance of the Circle and its continuation


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becoming increasingly more questionable? The reasons are generally connected with the decline of the European movement after 1949. The decrease of relevance was due in no small part to the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany and its inclusion in the Council of Europe.56 Coudenhove-Kalergi identified five reasons for the movement for European integration appearing to weaken after 1954.57 The Geneva Circle was also affected by these trends. First, Stalin’s death meant ‘a heavy blow to the idea of a united Europe’. Europe was freed from a nightmare. His successors appeared less menacing and dangerous. Second, with the end of the Korean War in 1953, there seemed to be no immediate danger of war. Third, the socio-economic consolidation of West European national economies as a result of the Marshall Plan reduced the pressure for deeper European integration. Fourth, the existence of NATO since 1949 made a big difference. It actually weakened the idea of European solidarity rather than strengthening it. Coudenhove-Kalergi judged the WEU linked to NATO as ‘stillborn’ and without importance as a European institution. Fifth, the European Payments Union (EPU) helped to overcome the monetary crisis in Europe and thus reduced demands for monetary union in Europe. The contours of the Cold War lost their clarity, and the USSR modified its foreign policy image through a ‘new look’ and switched from the aggressive confrontational course of the Kominform of the 1940s to a reduction of tension and to a respect for the realities of European politics. Western Europe increasingly consolidated itself in the military and economic policy sectors to such an extent that the process of integration lost its supranational political drive. Economic questions stood in the foreground—for this, ideological and political party discussions in Geneva were expendable. The technocrats of economic integration who operated behind the scenes, such as Jean Monnet, Pierre Uri, Etienne Hirsch or Louis Armand, were now at the helm. In organizational terms, what both the NEI and the Geneva Circle missed was a unified concept of transnational political party integration. The members could not agree on the closer integration of both organizations. The main rationale for the Geneva Circle was the Franco-German rapprochement, as reflected in the personal backgrounds of Kindt-Kiefer and Koutzine. Not only had it been decided by 1949–50 that this was the Circle’s main concern, but the direction it would take had also already been determined, although there were disputes about form and method. Aside from the French and West Germans, the remaining representatives in the Geneva Circle in the 1950s were more or less as supernumeraries. Once the contact between Bonn and Paris had been established and the process of rapprochement initiated, the main purpose of the initiative had been achieved. NOTES 1 See Philippe Chenaux, Une Europe vaticane? Entre le Plan Marshall et les Traités de Rome (Brussels 1990), pp. 128–39; Wolfram Kaiser, ‘Begegnungen christdemokratischer Politiker in der Nachkriegszeit’, in Martin Greschat and Wilfried Loth (eds), Die Christen und die Entstehung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft (Stuttgart, Berlin and Cologne 1995), pp. 139–57; Philippe Chenaux, ‘Les démocrates-chrétiens au niveau de l’Union Européenne’, in Emiel Lamberts


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(ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union [1945/1995] (Leuven 1997), pp. 449–58; Roberto Papini, The Christian Democrat International (Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York and London 1997); Michael Gehler, ‘Der “Genfer Kreis”: Christdemokratische Parteienkooperation und Vertrauensbildung im Zeichen der deutsch-französischen Annäherung 1947–1955’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 49, no. 7 (2001), pp. 599–625. 2 Philippe Chenaux, ‘Les démocrates-chrétiens et la construction de l’Europe (1947– 1957)’, Revue politique, vol. 1 (1991), pp. 87–101, here pp. 94–5; Bruno Dörpinghaus, ‘Die Genfer Sitzungen—Erste Zusammenkünfte führender christlichdemokratischer Politiker im Nachkriegseuropa’, in Dieter Blumenwitz et al. (eds), Konrad Adenauer und seine Zeit. Politik und Persönlichkeit des ersten Bundeskanzlers. Beiträge von Weg- und Zeitgenossen (Stuttgart 1976), pp. 538–65, here p. 538. 3 Ulrike Hörster-Philipp, Joseph Wirth 1879–1956. Eine politische Biographie (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1998), p. 591. 4 See Kaiser, ‘Begegnungen’, p. 150. 5 Vertrauliche Aktennotiz für Herrn Dr. Josef Müller, 1 March 1948, Archiv für christlich-demokratische Politik (ACDP) I–009–017. 6 Bruno Dörpinghaus to Johann Jakob Kindt-Kiefer, 12 April 1948, ACDP I– 009– 017. 7 Roberto Papini, L’Internationale démocrate-chrétienne. La coopération internationale entre les partis démocrates chrétiens de 1925 à 1986 (Paris 1988), pp. 79–82. 8 Niederschrift über die Sitzung des Coordinations-Comitees der christlichdemokratischen Parteien in Genf, 8 March 1949, Institut für Zeitgeschichte (IfZg) Innsbruck, Karl Gruber Archiv. 9 Tagung des Kontaktausschusses in Genf, 13 February 1950, Archiv des Karl von Vogelsang-Instituts (AKVI), BPL, Konvolut BMfUnterricht 1946–50, Mappe NEI. 10 Bericht über die Besprechung des Informationszirkels der NEI in Genf am 19.10.1953, erstattet von Franz Grubhofer, Dornbirn, 26 October 1953, AKVI, Karton NEI c) e). 11 Otto Lenz to Konrad Adenauer, 7 July 1953, ACDP I-172–058/2. 12 Chenaux, Une Europe vaticane?, pp. 128–9. 13 Hörster-Philipp, Joseph Wirth, pp. 591, 626. 14 Günter Buchstab, Brigitte Kaff and Hans-Otto Kleinmann, Verfolgung und Widerstand 1933–1945. Christliche Demokraten gegen Hitler (Düsseldorf 1986); Rudolf Morsey, ‘Vorstellungen Christlicher Demokraten innerhalb und ausserhalb des “Dritten Reiches” über den Neuaufbau Deutschlands und Europas’, in Winfried Becker and Rudolf Morsey (eds), Christliche Demokratie in Europa. Grundlagen und Entwicklungen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne and Vienna 1988), pp. 189– 212, here pp. 202–4; Heinrich Küppers, Joseph Wirth. Parlamentarier, Minister und Kanzler der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart 1997), p. 303. 15 See Hörster-Philipp, Joseph Wirth, pp. 628–9, 650–60; Victor Koutzine to Bruno Dörpinghaus, 19 July 1948, ACDP I–009–017. 16 Hörster-Philipp, Joseph Wirth, pp. 653–6.


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17 Küppers, Joseph Wirth, p. 316 (footnote 1144), pp. 319–23. 18 Chenaux, Une Europe vaticane?, p. 7. 19 Tagung des Kontaktausschusses in Genf, 13 February 1950, AKVI, BPL, Konvolut BMfUnterricht 1946–50, Mappe NEI. 20 Bericht über die Sitzung des Büros der NEI am 18.9.1950 in Paris, Institut für Zeitgeschichte (IfZg) Wien, Nachlass Hurdes, NL 48, DO 367. 21 For information on Koutzine’s background see Dossier Victor Koutzine (224’443), Département de l’intérieur, de l’environnement et des affaires régionales, Archives d’Etat, République et Canton de Genève. Archives de la Police des Étrangers. 22 Chenaux, Une Europe vaticane?, p. 130; Dörpinghaus, ‘Die Genfer Sitzungen’, p. 541 and following pages. 23 Koutzine to Dörpinghaus, 16 September, ACDP I–009–017. 24 Dörpinghaus, ‘Die Genfer Sitzungen’, pp. 544 and 561–2. 25 Koutzine to Dörpinghaus, 5 November 1949, ACDP I–009–017. 26 Wortprotokoll von der Genfer Sitzung, 10 June 1949, ACDP I–009–017; Michael Gehler, ‘“Politisch unabhängig”, aber “ideologisch eindeutig europäisch”. Die ÖVP, die Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI) und die Anfänge der europäischen Integration’, in idem and Rolf Steininger (eds), Österreich und die europäische Integration 1945–1993. Aspekte einer wechselvollen Entwicklung (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 1993), pp. 293–328, here pp. 296–305. 27 Koutzine to Dörpinghaus, 5 November 1949, ACDP I–009–017. 28 Streng vertrauliche Niederschrift Hurdes über die Besprechungen im Genfer Coordinations-Comitee am 10.6.1949, Hurdes to Gruber and Figl, 20 June 1949, KGA, Karton 6, Mappe M “V”, Zl. 70.186–K/49 (GZl. 70.030–K/49). The participants were Bidault, Bichet, Gortais, Koutzine, Adenauer, Kaiser, v. Prittwitz, Serrarens, Rosenberg, Hurdes and Tschurtschenthaler. 29 Dörpinghaus to Adenauer, 5 November 1949; Koutzine to Adenauer, 23 July 1950; 3 August 1950. Stiftung Bundeskanzler Adenauer Haus, Bestand 10 01–25, 10.01 CD/10.03 K; Bruno Dörpinghaus to Adenauer, 21 January 1950, ACDP I-009–13/1; Koutzine to Dörpinghaus, 11 March 1951, ACDP I– 009–017; Henning Köhler, Adenauer. Eine politische Biographie (Berlin and Frankfurt/Main 1994), pp. 588 and 590. 30 Tagung des Kontaktausschusses in Genf, 13 February 1950. AKVI, BPL, Konvolut BMfUnterricht 1946–50, Mappe NEI. 31 Gedächtnisprotokoll über die Besprechung des Informationszirkels der NEI in Genf am 3.11.1952, geführt von Franz Grubhofer, AKVI. Karton NEI a) b) and c) e). The participants were Bichet, Colin, Fontanet, Charpentier, Koutzine, Tosi, Blankenhorn, Lenz, v. Spreti and Grubhofer. See also Philippe Chenaux, ‘Le Vatican et l’Europe (1947–1957)’, Storia delle Relazioni Internazionali, vol. IV, no. 1 (1998), pp. 47–83. 32 Protokoll über die Sitzung in Genf, 2 March 1952, ACDP I–172–31. 33 Victor Koutzine to Otto Lenz, 31 May 1953, ACDP I–172–064. 34 Dörpinghaus, ‘Die Genfer Sitzungen’, p. 540. See also Wilfried Loth, ‘Von der “Dritten Kraft” zur Westintegration. Deutsche Europa-Projekte in der Nachkriegszeit’, in Franz Knipping and Klaus-Jürgen Müller (eds), Aus der


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Ohnmacht zur Bündnismacht. Das Machtproblem in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1960 (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1995), pp. 57–83. 35 Jean-Marie Mayeur, ‘Einige Betrachtungen über die Rolle der Christlichen Demokratie in Frankreich beim Aufbau der Demokratie und Europas nach 1945’, in Becker and Morsey, Christliche Demokratie in Europa, pp. 225–33, here p. 228. 36 Bericht Hurdes von der Tagung des Koordinations-Komitees der christlichdemokratischen Parteien in Genf 8.3.1949. Streng vertraulich. ÖStA, AdR, BKA/AA II-pol 1949, Zl. 82.250–pol/49 (80.161-pol/49), Int. 14. See also the protocol in ACDP I–009–017. 37 Kaiser, ‘Begegnungen christdemokratischer Politiker’, p. 152. 38 Proposition du Chancelier Adenauer, Koutzine to Bidault, 22 March 1950, Archives Nationales, Archives Bidault, 457 AP 59, Notes Koutzine. 39 Koutzine to Dörpinghaus, 15 October 1950, ACDP I–009–017. 40 Koutzine to Dörpinghaus, 26 October 1950, ACDP I–009–017. 41 Report ‘La Tactique du Chancelier Adenauer’, Victor Koutzine to Bidault [1951], Archives Nationales, Archives Bidault, 457 AP 59, Notes Koutzine/ Nemanoff. 42 Protokoll über die Besprechung des Genfer Kreises am 24.3.1952, Karl Graf Spreti, ACDP I–172–31. 43 Bericht und Protokoll über die Besprechung des Genfer Kreises am 24.3.1952 von Franz Grubhofer, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA), AdR, BKA/AA, II-pol, International 11–49, Zl 150.423–pol/52, box 198. 44 Bericht über die Tagung des Genfer Kreises am 16. 6. 1952, erstattet von Franz Grubhofer, Vienna, 19 June 1952, AKVI, Karton NEI c) e). The participants were Bichet, Teitgen, Fontanet und Koutzine, Tosi, Klompé, Cottier, Favre, von Brentano, v. Spreti, Lenz and Grubhofer. 45 Chenaux, ‘Les démocrates-chrétiens’, p. 97. 46 Gedächtnisprotokoll über die Besprechung des Informationszirkels der NEI in Genf am 3.11.1952, geführt von Franz Grubhofer, AKVI. Karton NEI a) b) and c) e). The participants were Bichet, Colin, Fontanet, Charpentier, Koutzine, Tosi, Blankenhorn, Lenz, v. Spreti and Grubhofer. See also Chenaux, ‘Le Vatican et l’Europe’. 47 Protokoll über die Sitzung des Informationszirkels der NEI in Baarn in Holland am 6.7.1953, erstattet von Franz Grubhofer, 12.7.1953, AKVI. Karton NEI c) e). The participants were Schlichting, Van de Pool, Klompé, Teitgen, Mallet, Koutzine, Lenz, Blankenhorn, Vogel and Grubhofer. On Churchill’s initiative and Blankenhorn’s secret mission see also Rolf Steininger, ‘Ein vereintes, unabhängiges Deutschland? Winston Churchill, der Kalte Krieg und die deutsche Frage im Jahre 1953’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, vol. 36, no. 2 (1984), pp. 105–44, here pp. 118 and 121 and following pages. 48 Victor Koutzine to Otto Lenz, 14 September 1953, ACDP I–172–74. 49 Koutzine to Lenz, 17 February 1955, ACDP I–172–081. 50 Koutzine to Lenz, 5 October 1954, ACDP I–172–74. See also the chapter by Carlo Masala in this book. 51 See Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Eine Idee erobert Europa. Meine Lebenserinnerungen (Vienna, Munich and Basel 1958), p. 332. For the division into


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‘core Europe’ and ‘outsiders’ see also Wolfram Kaiser, ‘Culturally Embedded and Path-Dependent: Peripheral Alternatives to ECSC/EEC “Core Europe” since 1945’, Journal of European Integration History, vol. 7, no. 2 (2001), pp. 11–36. 52 Otto Lenz to Pierre-Henri Teitgen, 8 February 1955, ACDP I–172–058/2. 53 Otto Lenz to Heinrich Krone, 1 February 1955, with a copy of a secret protocol of the Geneva Circle meeting of 31 January 1955, ACDP I–172–058/2. 54 Koutzine to Lenz, 17 April 1955, ACDP I–172–081; Michael Gehler, ‘State Treaty and Neutrality: The Austrian Solution in 1955 as a “Model” for Germany?’, Contemporary Austrian Studies, vol. 3 (New Brunswick, NJ and London 1995), pp. 39–78. 55 Koutzine to Lenz, 3 December 1956, ACDP I–172–081. 56 Chenaux, ‘Les démocrates-chrétiens’, p. 96. 57 See Coudenhove-Kalergi, Eine Idee erobert Europa, pp. 330 ff.

14 Transnational Christian Democracy: From the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales to the European People’s Party Wolfram Kaiser

After the experience of National Socialist rule and the Second World War, it seemed natural to Christian politicians that Europe should be treated as one political space. In order to create a new politics in this space together, one aimed at a better future, free of war, much more intensive international co-operation was needed than after the ‘lost peace’1 of 1918–19, which had not succeeded in creating a stable post-war system. After 1945, Christian politicians agreed to call for transnational concertation of their politics. As a first step, it seemed necessary to reactivate societal and political party contacts from the inter-war period. Joseph Escher, President of the Swiss Conservative People’s Party (SKVP), complained at the first multilateral meeting of Christian politicians in Lucerne at the end of February and beginning of March 1947, leading to the founding of the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI), that the Second World War had ‘put an end to relations between Catholics (and protestants) in all European countries. The relationships between countries, between people were violently broken, organizations were broken up and many of those who formerly acted as mediators between the nations have passed away. The people in today’s influential generation do not know each other any more.’2 Added to this was the perceived threat of communism as a secular internationalist ideology, a perception intensified by the development of the Cold War after 1946–47. This ideology was disseminated worldwide by the Kominform organization, which was led from Moscow. According to Herbert Blankenhorn, Konrad Adenauer’s close confidant and foreign policy adviser, it was the decisive strength of the ‘totalitarian parties’, especially the internationally organized communists, ‘to shift politics into daily life and demand its followers to work every day towards its goals’. The bourgeois parties had, in contrast, ‘not grown out of the forms that they had developed in the nineteenth century. They are normally only really politically active during electoral campaigns.’3 Lacking an efficient international network, they appeared to be just as inadequately prepared for European and global ideological competition after 1945 and any possible European civil war, as they had been in the inter-war period. However, the Italian Paolo Emilio Taviani noted in June 1950 that it was clear that despite the continuing differences between the Christian democratic parties in Western Europe ‘that in such a case we would all be on the same side of the barricade. There is greater distance between me and my neighbour who writes for [the Italian Communist newspaper] Unita, than between me and a black member of the French NEI Group.’4 The first moves towards organizing the socialist and liberal parties internationally in

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Western Europe after 1945 provided a further incentive for the Christian democrats to improve their own links. With their solid, secular, international Weltanschauung both party groups seemed per se to be better prepared for a Europeanization of their national policies, especially in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) after 1951–52 and the European Economic Community (EEC) after 1957–58. In order to define this small ‘core Europe’ in terms of its intellectual and programmatic basis, intensive transnational co-operation, including a close concertation on the selection of personnel, was needed, which the NEI attempted for the first time in 1957 with regard to the appointment of the first EEC Commission. In the early phase of the EEC—strengthened by the French President Charles de Gaulle’s influence—all the most important decisions were made between states in the Council of Ministers. Yet in the medium term, the European Christian democrats expected the Europeanization not only of more policy sectors, but also of public opinion and decision-making processes. This, they felt, would enhance the role of transnationally organized party groups. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND REFORMS Thus incentives for more intense transnational contacts and systematic party co-operation were not lacking after 1945. Co-operation within the NEI was, up until its transformation into the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD) in 1965, marked by almost constant debates about the institutional form these contacts should take and to what extent the parties should agree on basic ideological and detailed programmatic issues. As had already become clear at the meeting in Lucerne, the most important conflict was between the French Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) and the Belgian Parti Social Chrétien (PSC/CVP) on the one hand and, on the other hand, the SKVP, the Austrian People’s Party, the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) and—after its integration into the NEI in 1948—the West German Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). The Italian and Austrian representatives in Lucerne, Attilio Piccioni and Felix Hurdes, urgently demanded the creation of a committee of leading Christian Democratic politicians to devise a common political programme that would be binding for all parties. Hurdes spoke especially passionately about the idea of founding an ‘international association of parties of Christian ideology, in order to determine our common aims and create a peaceful and democratic Europe’.5 The MRP politician Robert Wirth spoke out against this idea in Lucerne. He insisted that Christian politicians and parties should not see themselves as a ‘black international’. He saw his party as a ‘new force’. ‘The papal encyclicals’, according to Wirth, ‘can inspire a doctrine but they should not be applied to politics.’6 Every form of association with the Vatican and with more conservative parties, such as the SKVP and the ÖVP, seemed dangerous, while leading MRP politicians were attempting to free political Catholicism from its isolation during the Third Republic and make it into an inter-confessional political movement of the political centre in the Fourth Republic. Barbara Barclay Carter, who had co-ordinated contacts between Catholic politicians in exile in London during the Second World War,7 ascertained in Lucerne that the great fear of the MRP representatives was that even the name Christian Democratic


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‘would lay them open to a charge of clericalism and took no account of the number of non-believers and, in North Africa, of Moslems among their adherents’.8 The MRP in particular followed different domestic policies from those of the ÖVP and CDU/CSU. The latter were middle-class people’s parties in their aims and programme, people’s parties that wanted to integrate left-Catholic and conservative tendencies, reflecting the common experience of anti-democratic radicalization of middle-class parties in the inter-war period. In the case of the CDU/CSU, an added important strategic aim was to overcome the confessional split. The MRP saw itself, in contrast, as a nonconservative and non-socialist political movement that propagated interventionist economic and social policies and supported nationalization. Regarding its domestic policy, it did not pragmatically co-operate with the socialists out of necessity, as was the case with the ÖVP, but it was an active choice with the aim of creating a new economic and societal order, a ‘third way’ between capitalism and communism. As a progressive party of the centre left, Robert Bichet, who was first president and then, from 1949 to 1955, secretary-general of the NEI, reminded other Christian Democrats that the MRP had three parties to its right. Most important were the Gaullists, and that is why the majority wanted, as before, no association with European conservatives in the form of a party link.9 In order to be able to reach a result at all, the Christian politicians in Lucerne finally agreed on the lowest common denominator. When choosing a name for the new organization, they adapted ‘NEI’, a bilateral co-operation agreement without statutes, on which the Belgians and French had already agreed in 1945–46.10 The name, which did not reveal much about the formation’s ideology, was probably suggested by the French Dominican Joseph Lebret,11 aligning the party with the Nouvelles Equipes Françaises, an organization that was founded in France in 1938 by young Catholic politicians around Francisque Gay and Georges Bidault. This was to have been a new force to be reckoned with in the centre of a radicalized political party landscape just before the Second World War.12 The NEI was made up of national groups rather than parties. These groups were composed of individual personalities from the MRP and PSC but were in fact identical to the Christian democratic parties in the other countries. An executive committee, which changed its name to Comité Directeur in 1953, was to lead the NEI.13 The NEI president presided over this committee. After Bichet’s appointment to the post of secretary-general in 1949, the Belgians August de Schryver (1949–59) and Théo Lefèvre (1960–65) acted as NEI presidents. Secretary-General Bichet and his successors, the French MRP deputies Alfred Coste-Floret (1955–60) and Jean Seitlinger (1960–65) led the small NEI secretariat in Paris. This organizational structure, which was rather like that of a club and was supposed to make possible the inclusion of the French, appeared from the outset to numerous groups and their NEI representatives to be completely insufficient. Hurdes and SKVP Secretary-General Martin Rosenberg were of this opinion, followed by the Germans and then the Dutch and Italians in the 1950s. In 1949, Hurdes and Rosenberg initiated the first more extensive reform debate, with repeated pleas to the MRP and PSC/CVP to join in as parties. In 1953–54, a Dutch initiative followed, supported mainly by the Germans, Austrians, and Swiss to strengthen the position of the non-French-speaking countries, and to intensify organizational and programmatic co-operation. One such reform finally came through in


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1965, with the Italian Mariano Rumor and the Belgian Leo Tindemans becoming respectively president and secretary-general of the EUCD. The Belgian PSC/CVP finally joined the NEI in 1959, while the MRP announced its decision to join much later in 1964 in the course of its planned restructuring. The deciding factor was the additional incentive to co-operate resulting from European integration. As ever more policies became Community competence in the EEC, those parties in the EEC that were not part of any powerful transnational alliance seemed to be threatened by a loss of influence and profile. In addition, the MRP, which had been the strongest party in the French elections of 1946, continued to lose votes and influence in the Fourth Republic and in the Fifth Republic after 1958. The CDU/CSU and DC were, in contrast, very successful and played a dominant political role nationally. They were increasingly less prepared to take into consideration the ideological and tactical sensibilities of MRP politicians. In the early 1960s, a rapprochement seemed to be possible between the CDU/CSU and the more successful Gaullists, whereby the MRP would have been completely marginalized. The NEI had already proved its ability to draw support in the 1950s as a de facto party alliance. Both Dutch protestant parties joined in 1954 and in this European context developed their rapprochement with the Catholic KVP.14 The French Equipe’s strong position was finally broken only in 1965, when the secretariat was transferred to Rome and Brussels and Tindemans became secretarygeneral. Its dominance had proved problematic for the NEI’s publicity activities and the effectiveness of its political propaganda. All NEI publications, from resolutions to press releases, were in French. As these publications also often arrived late in Rome, The Hague and Bonn, they often missed being covered in the media. Although there was increasingly a European political sphere, there was, however, no developed common European public space. The French Equipe’s strong position also held back the modernization of the NEI. From the mid-1950s onwards, many participants found the annual congresses especially anti-quated. They were ever less fruitful in programmatic terms and were not effective enough in terms of publicity. The NEI congress in Vienna in 1962 was, in the words of an otherwise favourable critic in the Austrian newspaper Die Furche, ‘the most disappointing [for ten years]’, and concluded with a meaningless resolution on social policy. It seemed to be a symptom ‘of a deeper-seated bad state of affairs. The form of this congress is so hopelessly out of date, reminiscent of a time when at such congresses the local dignitaries gave welcoming speeches, committee reports were read out and the “cosy part”…was extensive, that one can only view the future with fear and foreboding.’15 There was then no congress in 1963–64, but several high-level meetings of leading European Christian Democrats took place about the issue of fundamental reform of the NEI. The meetings of the parties’ secretary-generals, which had been called by the CDU/CSU for the first time in Bonn in May 1954, had long since become more important for co-operation than the congresses.16 The German CDU politician Konrad Kraske insisted that these meetings ‘which are not an organizational nor a financial burden are at least a start, leading towards practical results’.17 The secretary-generals did not discuss Christian democratic policy. They were primarily concerned with optimizing their party organization and election campaigns by transnational co-operation in Western Europe,


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for example by using radio and television more effectively.18 The more important role of the secretary-generals in Christian democratic party co-operation reflected the more technocratic European politics after the first years after the war with its more passionate and controversial debates about economic, social and European policy principles, also in the NEI. The meetings of the party leaders, which took place at irregular intervals after 1954 on the initiative of the secretary-generals, made strategic rather than detailed programmatic agreements a priority and were mainly intended to raise the Christian democrats’ profile in the media in Western Europe. The conflict between the MRP and the PSC and those Christian democratic parties that wanted to found a real party alliance early on was the most important if not the only conflict within the NEI. Added to this was the divide between the six EEC states and Austria and Switzerland after the formation of the EEC. Austria and Switzerland were neutral and, after 1960, members of the rival European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The parties of the EEC worked together closely in the Christian Democratic parliamentary party in the European Parliament. The growing connections between parliamentary party and NEI contributed to the marginalization of the ÖVP and SKVP, which had after 1945 at first played such an important role in transnational party cooperation.19 Important for all eight parties was the question of their future relationship with the conservative parties in Britain and Scandinavia, especially after the British application for membership of the EEC in August 1961. In these countries there was no comparable Christian democratic tradition originating in a Catholic milieu. Denmark and Norway, which also applied for membership in 1961–62, were in addition dominated by social democrats, so that the Christian democrats feared a shifting of political power at their expense within an enlarged EEC. It was mainly the pro-American and proenlargement majority within the CDU/CSU, which had a strong conservative element itself, that pushed for a rapid reconciliation and the inclusion of these parties in the NEI as soon as possible. Those very much against co-operation with conservative parties were the French, Dutch, Belgians and Italians. After de Gaulle vetoed British entry into the EEC in January 1963, the question of the relationship between Christian democrats and conservatives in Western Europe was, for a time, less acute, but it continued to be a source of conflict beyond the 1965 NEI reform.20 When de Gaulle withdrew from French politics in 1969, the European Council at The Hague gave a new stimulus for the closer transnational integration of the Christian democrat network. In 1970 the EUCD created an informal permanent conference of the EEC parties; it became institutionalized two years later in the Political Committee of the EUCD. The Dutch MEP Tjerk Westenterp was the first to suggest the formation of a European party. The European People’s Party (EPP) was founded in 1976 and a framework programme agreed on in 1978.21 After the first enlargement of the EC in 1973, the EPP and its parties were relegated to second place in the European Parliament, behind the socialists. However, they became the largest parliamentary group again at the European elections in 1999, but only through the progressive inclusion of previously more nationalist and/or conservative parties—such as the Spanish Partido Popolar, which has been ‘Europeanized’ as a result of its inclusion in the EPP and its governmental experience since 1996 and through co-operation with other conservative parties that have remained outside the EPP.


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THE EUROPEAN CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS’ PROGRAMME Transnational contacts between European Christian democrats increased after 1945. These contacts influenced the parties’ programmes and the political action they took. In addition to the committee meetings, the congresses and the meetings of the secretarygenerals and party leaders, came the co-operation of the younger generation in the NEI youth section, the co-operation between political foundations and think-tanks, as well as in the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe and in the European Parliament. These contacts made the diffusion of programmatic ideas across national boundaries so much easier and enabled the European Christian democrats collectively to feel sure of and reconfirm their own ideological position in relation to other important political currents, especially the socialists. This was especially true of the Christian democratic post-war idea of a mixed economy. Although the Christian democratic programme revolved around the idea of subsidiarity, priority of the family and a limited state, Christian democrats in fact increased step by step the room for manoeuvre for economic and social interventionism and began to generously extend the European welfare state. Without this basic consensus, which made co-operation with reform-orientated social democrats easier, European interventionist and protectionist policies, especially in the coal, steel and agricultural sectors, could not be understood. In particular, the Christian Democratic Group in the European Parliament and the Christian democrats in national governments worked towards a highly protectionist harmonization of agricultural policy in the EEC. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as it evolved in the 1960s, was designed to assist rural areas and to limit worker migration into industrial cities, as the Christian democrats regarded small communities and rural family life as ‘healthy’ and more compatible with their preference for a decentralized society based on the principle of subsidiarity. The Christian democrats’ support for a very interventionist CAP also reflected their strong electoral over-representation in rural areas with a disproportionately high percentage of the workforce in agriculture. GERMANY IN EUROPE Two fundamental issues in which transnational Christian democratic party co-operation can be seen to have had a substantial influence on West European post-war history after 1945 are the integration of West Germany into the Western world and European integration. The NEI already made the ‘German question’ the subject of its Luxembourg congress in January 1948. This was the first international political congress in which Germans took part, even if at first just as observers. Those Germans present were the leading Catholic CDU/CSU politicians Konrad Adenauer, Jakob Kaiser and Josef Müller, as well as Rainer Barzel, a young politician of the refounded Centre Party and later CDU party leader.22 This congress not only paved the way for the early integration of the German Christian Democrats into transnational party co-operation, but created a political climate in which—also for the MRP—the rehabilitation of the West Germans and their


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speedy integration into the community of democratic states became conceivable and realistic.23 Swiss National Councillor Karl Wick’s introductory lecture,24 Pierre Frieden from Luxembourg’s exposition of the ‘spiritual and cultural aspect’ of the German question,25 and the Dutchman P.J.S.Serrarens’ speech about the political aspect26 illustrate the extent to which the Christian democrats after the Second World War were rapidly prepared to reject the thesis of collective guilt in the discussions about National Socialism, preferring to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Germans. The concept of ‘two Germanys’ had its roots in a specifically Catholic interpretation of German history, which saw one Germany as being west of the Roman defensive fortifaction Limes and partly west of the River Elbe, which was first Roman, then Carolingian and later democratically influenced, in any case ‘non-Prussian’. The ‘other Germany’ was Lutheran and situated east of the Elbe. Estranged from Catholic occidental civilization, it had already been responsible ‘for the destruction of European unity’ in the course of the Reformation.27 According to Serrarens there was in actual fact ‘a direct line from Frederick II to Bismarck to Hitler’.28 West Germany thus seemed worthy of rehabilitation and capable of being integrated. Sovietoccupied East Germany, on the other hand, seemed—at least for the time being—lost to the Christian occident.29 This clichéd view of German history ignored, among other things, the facts that fascism had first taken hold in Catholic Italy, Hitler came from Austria, which was also Catholic, and Prussia had been the last bastion of the Weimar Republic up until 1932. The clichéd view was shared by Adenauer, however, which made it very much easier for him to rapidly become the preferred German co-operation partner in European politics. Other leading German politicians, including some from the CDU/CSU, did not meet West European expectations. Among them was the leader of the East-CDU, Kaiser, who gave top priority to German reunification, albeit under a democratic banner. Others who did not meet the West European Christian democrats’ expectations were the erratic CSU leader Müller and the SPD leader Kurt Schumacher with his nationalistic rhetoric; and this despite the fact that all three—in contrast to Adenauer—had been seriously persecuted by the National Socialists and had been interned in concentration camps. In his speech in Luxembourg, which was requested at short notice and was therefore rather improvised, Adenauer, who was at that time the CDU leader in the British zone of occupation, spoke against the idea of German collective guilt, pointing especially to the Christian resistance against Hitler.30 Dutch Christian Democrats, only a few months prior to this, had wanted to make admission of collective guilt a condition of the participation of German politicians.31 In addition, Adenauer made a far-reaching offer for close Franco-German partnership, following on from Churchill. This initiative, together with the very much better CDU/CSU results in the elections after 1946, made the exclusion of the left-leaning Catholic Centre Party from transnational party co-operation in Western Europe very much easier for Adenauer. The Centre Party was not accepted by the German Equipe, although it was closer to the MRP in terms of its programme and several NEI politicians repeatedly tried to induce an understanding between the CDU/CSU and Carl Spiecker, the leader of the Centre Party.32 There was a second central prerequisite for the moral rehabilitation of the West Germans, for the rapid inclusion of the German Christian Democrats into party co-


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operation and for the integration of the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany into Europe. This was the shifting of the blame away from the West Germans by the delegation of historical responsibility for National Socialism and for the crimes committed by Germans in its name, to the ‘Prussian’ element and the now increasingly communist East Germany as well as by its simultaneous Europeanization. Frieden ascertained in his speech that a specific German contribution to the rise of fascism was unquestionable, as German elites had an unrealistic romantic disposition and had thus been more open to the ideological message of National Socialism.33 On the other hand, fascism was a phenomenon that had taken hold ‘not only in Germany, but in Europe as a whole’.34 That is why National Socialism was, according to Wick, ‘rather the expression of an international spirit of the times than the expression of a national characteristic’.35 It was only ‘the Teutonic expression of a general crisis’, Wick continued, ‘just as Bolshevism is the Russian-Asiatic expression of this crisis’.36 Both ideologies and systems of government could take hold only in an unjust and morally bankrupt world. The Christian democrats after 1945 laid the blame for this state of affairs primarily on the supposed dominance of laissez-faire capitalism and international free trade in the nineteenth century and, following on from this, liberalism itself.37 Wick even spoke of a ‘European collective guilt’, as National Socialism and Bolshevism ‘are basically a recapitulation of European history in the last 150 years taken to its extreme’.38 A healing of the German soul seemed to Frieden to be possible ‘by reintegrating the German people into Christianity, by detaching it from a purely biological and positivist concept of life’.39 Following this line of thought, how could the Germans better prove their ‘reChristianizing’ than by taking a decidedly anti-Bolshevist stance, which Adenauer with his warning about the ‘fifth column’ demonstrated in Luxembourg? The ‘two Germanys’ thesis and the Europeanization of the guilt question did not in any way make collaboration an issue and remained on a diffuse philosophical level. This made it easier for the Christian democrats to analyse pragmatically the negative effects on Europe as a whole of the terrible economic situation in the Western zones of occupation and of a lengthy enforced control of Germany. In his report about the ‘economic aspect’ Désiré Lamalle especially analysed the economic integration of the Benelux economies with Germany prior to the Second World War and the close connection between economic recovery in West Germany and in Europe as a whole. He pointed especially to the urgent short-term neces sity of greatly increasing the German production of coal and its export.40 Swift economic recovery in the western zones of occupation was, for Lamalle ‘an evident necessity’. He went on to say that without Germany’s peaceful economic recovery, ‘Europe would be open to oriental barbarism. Without a European hope, the Germans will only think of mad revenge or a nihilism that will lead them towards Russia, and Europe with it.’41 After the National Socialists’ attempt to create a German Europe by ruthless violence, the European Christian democrats wanted to see a European Germany, in order to avoid such an ‘infection’.42 They saw the solution to the ‘German question’ in the (self) control of (West) Germany by way of integration into a new institutionalized European order. The decision in favour of the European option, which was to prevent the mistakes of 1918–19 being repeated, was made considerably easier for the European Christian democrats, in contrast to the socialists, in that they had partners in West Germany in the


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majority of the CDU/CSU and especially in Adenauer, who corresponded to their vision of a renewed, ‘European’ Germany, and were prepared to give top priority to its integration into Western Europe and Franco-West German reconciliation.43 EUROPEAN INTEGRATION The European question was thus inextricably linked to the ‘German question’ for the NEI, and moved to the centre of transnational party co-operation at the third NEI congress in The Hague in September 1948. The European Christian democrats were basically in agreement about the idea of economic and political integration of a future West German state in new structures. They had diverse views, however, on the institutional design of such structures. The NEI was active in the European Movement and took part in the Congress of The Hague in May 1948. On the whole, however, it was not federalist, but decidedly pragmatic. There was widespread confusion about federalist and confederalist solutions and their constitutional implications that could be traced back to different, historically and culturally informed understandings of the terminology and concepts.44 What were needed, according to the NEI in its resolution at the end of its own congress in The Hague, were ‘practical measures with a view to realizing an economic and political union of a free and democratic Europe within the United Nations’. The new Europe could take on a federal or a confederal form.45 In 1950, radical federalist solutions came primarily from Christian democratic politicians of the younger generation who did not yet have responsibility in government or had not been part of it for long enough. Thus, at the NEI congress in Salzburg in 1955, the Bavarian CSU politician Franz Josef Strauss, after speaking about his generation’s experience of war, went on to say that federation was as ‘the natural law of the twentieth century’, the only means of averting ‘the decline of European culture’.46 A second continuity in Christian democratic co-operation in European questions was the marked openness to dirigiste concepts, especially in the early stages of integration, which reflected the dominant socio-economic ideology of a ‘third way’ between capitalism and communism. This became especially clear in the discussions about the Marshall Plan, the way the Ruhr question was treated and a possible integration of the European coal and steel industry. The NEI, in its new year’s message for 1949, demanded, partly on the MRP’s instigation, ‘veritable economic planning’ for the European economy with a strong social policy component.47 Only the ‘effective internationalization of primary products and core industries’, seemed to be able to satisfy the need for security, especially that of France, against Germany.48 Thus it was easy for the European Christian democrats to take up the project of a European Coal and Steel Community in the context of the Ruhr question, and to implement it largely in cooperation with the socialists. The Schuman Plan was discussed intensively by the European Christian democrats, primarily in the Geneva Circle,49 before being made public by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman on 9 May 1950. The NEI made great efforts to get positive publicity for the plan. It also played a very important role in the run-up to the European renaissance after the final collapse of the plan for a European Defence Community (EDC) in the


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French Parliament on 30 August 1954.50 Its annual congress, which took place from 10 to 12 September 1954 in Bruges, was devoted to the economic and social integration of Europe. This was a long-term choice of theme, which emphatically underlines the thesis of a distinct continuity in the discussions about economic integration from the late 1940s through to the signing of the Rome Treaties in March 1957.51 The NEI reiterated in its ‘Manifest of Bruges’ that only a unified Western Europe could finally overcome the Franco-German antagonism and prevent the neutralizing and ‘Sovietizing’ of Germany. It was important, after the failure of the EDC, not to restrict the search for a suitable alternative solution to the security problem that West German armament posed. It was even more crucial to rapidly create ‘a common economic space’ with free exchange of goods, services, workers and capital.52 The transnational exchange of ideas about economic integration extended far beyond this declamatory public demand for the creation of a common market. In an extremely detailed questionnaire, Robert Houben questioned the national Equipes about specific problems that the introduction of a common market would pose, including, for example, the desired transition period for the abolition of tariffs within the customs union and the exact form that the inclusion of the colonies would take. In the CDU/CSU’s answers, and in those of the French Equipe,53 the positions were already developed in outlines that the governments in Bonn and in Paris took in the Spaak Committee in 1955 and then in the EEC negotiations in 1956–57. The NEI continued in its advisory role in 1955 and 1956. The Salzburg congress took place in September 1955, after the discussions between the experts in the Spaak Committee had begun, and the Luxembourg congress in May 1956 took place just before the conference of the foreign ministers of the six EEC states in Venice. It was there that they decided to begin with official inter-governmental negotiations. The position of the national Equipes, from Bruges to Luxembourg, was modified by inter-party conflicts and coalition compromises. Nevertheless, the intensive discussions about integration in the NEI promoted a deepened mutual understanding of national economic and political interests and aims and fostered the growth of mutual trust. They thus helped to create a situation in which a successful outcome of negotiations and the ratification of the Rome Treaties became possible. Following the formation of the EEC, discussions in the NEI about integration were soon overshadowed by the controversy within the Community brought on by de Gaulle, about the further development of the EEC institutions and its foreign policy direction, especially in its relations to the United States. The NEI hardly managed to exert any influence here, particularly as it was itself in a crisis in the early 1960s. Nevertheless, leading Christian democratic politicians used the NEI as a forum for publicly demonstrating their commitment to important issues of principle for the post-de Gaulle period. Most of all, they established the long-term aim of the expansion of the Community to include Britain and other EFTA states54 even against resistance in its own ranks, such as from Adenauer and the Gaullists in the CDU/CSU. After de Gaulle’s veto of British EEC entry, the party leaders held a meeting on 8 February 1963. In their ‘call for Europe’, they rallied against de Gaulle’s ‘nationalistic conception’ of European politics and demanded the creation of a fully fledged common market ‘with a political component and openness towards those European countries that accept the rights and responsibilities of the Rome Treaties, and the establishment of a partnership with the


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United States of America’.55 ‘A DEBATING CLUB FOR IDEALISTS’? Christian democratic transnational co-operation in the first two decades after 1945 did not measure up to the ambitions that Felix Hurdes had in the reconstruction euphoria in the time just after the war. The NEI did not develop into a European political party with a cohesive, common programme for the organization of the United States of Europe. Although the Christian democrats increasingly had to act and make decisions together in a European political space, most importantly in the ECSC and the EEC, national, cultural and linguistic barriers hindered the emergence of a truly European political public that would have provided a sufficient incentive for the creation of a more integrated political force at the European level. Despite significant reforms, the EPP has still not yet become a European party in the strictest sense, but has remained a confederation of parties. Moreover, the political action of the Christian democrats increasingly concentrated (especially after the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949) on co-operation at the governmental level and in 1951–52 and 1957–58 in the new European institutions. Nevertheless, the NEI/EUCD was certainly not merely a ‘debating club for idealists’.56 It would be a mistake to evaluate transnational NEI/EUCD co-operation purely in terms of its formal institutionalization or its common programmatic commitment. The diverse contacts between the European Christian democrats after 1945, which in most countries played a leading role in government, contributed significantly to the solving of fundamental issues, especially those connected with the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the Western world as well as European integration. Transnational party and societal networks made agreement about political concepts and fundamental issues possible, which gave political action at government level long-term direction and stability. Party co-operation in the NEI also brought the lesson home that the success of a party and the political career of individual politicians was perhaps still decided in national politics, but for a democratic party of the centre to make its mark against the background of the collective European experience of the nationalistic and ideological radicalization in the inter-war period, it had to co-operate with partners in other countries in an increasingly integrated Western Europe. Most importantly, Christian democratic transnationalism helped to bring about and to consolidate the ‘core Europe’ concept of the ECSC/EEC, with its economic content combined with the long-term goal of meaningful political integration, which has remained a central feature of EPP party ideology. Thus Christian democratic transnationalism has also helped to protect the ‘core Europe’ approach within the enlarged European Union of 15 member states, allowing for the swifter deepening of the integration process, now enshrined in the Treaty on European Union since the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, of some advanced member states, such as over the abolition of border controls under the Schengen Agreement or in the context of monetary union. In these different ways, therefore, Christian democratic transnationalism in the NEI/EUCD/EPP as well as in the European Parliament and organized by other networking institutions such as the party foundations has made an important contribution


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to the politics of European integration in a wider sense than the exclusive concentration on inter-governmental relations based on state sources would suggest. NOTES 1 Anthony Adamthwaite, The Lost Peace: International Relations in Europe 1918– 1939 (London 1980). 2 Procès-verbal de la conférence politique internationale de Lucerne 27 février-2 mars 1947, Bundesarchiv Bern (BAR), JII.181 1987/52, 2372. 3 Diary Herbert Blankenhorn, 31 August 1951, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BA), N 1351/a. 4 Geneva Circle, 12 June 1950, protocol Koutzine, Katholiek Documentatie- en Onderzoekscentrum Leuven (KADOC), Archief CEPESS, 3.1.11. 5 Procès-verbal de la conference politique internationale de Lucerne 27 février-2 mars 1947. BAR, JII. 181 1987/52, 2372. 6 Ibid. 7 See also Wolfram Kaiser, ‘Transnational Networks of Catholic Politicians in Exile’, in idem and Helmut Wohnout (eds), Political Catholicism in Europe 1918–1945 (London 2004), pp. 265–85. 8 ‘Christian Democrats and Industrial Democracy. A New International Body’, People & Freedom 94 (1947), pp. 1–2. See also ‘Lucerne: The Christian-Democratic Congress’, People & Freedom 92 (1947), pp. 3–4. 9 Aide-mémoire de la réunion des présidents (ou leurs délégués) qui a eu lieu à Bruxelles, le lundi 3 juillet 1950, KADOC, Archief CEPESS, 3.1.11. 10 See Robert Wirth’s comments in Lucerne: Procès-verbal de la conférence politique internationale de Lucerne 27 février-2 mars 1947, BAR, JII.181 1987/52, 2372. For the Franco-Belgian contacts during 1945–46 and the discussions with European guests, including Hurdes and Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi, at the MRP party congress in December 1945 see Philippe Chenaux, Une Europe Vaticane? Entre le Plan Marshall et les Traités de Rome (Brussels 1990), p. 120. 11 Heribert Gisch, ‘Die europäischen Christdemokraten (NEI)’, in Wilfried Loth (ed.), Die Anfänge der europäischen Integration 1945–1950 (Bonn 1990), pp. 227–36, here p. 230. 12 For the Nouvelles Equipes Françaises see Pierre Letamendia, Le Mouvement Républicain Populaire. Histoire d’un grand parti français (Paris 1995), p. 43. 13 NEI—Exekutivausschuss, Paris, 18. April 1953. Archiv für christlichdemokratische Politik St. Augustin (ACDP), I–085–051/I. 14 See the chapter by Jac Bosmans in this book for the historical reasons for the continuing tradition of confessional protestant and Catholic parties in the Netherlands after 1945. 15 Friedrich Abendroth, ‘Unter dem Mittagsdämon’, Die Furche, 30 June 1962. 16 Kurzprotokoll über die Generalsekretärskonferenz am 31.5.1954 in Bonn, BAR, JII.181 1987/52, 2403. 17 Kraske to Rosenberg, 9 December 1954, BAR JII.181 1987/52, 2353.


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18 Konferenz der Generalsekretäre, Brüssel, 11.–12.12.1955, ACDP, IX–002–078/1. 19 See Michael Gehler for the ÖVP’s role in the NEI’s early phase, especially the role played by Hurdes, ‘“Politisch unabhängig”, aber “ideologisch eindeutig europäisch”. Die ÖVP, die Vereinigung christlicher Volksparteien (NEI) und die Anfänge der europäischen Integration 1947–1960’, in idem and Rolf Steininger (eds), Österreich und die europäische Integration 1945–1993. Aspekte einer wechselvollen Entwicklung (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar 1993), pp. 291–326. 20 For the unsuccessful attempt in 1966 by the Conservative leader at that time, Edward Heath, to gain entry for his party in the EUCD, see Charles R.Dechert, ‘The Christian Democratic “International”’, Orbis. A Quarterly Journal of World Affairs, vol. XI, no. 1 (1967), pp. 106–27, here p. 118. 21 As an introduction to the history of the EPP, albeit written by its former secretarygeneral, see Thomas Jansen, Die Entstehung einer Europäischen Partei. Vorgeschichte, Gründung und Entwicklung der EVP (Bonn 1996). 22 For the German standpoint see Josef Löns’ conference report, ‘Die erste Tagung der NEI’, Die Welt, 7 February 1948; Rainer Barzel, ‘Deutschland—ein Europäisches Problem’, Rhein-Ruhr-Zeitung, 16 February 1948. Adenauer’s somewhat adventurous trip to Luxembourg is described in Paul Weymar, Konrad Adenauer. Die autorisierte Biographie (Munich 1955), pp. 305–6. 23 For the reorientation of the MRP’s policy, especially that of Georges Bidault, regarding Germany during the intensification of the Cold War, see Reinhard Schreiner, Bidault, der MRP und die französische Deutschlandpolitik, 1944–1948 (Frankfurt, Bern and New York 1985). 24 Karl Wick, Die deutsche Frage, Expose zuhänden der Konferenz christlicher Politiker, Luxemburg, 30.–31.1., 1.2.1948, BAR, JII.181 1987/52, 2662. 25 Pierre Frieden, Le problème allemand, son aspect spirituel et culturel, NEI, Le problème allemand, Session de Luxembourg, 30–31 Janvier et 1er Février 1948, BAR, JII.181 1987/52, 2350. 26 P.J.S.Serrarens, Le problème allemand, son aspect politique, NEI, Le problème allemand, Session de Luxembourg, 30–31 Janvier et 1er Février 1948, BAR, JII. 181 1987/52. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 For the importance of the term Abendland (Occident) for the German debate on Europe after 1945 see Walter Lipgens, Die Anfänge der europäischen Einigungspolitik 1945–1950. Erster Teil: 1945–1947 (Stuttgart 1977), pp. 233–5. For a contemporary history of the concept of Abendland, albeit only in a German and not in a European context, see Axel Schildt, Zwischen Abendland und Amerika. Studien zur Westdeutschen Ideenlandschaft der 50er Jahre (Munich 1999). 30 There is no transcript of this speech. For a synopsis of the key points see ‘Christlich-demokratische Internationale?’, Rheinischer Merkur, 7 February 1948. 31 See also Jac Bosmans, ‘Das Ringen um Europa. Die Christdemokraten der Niederlande und Deutschlands in den “Nouvelles Equipes Internationales” (1947– 1965)’, in idem (ed.), Europagedanke, Europabewegung und Europapolitik in den Niederlanden und Deutschland seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Münster 1996), pp. 123–


207

48, here p. 140, and the recollections of the Austrian secretary-general of the NEI youth organization at that time, Rudolf Lewandowski, ‘Der Traum von Europa’, Rheinischer Merkur, 15 June 1973. See also the memoirs of the CSU leader about an intense argument with a Dutch delegate in Luxembourg about the question of German collective guilt (this is not, however, confirmed in this form elsewhere). Josef Müller, Bis zur letzten Konsequenz. Ein Leben für Frieden und Freiheit (Munich 1975), pp. 360–1. For Müller see Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (ed.), Josef Müller, der erste Vorsitzende der CSU. Politik für eine neue Zeit (Grünwald 1998). 32 NEI Exekutivausschuss, 21.6.1948, ACDP, IX–002–002. 33 Frieden, Le problème allemand. 34 Ibid. 35 Wick, Die deutsche Frage. 36 Ibid. 37 For more detail see Wolfram Kaiser, ‘Begegnungen christdemokratischer Politiker in der Nachkriegszeit’, in Martin Greschat and Wilfried Loth (eds), Die Christen und die Entstehung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft (Stuttgart 1994), pp. 139–57, here pp. 145–7. 38 Wick, Die deutsche Frage. 39 Frieden, Le problème allemand. 40 Désiré Lamalle, Le problème allemand, son aspect économique, NEI, Le problème allemand, Session de Luxembourg, 30–31. Janvier et 1er Février 1948, BAR, JII. 181 1987/52, 2350. 41 Ibid. 42 See also in connection with this, Resolution, adoptée par la conference de NEI tenue à Luxembourg du 29 Janvier au 1er Février 1948, ACDP, IX–002–011/2. 43 For the importance of the NEI for Adenauer and for his concept of integration into the West within his party and in West Germany see Hans-Peter Schwarz, Vom Reich zur Bundesrepublik. Deutschland im Widerstreit der aussenpolitischen Konzeptionen in den Jahren der Besatzungsherrschaft 1945–1949 (Neuwied and Berlin 1966), p. 792. In contrast, the numerous biographies of Adenauer pay little attention to the NEI’s role in the integration of the CDU/CSU in inter-party cooperation and of West Germany in Western Europe. Hans-Peter Schwarz, Adenauer. Der Aufstieg: 1876–1952 (Stuttgart 1986); Henning Köhler, Adenauer. Eine politische Biographie (Frankfurt 1994). Adenauer repeatedly emphasized how important the friendly acceptance in the NEI was for him and for the CDU/CSU. This has been once again confirmed by Konrad Kraske, letter to the author, 5 September 1998. 44 See the discussion at the special congress of the NEI party leaders, Brussels, 30 June 1952, Archiv Karl von Vogelsang-Institut (AKVI), NEI-Karton a) b). 45 NEI, Résolutions du Congrès de La Haye sur l’organisation de l’Europe, 17.– 19.9.1948, KADOC, Archief A.E.de Schryver, 7.2.4.3. 46 Stenographisches Protokoll [of the German language parts] des IX. Kongresses der Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI) am 16. und 17. September 1955 in Salzburg, KADOC, Archief A.E.de Schryver, 7.2.4.9. 47 NEI, Message N.E.I. 1949, no date [1 January 1949]. KADOC, Archief A.E.de


208

Schryver, 7.4.1.1. 48 Ibid. 49 See Michael Gehler’s chapter in this book. 50 For the background to and context of this vote see by way of introduction MarieThérèse Bitsch, Histoire de la construction européenne (Paris 1996), pp. 91–4; Wilfried Loth, Der Weg nach Europa, 2nd edn (Göttingen 1991), pp. 105–12. 51 Alan S.Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London 1992). 52 NEI, Manifeste de Bruges, 12.9.1954. KADOC, Archief R.Houben, 246.2/3. 53 Robert Houben, Fragebogen zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik in der europäischen Integration in Vorbereitung auf den NEI-Kongreß in Brügge, 10–12.9.1954; Antworten von CDU/CSU und französischer Equipe, KADOC, Archief R.Houben, 246.2/3. 54 For the effects of the founding of EFTA on the debate about integration in the EEC, especially in West Germany see Wolfram Kaiser, ‘Challenge to the Community: The Creation, Crisis and Consolidation of the European Free Trade Association, 1958–72’, Journal of European Integration History, vol. 3, no. 1 (1997), pp. 7–33. For the conflicts within the CDU/CSU see Wolfgang Hölscher, ‘Krisenmanagement in Sachen EWG. Das Scheitern des Beitritts Grossbritanniens und die deutschfranzösischen Beziehungen’, in Rainer A.Blasius (ed.), Von Adenauer zu Erhard. Studien zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1963 (Munich 1994), pp. 9–44. 55 Un appel pour l’Europe. Declaration de la conférence des presidents des partis démocrates chrétiens de l’Europe des Six faite à Bruxelles le 8 Février 1963, KADOC, Archivilia Théo Lefèvre (Bewaargering W.Dewachter), 6.6. 56 Bosmans, ‘Das Ringen um Europa’, p. 132. For a rather uncritical assessment of the NEI’s achievements, see in contrast Karl Josef Hahn, the long-term director of the Study Centre in Rome, Die Christliche Demokratie in Europa (Rome 1979) and idem, Standplaats Europa. Memoires van een christen-democraat (Weesp 1984).

Index Aachen, European Congress (1948), 95 Abelin, Pierre, 78, 79 Abendland (Christian Occident), Austria, 121, 206 AC (Azione Cattolica), 90, 91, 92 Académie Française, 13 Acton, Lord John Emerich Edward, 11–11, 19–4 ACW/MOC (Christian Workers’ Movement), Belgium, 59; Christmas Programme, 62, 66 Adenauer, Konrad: as Chairman of Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 181; as Chancellor, 16, 21; and collective guilt of Germany, 200; and de Gaulle, 82; European policy, 21, 23, 24, 25; on Federal Republic, role, 23–9; as ‘founding father’, 3, 9; on Franco-German alliance (1963), 23; and Geneva Circle, 183, 184, 185; as major of Cologne (1917–33), 9, 15; and nationalism, 14, 15–16; and Netherlands, 52; and ÖVP, 122; and religion, 21; resignation of, 25; Romme, Carl, relationship with, 53; and transnational co-operation, 199, 201 Aggiornamento, 65 Ahlener Programm of Northrhine-Westfalian CDU (1947), 22, 122, 173 Akord (Czech journal), 159 Albertario, David, 10 Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), Hungary, 144, 145 Amsterdam City Council, 50 Amsterdam Treaty (1997), 3, 204 Andreotti, Giulio, 89, 94 Antall, József, 145, 146 Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), Netherlands, 47, 49, 50, 52, 55, 175 anti-Semitism, 8, 108, 146 Apor, Baron Vilmos (bishop of Györ), 135 Aradi, Zsolt, 136 Armand, Louis, 189

Index

210

ARP (Anti-Revolutionary Party), Netherlands, 47, 49, 50, 52, 55, 175 ASSEDIC (Association pour l’Emploi dans l’Industrie et la Commerce), 78 Association of Catholic Agrarian Youth Associations (KALOT) see KALOT (Association of Catholic Agrarian Youth Associations), Hungary Association of the Friends of Children (Poland) 105 Association of Medium-Sized Business (Switzerland), 33, 34 Association pour l’Emploi dans l’Industrie et la Commerce (ASSEDIC), 78 Association of Young Communists (ZMP), 107 Atlantic Alliance, 68 Atlantic Charter, 137 Austria, 121–54; Abendland (Christian Occident), 121, 125, 127, 130; and Catholicism, 123–3; and Cold War, 126, 127; corporatism, 125–6, 170; EFTA, member of, 198; and Europe, 127–9; free trade area, support for, 128; Great Coalition, 129; and Habsburg monarchy, 127; Manifesto of Mariazell (1953), 124; and National Socialism, 123–3, 126; neo-liberalism, 125; and neutrality, 126–7; ÖGB (Austrian Trade Union Congress), 177; South Tyrol question, 188; Ständestaat, 2, 121; State Treaty, 125, 126–7; subsidiarity concept, 125, see also Austrian Christian Social Party; FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party); ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party); SPÖ (Austrian Social Democrats) Austrian Catholic Congress (1952), 124 Austrian Christian Social Party (as Reichspartie), 12 Avenue of the Saint Virgin Mary (Poland), 111 AWS (Electoral Action Solidarity), Poland, 117 Az Ország Útja (Hungarian newspaper), 135 Azione Cattolica (AC), 90, 91, 92 Bacon, Paul, 78, 79, 80 Balcerowicz, Leszek, 116 Bálint, Sándor, 136, 139, 143 Balkenende, Jan Peter, 2 Balla, Borisz, 136 Barangé, Charles/Barangé law (1951), 80 Barankovics, István: and Democratic People’s Party, dissolution, 144;

Index

211

electoral programme (DNP), 163–4; formation of DNP, 136; KDNP policies, DNP contrasted, 145; publications of, 135; as secretary general (DNP), 137, see also DNP (Hungarian Christian Democratic Party) Barre, Raymond, 84 Barzel, Rainer, 22, 26, 199 Base (Italian political wing), 94–9, 97 Basque nationalism (Spain), 13 Baudouin I, 62 Bayrou, François, 84 Bech, Joseph, 53 Belgium, 59–73; and Atlantic integration, 17; Brussels Pact (1948), 68; ‘community question’, 63; Employers’ federation, 67; Farmer’s Union, 67; Flemish Christian Democrats, 63; Flemish Movement, 63–3; Flemish-Walloon conflicts, 61, 63, 177–4; King’s Question (Flanders), 61; ‘language question’, 63; Leuven Question, 63, 65, 69; NCMV (Lower Middle-Class Movement), 67; neo-corporatism, 3; ‘School Question’/School Pact (1958), 62, 176; Unity Law (1961), 63, 65; Volksunie (Flemish Nationalist Party), 63; Walloon movement/Walloon Popular Movement, 63; Workers’ Movements, 59, 62, 65, 67, see also CVP/PSC (Belgian Christian People’s Party/Christian Social Party); Vlaams Bloc (Belgium) Belső, Gyula, 139, 143 Bencze, Imre, 139 Benedict XV (Pope), 15 Beneš, President Edvard, 152, 160 Berlin Programme (1968), 22 Berlin wall, 113 Berlusconi, Silvio, 98 Béthouart, Bruno, 74–86, 172, 174 Beugniez, Louis, 80 Beveridge, William, 93 Bichet, Robert, 84, 186, 195, 196 Bidault, Georges: Cabinet of, 78; CNR, head of, 74;

Index on Europe, 80, 81; and Geneva Circle, 181, 183–11, 187; and MRP, 76; transnational co-operation, 196 Bieńkowski, Witold, 110 Binder, Dieter A., 121–54, 171, 172, 173 Birke, Adolf M., 122 Black Virgin, 113 Blankenhorn, Herbert, 184, 186, 194 Blocher, Christoph, 43 Bocheński, Alexsander, 109 Bock, Fritz, 129–9 Bodnár, János, 143 Bohemia, 156, 172 Bolshevism, 17, 201 Bontadini, Gustavo, 89 Borne, Etienne, 77 Bosmans, Jac, 47–57, 173–8, 174, 175 Bosson, Bernard, 84 Bourgeois Democratic Party (Hungary), 139 Bouxom, Fernand, 76 Brandt, Willy, 26, 129 Brenner, Christiane, 151–92, 171, 174 Breton nationalism, 13 Britain: and EEC entry, 18, 38, 96, 198, 203–3; free trade area proposed by (1956), 128; Labour Party, 4, 121, 173; and liberalism, 10; NEI, Conservative membership, 68; Soviet Union threat, 185 Brussels Pact (1948), 68 Brystygier, Colonel Luna, 110 Buchanan, Tom, 5 Budapest National Commission, 136 Bünde, and ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party), 121 Bundesrat, 28; and Switzerland, 33, 38, 39, 40 bürgerlich (bourgeois), 123 Buron, Robert, 78, 79, 80 Bús, Imre, 143 Buttiglione, Rocco, 98 Buzek, Jerzy, 117 Byé, Maurice, 80 CA (Catholic Action), 104, 124, 135 Calvinism, 9 CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), 25, 198

212

Index

213

Caritas organization (Poland), 103, 107, 109, 110, 112 Carter, Barbara Barclay, 195 Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Italian economic body), 92, 93 Catholic Action (CA), 104, 124, 135 Catholic Farmers’ Organization (Switzerland), 33, 34 Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), 103–19 Catholic Workers’ Movement (Netherlands), 51 Catholic Youth Association (Poland), 103 Catoire, Jules, 78, 80, 81 CCD (Centro Cristiano Democratico), 98 CD (Centre Démocrate), 4, 83 CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal), Netherlands, 1, 4, 49, 55, 173, 175 CDP (Centre Démocratie et Progrès), 83 CDS (Centre des Démocrates Sociaux),83 CDU (Christian Democratic Union), 21–31, 171; Ahlener Programm (1947), 22, 122; and Catholic Church, 21–7, 172; confessional divide, 21; economic and societal order (Christian), 22–8; European policy, 23–26, 96; formation, 21; ‘historic mission’, 22; and Italy, 95; Kindt-Kiefer as member of Board of Directors, 181; and MRP, 4; National Socialism, condemnation of, 22; neo-Conservative policy, 26; organization of party, 21–6, 26; party funding scandals (1999), 1, 26–3; as people’s party, 21, 26; and Protestantism/Catholicism, 172; ‘red-green’ coalition, 26; reform issues, 26; societal basis, 21; SPD, coalition with (1966), 23; structure, 21–7; and twenty-first century, 26–3, see also CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union); Germany; West Germany CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union): and Catholicism, 178–5; domestic policies, 195; election results, 1, 2, 21, 26, 36, 122, 200; and European integration, 4; Geneva Circle, participation in, 182; and Italy, 88; and ÖVP, 122;

Index

214

self-image, 178; solidarity with Western powers, 186; transnational co-operation, 194, 196–5, see also CDU (Christian Democratic Union) Central Committee, SKVP (Conservative People’s Party), Switzerland, 33, 35 Central Council for Corporate Life (Belgium), 67 Central European Christian Democratic Union, formation (1950), 144 Centrale Raad voor het Bedrijfsleven (Belgium), 67 Centre Démocrate (CD), 4, 83 Centre Démocratie et Progrès (CDP), 83 Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (CDS), 83 Centre National des Indépendants (CNI), 83 Centre Party (PC), Poland, 117 centrismo policy, 92 Centro Cristiano Democratico (CCD), 98 CFTC (Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens), 75, 77, 176 CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail), 74 Charta 162 Chenaux, Philippe, 181 Chirac, Jacques, 83 Choromańsi, Bishop, 111 Christelijke Volkspartij/Parti Social Chrétien see CVP/PSC (Belgian Christian People’s Party/Christian Social Party) Christian Camp of Women, Hungary (KNT), 138 ‘Christian Culture Weeks’ (Poland), 115 Christian democracy: 1870,significance of, 8–8; definition, 8; pre-First World War, 9, 11–14; inter-war period, 8, 14, 16–1; in twentieth century, 8, see also European Christian democratic parties Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), Netherlands, 1, 4, 49, 55, 173, 175 Christian Democratic Union (KDU), Czechoslovakia, 161 Christian Democratic World Union (1961), 68 Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union see CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union) Christian Emergency Aid (Christliche Nothilfe), 181 Christian Occident (Austria), 121, 125, 127, 130 Christian Social Union see CDU (Christian Democratic Union) Christian Workers’ Movement (ACW/MOC), Belgium, 59, 65, 68, 69; and Socialist Workers’ Movement, 62, 67 Christian-Historical Union (CHU), Netherlands, 47, 49, 50, 55, 175 Christian-National Trade Union (CNG), Switzerland, 34 Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU) see CDU (Christian Democratic Union) Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), 21, 178 Christmas Programme (1945), 59, 62, 66, 68 Chrzanowski, Wiesław, 104, 115, 117

Index

215

CHU (Christian-Historical Union), Netherlands, 47, 49, 50, 55, 175 Chudoba, Bohdan, 153, 159 Citizens’ Clubs of Parliament (OKP), Poland, 116, 117 Citizens’ Platform (Poland), 117 Civiltá Cattolica (Jesuit magazine), 90, 91 ‘cleavage’ theory: centre/periphery position, 169, 177–4; class, 169, 176–3; religion, 169, 174–2 Clubs for Catholic Intelligence (KIK), 114, 175 CNG (Christian-National Trade Union), Switzerland, 34 CNH (Christian Emergency Aid), 181 CNI (Centre National des Indépendants), 83 CNR (Conseil National de la Résistance), 74, 79 Cold War, 4, 5, 189; and Austria, 126, 127; and Belgium, 60, 68; Communist threat, 194; and Czechoslovakia, 157; and Netherlands, 50 Comité Directeur, 196 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 25, 198 Communist Information Office (Czechoslovakia), 156 Communist Party (Belgium), 63 Communist Party (Czechoslovakia), 154, 155, 158 Communist Party (Hungary), 139–2 Communist Party (Netherlands), 50 Communist Party (Poland), 103, 104, 106–3, 108, 112 concentration camps, 103 Concordat, repudiation of, 8 Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC), 75, 77, 176 Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), 74 Confindustria (employer’s association), 93 Congress of Europe (Hague) 1948, 53, 68 Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR), 74, 79 conservatives, and nation-state, 17 Considerations on Representative Government (John Stuart Mill), 10 Conway, Martin, 5, 6 Coordination Committee of Christian Democratic Parties see Geneva Circle ‘core Europe’ integration see European integration corporatism, 3; Austria, 125–6, 170; Belgium, 66; Netherlands, 174; Switzerland, 37 Corpus Christi, 107 corrente/correnti (political wings), 88, 94 corruption scandals (1999), 1, 98–3

Index

216

Cossiga, Francesco, 98 Coste-Floret, Alfred, 196 Coste-Floret, Paul, 77, 78, 196 Cotti, Flavio, 42 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Nikolaus, 17, 187, 189 Council on Agricultural Policy (France), 79 Council of Europe: Consultative Assembly, 198; Federal Republic of Germany, inclusion in, 188; and Geneva Circle, 185; Swiss entry into, 39, 40 Cristiani Democratici Uniti (CDU), 98 Cronache Sociale (magazine), 90, 93 Csépány, József, 139 ČSL (Czechoslovak People’s Party), 151, 161; Church/State relationship, 155–80; ‘cleansing’ of leadership, 160–5, 171, 176; economic reforms, 153; election results, 161; February 1948 crisis, 160–5; function (post-1948), 171; ideological development, 162; intra-party crisis, 154–8; and National Front, 151–5, 153, 154, 160, 162, 175; and ‘people’s democracy’ (1945–48), 151, 152, 162; and St Adalbert cult, 155; and socialism, 152; in Third Republic, 151–7, see also Czechoslovakia CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union), 21, 178, see also CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union) Csurgay, István, 139 Csurka, István, 146 Curie of Cracow, 104, 108–5 Curie of Warsaw, 104 CVP (Christlich-demokratische Volkspartei): Catholic voters, 173; centre party profile, 41, 42; EU entry, 42; on family, 41–9; internal referendum (1998), 42; voters, religious affiliation, 37, see also SKVP (Swiss Conservative People’s Party, Switzerland) CVP/PSC (Belgian Christian People’s Party/Christian Social Party), 59–73; administrative levels, 60; Catholic Party, as, 59–9; centre-periphery cleavage theory, 177; characteristics of Christian democratic parties, 170;

Index ‘Christian’ values, 172; Christmas Programme (1945), 59, 62, 66, 68; corporatism, 66–7; decline, governing despite, 68–70; education issues, 62; election results, 2, 4, 60, 63, 68–70; establishment, 59; European integration, 68–9; evolution, 60–63; Flemish wings, 60; Geneva Circle, participation in, 182; international co-operation, 68; organization, 59–9; Personalism, and Christmas Programme, 59; pillarization, 64–5; pluralism, 59; profiles, 65; school issue, 62, 176; split in, 69; transnational co-operation, 17; Walloon wings, 60 Czechoslovakia, 151–92; First Republic, 151–4, 155, 162; Second Republic, 151; Third Republic, 151–7; Christian Social Party, 13; Communist Information Office, 156; cultural orientation, 155; and East-West divide, 156–2; and France, 157–2; and Germany, 158; Munich Agreement (1938), 151, 157; National Front, 151–5, 153, 154, 160, 162, 175; and National Socialism, 151–4, 155, 159, 160; People’s Forum (OF), 160–6; post-Communism, 160–7; ‘Prague centralism’, 161; and Second World War, 162, 163; society, crisis of, 158–4; and Soviet Union, 156–1, 158, see also »SL (Czechoslovak People’s Party) Częstochowa, Virgin of, 111 Czupy, Bálint, 139, 143 Daens brothers, 11 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 1 D’Alema, Massimo, 98 DC (Democrazia Cristiana), 1, 4, 88–17;

217

Index

218

AC, as elite training centre, 90; and Catholic Church, 88–6; characteristics of Christian democratic parties, 170; and European integration, 94–12; Geneva Circle, participation in, 182; history, 88–2; internal structure, 89–4; and just economic system, 92–9; land reform, 92; Parantela relationship, 170, 176–3; as partito italiano, 89; as partito nazionale, 88, 91; Partito Popolare Italiano, renaming as, 97; profit-sharing schemes, 92; South Tyrol question, 188; transnational co-operation, 194, 196–5, see also Italy de Bruijn, A.C., 51 De Gasperi, Alcide: and Catholicism, 88; and Church, relationship with, 97; development of DC, 88–3, 91; economic policy, 92–7, 93; electoral victory, 91; European integration, 94–10; as ‘founding father’, 3, 9; and Geneva Circle, 185; protestants, threat to, 52; resignation from DC party leadership, 92; Vatican, supported by, 90 de Gaulle, President Charles: and Adenauer, 24, 82; and Austria, 122; Catholic support, 76; EEC, vetoing of British entry, 198, 203–3; and Europe, 25, 80, 96, 194; and MRP, 74, 76, 84; ‘nationalistic conception’ of European politics, 203; withdrawal from French politics (1969), 198 de Jong, Cardinal Jan, 47 de Menthon, François, 77, 80, 82 de Schryver, August, 68, 196 de Volkskrant (Catholic newspaper), 63 Defferre, Gaston, 83 Delors, Jacques, 17 Democratic International, 16 Democratic Union (Poland), 117

Index

219

Democrazia Cristiana see DC (Democrazia Cristiana) d’Estaing, Valéry Giscard, 83 deutschmark donation scandal (1999), 1, 27–3 deutschnational (label of), 12 Die Furche (Austrian newspaper), 197 Die Ostschweiz (Swiss newspaper), 42 Dienesch, Marie-Madeleine, 82 Dienstleder, Alois, 121 Diet (Polish Lower Chamber), 116 Diligent, André, 83 Dirk, Walter, 122 Diuturnum (encyclical), 11 DNP (Hungarian Christian Democratic Party): and Catholic Church, 138, 163; composition (1947), 142–6; economic programme, 142; electoral results (1947), 163–4; and European Christian democracy, 140–3; formation, 135–8; and Independent Smallholders’ Party, 139, 142, 143–6; origins, 135–6, 142, 143; socialism, 142, see also Barankovics, István; KDNP (Hungarian Democratic People’s Party) Dobretsberger, Josef, 125 Doka, Carl, 39 Döllinger, Ignaz, 11 d’Ormesson, Wladimir, 76 Dossetti, Giuseppe: and Catholic Church, 89; as de Gasperi’s opponent, 88; and economic policy, 92, 93, 94; on state, role of, 91; Utopian ideas of, 90 DPP (Democratic People’s Party), Hungary, 144 Dreyfus Affair, 8 Dru, Gilbert, 135 DucháËek, Ivo, 153, 154, 157, 158 Dudek, Antoni, 116 Duft, Emil, 39 Duhamel, Jacques, 83 Duquesne, Jules, 80 Durand, Jen-Dominique, 85 Durrer, Adalbert, 43 Düsseldorfer Leitsätze programme (West Germany), 23, 122 Dziś i Jutro (Polish journal), 109, 111 Eckhardt, Sándor, 139, 143

Index

220

ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community): accession to, party support, 3; and Christian democracy, 2; integration in, 3; national policies, Europeanization, 194; Netherlands, importance of Europe, 63; Parliamentary Assembly, 4; Ruhr question, 202; Schuman’s plan for, 81, 185; and sovereignty issues, 38 EDC (European Defence Community): failure, 187, 202; and France, 81–5; and Geneva Circle, 184, 185, 186; and Germany, 24 EDU (European Committee of the European Democratic Union), 145 EEA (European Economic Area), 42 EEC (European Economic Community): accession to, party support, 3; British entry, vetoing by De Gaulle, 198, 203–3; common customs external tariff, 39; EFTA, debate with, 128; integration in, 3; Italy’s position in, 97; negotiation, 17; Netherlands, importance of Europe for, 63; ÖVP bilateral association with, 129; ratification by Mollet government (1957), 82; and sovereignty issues, 38; supranational character, 39 EFTA (European Free Trade Association), 5, 38, 39, 128, 198 Egyesült Keresztény Párt (Hungary), 135–6 Egyházközségi Munkásszakosztályok see EMSZO (Parochial Departments of Workers), Hungary Einaudi, Luigi, 93 Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS), Poland, 117 Elements of a Programme for National Renewal (1944), 59 ‘empty chair crisis’ (Germany), 25 EMSZO (Parochial Departments of Workers), Hungary, 135; disbanding of (1945), 138; and DNP, 143; and Independent Smallholders’ Party, 139 encyclicals: Diuturnum, 11; Immortale Dei, 11; Populorum progressio, 78; Quadragesimo anno, 51, 135; Rerum novarum, 13, 51; and politics, 195

Index

221

EP (European Parliament), 198 EPP (European People’s Party): as confederation of parties, 203; election victories, 1; in European Parliament, 198; European Union of Christian Democrats as precursor to, 5; founding of (1976), 198; framework programme agreed (1978), 198; Hungarian membership, 147; integration, 3; party systems, Western Europe, 178 EPU (European Payments Union), 38, 189 Erhard, Ludwig: and Catholic Church, 21; CDU electoral support, 21; as Chancellor, 25; free market approach, 51; on free trade internationalism, 24; ‘social market economy’ of, 3, 22, 23, 173 Erzberger, Matthias, 15–15, 16 Escher, Joseph, 38, 194 Esprit (review), 110 Eszterhás, György, 139–1, 143 EU (European Union): ‘core Europe’ integration, 2, 3, 4, 5, 185, 194, 204; as legacy of Christian democratic post-war politics, 3; Swiss entry, 42; Treaty of Accession, 147 EUCD (European Union of Christian Democrats): as ‘debating club for idealists’, 203–4; establishment (1965), 5, 194; Political Committee, 198; Rosenberg as vice-president, 33 EURATOM, 39, 63 euro, 18 European Christian democratic parties (classification), 169–179; anti-clericalism, 169; ‘bourgeois’ image, 177; characterization, 169; ‘cleavage’ theory, 169, 174–4; confessional structure, 170; and DNP (Hungarian Christian Democratic Party), 140; future of parties, 178–179; ‘left’/‘right’ spectrum, 169; materialist/post-materialistic spectrum, 169, 174; organizational density, 169, 170; secularism/secularization process, 169–5, 177; typology, 169–4, 170–174,

Index

222

see also Christian democracy European Coal and Steel Community see ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community) European Committee of the European Democratic Union (EDU), 145 European Defence Community (EDC) see EDC (European Defence Community) European Economic Area (EEA), 42 European Economic Community see EEC (European Economic Community) European Free Trade Association (EFTA), 5, 38, 39 European integration, 2, 3, 4, 5; CDU/CSU, 4; De Gasperi, Alcide, 94–10; Federal Republic of Germany, 200, 203; and Geneva Circle, 185; Italy, 94–12; transnational party co-operation, 194, 201–3, 204 European Movement, Dutch section, conference of, 55 European Parliament (EP), 198 European Payments Union (EPU), 38, 189 European People’s Party (EPP) see EPP (European People’s Party) European Union see EU (European Union) European Union of Christian Democrats see EUCD (European Union of Christian Democrats) Fail, Fianna, 179 Fanfani, Amintore: and development of DC, 88, 90; and economic policy, 92, 93, 94; and European integration, 96; and Geneva Circle, 186; Humanitas magazine article (1946), 89; as secretary-general of DC, 92 Farkas, György, 139 Farmers’ Union (Boerenbond), Belgium, 67 fascism: and bolshevism, 17; Catholic Church’s initial support for, 2; in Italy, 2, 88; and peace settlement (1919), 18 Faure, Edgar, 79 Favre, Antoine, 38 FD (Force Démocrate), 83 FDP (Free Democrats), 21, 175, 178 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) see FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) federalism, 19, 60 Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI), 89 FIDESZ (League of Young Democrats), Hungary, 144, 146–70 Fiesz-Hungarian Civic Party, 146–70 Figl, Leopold, 121, 124, 128 First World War, 14 FISZ (Independent Youth Organization), Hungary, 139

Index

223

FKgP (Independent Smallholders’ Party) see Independent Smallholders Party (Hungary) Flemish Movement, 63–3 Flemish-Walloon conflicts (Belgium), 61, 63, 177–4 Foederatio Emericana (Catholic student association), 143 Fontanet, Joseph, 7, 83 Force Démocrate (FD), 83 formierte Gesellschaft (organized society), 23 Fouchet Plan (1962), 24 ‘founding fathers’, 3, 9 FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party): and Belgium, 70; and ÖVP, 129, 130; People’s Party, coalition with, 1 France, 74–86, Third Republic, 12, 77, 195; Fourth Republic, 78, 123, 173, 181, 195, 196; Fifth Republic, 77, 83, 84, 173, 196; Association pour l’emploi dans l’Industrie et la Commerce (ASSEDIC), 78; Barangé law (1951), 79; Centre Démocratie et Progrès (CDP), 83; Centre National des Indépendants (CNI), 83; clergy, relations with, 75–8; Confédération du Travail (CGT), 74; Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC), 75, 77, 176; Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR), 74, 79; Council on Agricultural Policy, 79; and Czechoslovakia, 157–2; Dreyfus Affair, 8; economic plan, 80; educational reform, 79; Equipe, 197, 203; force de frappe, 25; Franco-German Treaty (1963), 25, 82, 96; Franco-Italian European Political Community Initiative (Art 38), 185; Independent Republicans, 83; Italian aim for equality with, 96; lay schools system, 12; National Assembly, 80; Paris Peace Conference (1946), 157; Paris Treaties, 187; Pleven Plan, 184; secularization movement, 77; social legislation, 78; Soviet Union threat, 185; Vichy regime, 173; Vichy Work Charter, 74, see also MRP (French Mouvement Républicain Populaire) François-Poncet, André, 158

Index

224

Frankfurt Economic Council, 22 Frankfurter Hefte, 122 Free Democrats (FDP), 21, 175, 178 Freedom Union (Poland), 117 French Liberation, 75 French Resistance, 75, 76 French Revolution, 9, 12 FRG (Federal Republic of Germany): Adenauer on, 23–9; Council of Europe, inclusion in, 188; economic/military integration, 185; European integration, 200, 203; ‘founding crisis’, 21; inter-denominational nature of, 17; Kiesinger on, 26; Polish treaty, ratification (1970), 114, see also Germany; West Germany Fribourg University think-tank, 41 Frieden, Pierre, 200, 201 FUCI (Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana), 89 Független Ifjúsági Szövetség (FISZ), 139 Furgler, Kurt, 40 GAEC (Groupement Agricole d’Exploitation en Commun), 79 Gael, Fine, 179 Gaelic League, 13 Gambetta, Léon, 13 Gaudium et Spes, 173 Gay, Francisque, 196 Gazeta Wyborcza (Polish newspaper), 117 Gedda, Luigi, 90–5 Gees, Thomas, 33–134, 171 Gehler, Michael, 6, 128, 181–20 Geneva Circle, 181–20, 202; Benelux representatives, 184; and Council of Europe, 185; Franco-German rapprochement, 181, 184, 189; language, 182; location of Geneva, 182; meetings, confidential, 5, 181–9, 184; motivation, 181–11; organizational structure, 181–11; on security policy, 185; topics of discussion, 181, 184–14; transnational cooperation, successes and limitations, 187–17 Geneva Disarmament Conference, 181 Geremek, Bronisław, 117

Index

225

Gergely, Jenő, 135–72, 172, 174 German Confederation (1815–66), 81 Germany, 21–54; anti-nationalism, 18; Bavarian People’s Party, 173; Berlin Programme (1968), 21; Berlin wall, 112; and Czechoslovakia, 158; deutschnational label, 12; economic crisis (twenty-first century), 1; ‘empty chair crisis’, 25; Franco-German friendship treaty (1963), 25, 82, 96; German Empire, constitution (1871), 12; ‘German question’, 4, 25, 199, 201; German state, re-creation of, 17–2; Kulturkampf, 8, 12; National Socialism, responsibility for, 182; North German Confederation (1867–71), 81; and Poland, 103, 113, 114; Soviet Union threat, 184–12; transnational co-operation, 198–30; ‘two Germanys’ thesis, 199, 201; USA, relationship with, 25; Weimar Republic, 178, 199, see also CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union); Free Democrats (FDP); FRG (Federal Republic of Germany); SPD (German Social Democrats); West Germany; Zentrum (German Centre Party) Gestapo, 105 Giannini, Guglielmo, 90 Giczy, György, 147 Gierek, Edward, 114 Giesswein, Sándor, 136 Gladstone, William, 11 Glasenbach, National Socialists imprisoned in, 123 Glemp, Archbishop József, 116 Globalsteuerung (global control), 23 Gocłowski, Tadeusz, 116 Gomułka, Władysław, 112 Gortais, Albert, 183 Gottwald, Kelment, 160 Graf, Ferdinand, 128 Great Novena programme (Poland), 112 Griger, Miklós, 136 Gróh, József, 139 Gronchi, Giovanni, 89, 92

Index

226

Groupement Agricole d’Exploitation en Commun (GAEC), 79 Gruber, Bruno, 39 Gruber, Karl, 128 Gruner, Erich, 35 Guelfen (resistance group), 89 Habsburg monarchy, 8, 14, 127 Hagmajer, Jerzy, 110 Haider, Jörg, 43, 70, 130 Hajdú, Kálmán, 139, 143 Hála, František, 152, 160, 176 Hallstein, Walter, 24 Hám, Tibor, 139, 140 Hamon, Léo, 77 Heimat regional concept (Austria), 127 Hellmuth-Brauer, Vladimír, 159 Hirsch, Etienne, 189 Hitler, Adolf, 200; ‘Emergency Decree’ (1933), 173 Hlond, Auguste (Cardinal), 104 Hoffman, Johannes, 182 Holenstein, Thomas, 38 Holy See: and Poland, 103, 110; Sangnier, relations with, 16 Horányi, Tibor, 139 Horthy, Nikolaus, 141, 174 Houben, Robert, 59, 69, 203 Humanitas (magazine), 90 Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), 144, 145, 146 Hungarian Democratic People’s Party, 146 Hungarian Freedom Party (MSZP), 139–3, 144 Hungarian Independence Party (MFP), 163 Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), 146, 147 Hungary, 135–72; Association of Catholic Agrarian Youth Associations (KALOT) see KALOT (Association of Catholic Agrarian Youth Associations), Hungary; Christian Camp of Women, 138; Horthy regime, 140; multiparty democracy, 144–70; National Committee of, 137; National Independence Front (MNFF), 136; National Vocational Organization of Workers, 135; Parochial Departments of Workers see EMSZO (Parochial Departments of Workers), Hungary, see also Independent Smallholders Party (Hungary) Hurdes, Felix: and Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), 125, 127, 128; and Geneva Circle, 183;

Index

227

and transnational party co-operation, 195, 196, 203 Hyde, William, 13 Idee ricostrutive, 92 IFOP (Institut Français d’Opinion Publique), 74 IMF (International Monetary Fund), 92 Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary, 111 Immortale Dei (encyclical), 11 INCO business (Poland), 109 Independent Republicans (France), 83 Independent Smallholders Party (Hungary), 121, 137–61; and Austrian ÖVP, 173; Catholic Group, 138, 139, 163; disintegration (1947), 139–2, 163; and DNP, 139, 142, 143–6; Farmers’ Association within, 139; historiography, 139; and Hungarian Freedom Party, 140; membership, 139; NEI, co-operation with, 163; re-establishment, 144, 145, 146, 147 Independent Youth Organization (FISZ), Hungary, 139 Industrial Revolution, 10 Information Circle see Geneva Circle Iniziativa Democratica, 94 Innitzer, Cardinal Theodor, 123, 124 Innsbruck, Bishop of, 125 Instffitut Français d’Opinion Publique (IFOP), 74 International Labour Office, 16 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 92 Ireland, 13–13, 179 Iron Curtain, 113 Italy, 88–17; Catholic Party, 13; and East-West conflict, 88, 95, 96; economic issues, 93; fascism in, 2, 88; Franco-Italian European Political Community Initiative (Art 38), 185; ‘integral democracy’ (Italian Constitution), 90; linea Einaudi, 173; Rome City Council, elections for, 91; unification movement, 12; and Vatican, 89, 90, 91, see also DC (Democrazia Cristiana); Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI); Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI); Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI)

Index

228

Jaruzelski, General Wojciech, 115 Jasna Góra, 111, 112, 115 Jean Monnet Committee, 63 Jelenkor, 136 Jeune République (JR), 16, 74 Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, 78 Jewish people, extermination of, 103 John XXIII (Pope), 92 John Paul II (Pope), 115 Joint Commission of bishops (Poland), 112 JR (Jeune République), 16, 74 Juhász, Ferenc, 139 Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), Hungary, 146, 147 Juventus Christiana (training group), 104 Kaczmarek, Czesław, 107, 108 Kaczyński brothers, 105, 117 Kaiser, Jakob, 17, 24, 199 Kaiser, Wolfram, 6, 194–36 Kaiserreich, reconciliation with Zentrum party, 12 KALOT (Association of Catholic Agrarian Youth Associations), Hungary, 135, 136; disbanding of (1946), 138; and DNP, 163, 143; and Independent Smallholders’ Party, 139 Kamitz, 173 Kaschau Programme (Czechoslovakia), 151 Katholieke Vlaamse Volkspartij (Belgium), 60 Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP) see KVP (Catholic People’s Party), Netherlands Katolikus Agrárifjúsági Legényegyesületek Országos Testülete see KALOT (Association of Catholic Agrarian Youth Associations), Hungary Katona, Jem, 136 KCVP (Konservativ-christlichsoziale Volkspartie), Switzerland, 33, 35, 36; Study Committee, 39, see also SKVP (Conservative People’s Party), Switzerland KDNP (Hungarian Democratic People’s Party): banning by Budapest National Commission, 136; as clerical party, 146; formation (1944), 136; founders, 145; re-establishment (1989), 144–8, 146, 147, see also DNP (Hungarian Christian Democratic Party) KDU (Christian Democratic Union), Czechoslovakia, 161 Keresztény Női Tábor (KNT), 138 Keresztes, Sándor, 144, 145 Keresztyén Ifjúsági Egyesület (KIE), 139 Kerkai, Jenö, 136, 137 Khol, Andreas, 131 Khrushchev, Nikita, 111

Index

229

KIE (Protestant Christian youth organization), 139 Kiep, Walter Leisler, 27 Kiesinger, Kurt Georg, 24, 26 KIK (Clubs for Catholic Intelligence), 114, 175 Kindt-Kiefer, Johann Jakob, 181–8, 182 Kiss, István, 139 Klagenfurter Manifest, 127 Klaus, Josef, 123, 129 Klaus, Václav, 162 Klompé, Margaretha, 183 KNT (Christian Camp of Women), Hungary, 138 Kohl, Helmut, 1, 26, 27 Kominform organization, activities of, 184, 189, 194 Komitet Obrony Robotników (KOR), 115 Komlós, Géza, 139–1 König, Franz, 125 Kopecký, Václav, 155–9 KOR (Komitet Obrony Robotnikow), 115 Korean Crisis/War, 68, 188 Koutzine, Victor, and Geneva Circle, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188 Kováts, Ferenc, 143 Kovrig, Béla, 136 Koželuhová, Helena, 154–8, 159 Közi-Horváth, József, 136 KP, 174, 176 Kraske, Konrad, 197 Kreisky, Bruno, 129 KS» (Czech Communist Party), 154, 155, 171 KUL (Catholic University of Lublin), 103–19 Kulturkampf (‘culture war’), 8, 13, 156, 225 Kummer, Karl, 125 Kuroń, Jacek, 115, 117 KVP (Catholic People’s Party), Netherlands, 175; ARP/CHV, inter-party relations, 55; Catholics, appeal to, 47–5; direct elections, support for, 63; electoral losses, 48; electoral support issues, 2, 4; formation, 47; Geneva Circle, participation in, 182; and Labour Party (PvdA), 48, 49–8; merger talks, 49; Protestant dominance, protest against, 172–8; Protestant/liberal parties, co-operation with, 50; transnational co-operation, 197, see also Netherlands La Croix, 173

Index

230

La Pira, Giorgio, 88, 89, 90 Labour Party: Britain, 4, 121, 173; Netherlands (PvdA), 47, 48, 49–8; Poland, 104, 109 Lafontaine, Oskar, 27 Lamalle, Désiré, 201 Lamberts, Emiel, 5, 59–73, 171, 172, 176, 177 Lamennais, Hugues-Félicité-Robert, 9, 15 Lappenküper, Ulrich, 21–31, 170, 172, 173, 175 Lateran University (Rome), 91 L’Aube, 74 Le Sillon (periodical), 16, 75 League of Nations, 15, 16; Geneva as seat of (inter-war), 182 League of Polish Families (LPR), 117 League of Young Democrats (FIDESz), Hungary, 144, 146–70 Lebret, Joseph (priest), 79, 196 Lecanuet, Jean, 77, 83 Lecourt, Robert, 78, 80 Ledniczky, Lajos, 139 Lefebvre, Francine, 79 Lefèvre, Théo, 68, 196 Leitsätze (programmatic guidelines), Austria, 121, 125 Lenz, Otto, 184, 185–13, 187 Leopold III (King), 61, 63, 64 Létamendia, Pierre, 81 Leuven Question (Belgium), 63, 65, 70 Liberal Party (Belgium), 62, 63 Liberal Party (Switzerland), 33, 40 liberalism, 11, 23, see also neo-liberalism Lidová Demokracie (Czech newspaper), 153, 157 linea Einaudi (Italian government programme), 93 l’Instytut Wydawniczy PAX (Polish publishing institute), 109 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 170 List Fortuyn, 2, 49 Locarno Treaty (1925), 16 Lomé Convention (1975), 79 Louvel, Jean-Marie, 79 LPR (League of Polish Families), 117 Lubbers, Ruud, 49 Ludwig, Eduard, 128 Lugmayer, Karl, 125 L’Ulivo alliance (Italy), 97 Luns, Joseph, 63, 55 L’Uomo Qualunque movement (Italy), 90

Index

231

Macierewicz, Antoni, 115 Magyar Dolgozók Országos Hivatásszervezete see National Vocational Organization of Hungarian Workers Magyar Front (resistance movement), 136 Magyar Függetlenségi Párt (MFP), 163 Magyar Nemzet (newspaper), 135 Magyar Nemzeti Függetlenségi Front (MNFF), 136 Majdanek, concentration camps at, 103 Malavasi, Gioacchino, 89 Maleta, Alfred, 128 Malovský-Wenig, Arnošt, 153 Malvestiti, Piero, 89, 93 Maritain, Jacques, 76, 90, 135 Marshall Plan, 81, 157, 158, 202; Geneva Circle, 181, 188 Martino, Gaetano, 17 Maryja, Radio, 117 Masala, Carlo, 88–17, 170, 173–9, 176 Mauer, Otto, 124 Max, Prince of Baden, 15 May Revolution (1945), 155 Mayeur, Jean-Marie, 82, 184 Maynard Keynes, John, 92 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 110, 115, 116 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 10, 12 MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum), 144, 145, 146 Meck, Henri, 81 Méhaignerie, Pierre, 84 Meier, Josef, 35 Merkel, Angela, 27 Messineo, Antonio, 91 Messner, Johannes, 126 MFP (Hungarian Independence Party), 163 Micewski, Andrzej, 110 Michelet, Edmond, 82 Michnik, Adam, 115 MIÉP (Hungarian Justice and Life Party), 146, 147 Mihelics, Vid, 136, 144 Mikołajczyk, Stanisław, 103, 105 Mill, John Stuart, 11 Millennium of the Baptism, 112 Miller, Leszek, 117 Milward, Alan S, 3, 53 Mindszenty, Cardinal József, 112, 138, 140, 144 Ministry for Home Affairs (Poland), 112 Mirage Affair (1964), 36 Missong, Alfred, 125, 126 Mitterand, François, 76, 84, 178

Index

232

Mock, Alois, 129 Moisan, Edouard, 78 Monnet, Jean, 17, 80, 81, 185, 189 Monory, René, 83 Moravia, 154, 162, 172, 176 Morino, Lina, 183 Moro, Aldo, 89, 93, 94, 96, 97 Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, 182 Moulin, Jean, 74 Mounier, Emmanuel, 90, 110, 135 Mouvement Populaire Wallon (Walloon Popular Movement), 63 Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) see MRP (French Mouvement Républicain Populaire) MRP (French Mouvement Républicain Populaire), 74–86; break-up, 178; ‘Catholic progressivism’, 176; decline, 173; domestic policies, 195; economic plan, 80; educational reform, 79; election results, 2, 4, 74–6, 76–9, 186; establishment, 74; Europe, concept of, 80–7; Geneva Circle, participation in, 182, 184; and German State, re-creation of, 17–2; as ‘inter-class’ party, 172; manifesto, 74, 79–3, 176; Modernization Plan, 79, 81; nationalization policy, 80; NEI, 186, 196; and ÖVP, 4, 121, 125; PSC, conflict with, 198; social democracy, 125; social foundations, 74–9; social legislation, 78; society, conception of, 77–80; transnational co-operation, 194, 196–5, 198; and Vatican Council, 173; voters’ background, 74–7, see also France MSZP (Hungarian Freedom Party), 139–163, 144 Müller, Josef, 199 Müller-Armack, Alfred, 125 multi-level governance, 3 Munich Agreement (1938), 152, 158 Nagy, Lajos, 143 Nagy, Töhötöm, 137 Naimski, Piotr, 115

Index

233

nation-state, ideal of, 8, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18 National Assembly, France, 80 National Christian Union (ZChN), Poland, 117 National Committee of Hungary, 137 National Council (Poland), 104 National Front: Czechoslovakia, 151–5, 153, 154, 160, 162, 175; Switzerland, 33 National Independence Front (MNFF), Hungary, 136 National Labour Council (Belgium), 67 National Peasants’ Party (Hungary), 140 National Socialism: and Austria, 123–3, 126; and Czechoslovakia, 151–4, 155, 159, 160; French sympathy for, 157; German responsibility for, 182; ideological message, 200 National Vocational Organization of Hungarian Workers, 135 Nationale Aktion gegen Überfremdung von Volk und Heimat (Switzerland), 36 Nationale Arbeidsraad (Belgium), 67 nationalism, 8–19; attitudes, variety of, 9; and Catholicism, 12; cultural, 12–12; and internationalism, 17, 24; nation-state, ideal of, 8, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18; and patriotism, 12, 17; self-determination principle, 14, 17, 18; sub-state, 13 Nationality (Lord John Acton), 10 Nationalrat (Swiss First Chamber), 33, 40 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization): and French European policy, 82; Germany, inclusion in, 187; High Command, 187; Italian participation, 88, 95; Netherlands founding member of, 51, 63; Western European Union (WEU), link to, 188–17 NEI Contact Committee in Geneva see Geneva Circle NEI (Nouvelles Equipes Internationales): Bichet as secretary general, 84; British Conservative membership, 68; Congress (1947), inaugural, 163; Congress (1948), Hague, 199, 201, 202; Congress (1955), Salzburg, 202, 203; Congress (1958), Scheveningen, 51; Congress (1962), Vienna, 197; Contact Committee in Geneva, 181;

Index

234

as ‘debating club for idealists’, 203–4; European Movement, active in, 202; European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD), transformation into (1965), 194; founding (1947), 181, 194, 195–4; ‘Manifest of Bruges’, 203; ÖVP, integration with, 127, 128; party co-operation, institutionalization within framework, 183; Political Circle of see Geneva Circle; reform issues, 197, 198; structure, 196 Nejedlý, Zdenek, 155 Németh, Lajos Hajdu, 139, 143 neo-liberalism, 125, see also liberalism Netherlands, 47–57; Amsterdam City Council, 50; and Atlantic integration, 17; Catholic Workers’ Movement, 51; Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), 1, 4, 49, 55; Christian Historic Union (CHU), 175; Communist Party, 50; corporatism, 174; domestic politics, primacy of, 51–1; Europe, importance to, 63; as nation, 14; NATO, founding member of, 51, 63; neo-corporatism, 3; pillarization/de-pillarization, 47, 52, 64–5, 69; political landscape, 47–6; political orthodoxy, decline, 48–7; Publiekrechtelijke Bedrijfsorganisatie (PBO), 51, 52; Roman Catholic State Party, 47; Roman-red collaboration, 49–9; Sociaal-Economische Raad (SER), 51; Welfare State, and restructuring of society, 51–51 Nieuw Europa (journal), 55 NKVD (Soviet political police), 103, 109 North German Confederation (1867–71), 81 Norway, European membership, vote against (1972), 18 Nosek, Václav, 160 Nouvelles Equipes Françaises , 196 Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI) see NEI (Nouvelles Equipes Internationales) ‘Oases’ (Polish youth camps), 115 Obzory (Czech newspaper), 157, 159 OEEC (Organization for European Economic Co-operation), 38, 95 OF (People’s Forum), Czech, 160–6 Office of Religion (Poland), 112

Index

235

ÖGB (Austrian Trade Union Congress), 177 OKP (Citizens’ Clubs of Parliament), Poland, 116, 117 Olszewski, 117 Open Door policy, 15 Operazione Sturzo (1952), 92 Orbán, Viktor, 147 Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), 38, 95 Orlando, Leo Luca, 98 Orszulik, Alojzy, 116 Österreichische Monatshefte (journal), 126 Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) see ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party), 121–54; Alpbach national party congress, 130; and British Labour Party, 121, 173; Bünde, 121; and Catholic Church, 124–4; and CDU/CSU, 122; characteristics, Christian democracy, 170; Christian Social Party, successor to, 123; Christian union tradition, 177; common good principle, 125–5; Concordate question, 175–2; democratization, and political catholicism, 123–3; domestic policies, 195; economic and social policy, 125–5; election results 129–51; FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party), coalition with, 1; Geneva Circle, participation in, 182; and Hungarian Smallholders’ party, 173; as Labour Party, 121–40; and Marxism, 121; membership, 171; and MRP, 4, 121, 125; national consciousness, 121, 125–7; National Council elections (1949), 122; power, loss of (1970), 4; ‘programmatic guidelines’ (Leitsätze), 121, 125; and reform, 130–1; self-image, 178; solidarism/solidarity, 122, 125, 174; South Tyrol question, 188; and sovereignty, 5; transnational co-operation, 198; and Vatican, 195, see also Austria Pacem in Terris (priests’ association), Czechsoslovakia, 161 Paisley, Ian, 18

Index

236

Pálffy, József, 136–8, 140 Palme, Olaf, 129 Pan European Movement, 187 papal infallibility doctrine, 8 Papée, Kazimierz, 115 Paris Peace Conference (1946), 157 Paris Treaties, 187 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 13 Parochial Departments of Workers see EMSZO (Parochial Departments of Workers), Hungary Parti Catholique Social (Belgium), 60 Parti Démocrate Populaire (PDP), 74 Parti Social Chrétien (PSC) see PSC (Belgian Christian Social Party) Partido Nacional Vasco (PNV), 14 Partido Popolar (Spanish), 5, 198–7 Partij voor Vrijheid en Vooruitgang (PVV/PRL), 62 Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), 88, 97 Partito Democratico di Sinistra (PDS), 97 Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI), 16, 88, 90, 98 Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI), 88 ‘patriotic priests’ movement (Poland), 106, 108 patriotism, 12, 18 Paul VI (Pope), 78 Pawlina, Léon, 106 Pax Association (1945–56), 109–8, 114, 171, 176 PBO (Publiekrechtelijke Bedrijfsorganisatie), 51, 52 PC (Centre Party), Poland, 117 PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano), 88, 97 PDP (Parti Démocrate Populaire), 74 PDS (Partito Democratico di Sinistra), 97 Peasant Party (Czechoslovakia), 151 Peasants’ Party (PSL), Poland, 117–6 Pécsi, József, 139–1, 143 Pelinka, Anton, 6, 126, 169–180 Pella, Giuseppe, 89, 93–8, 187 People’s Forum (OF), Czech, 160–6 People’s Party (Austria), 121–54 People’s Party (Austria) see ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) Perr, Viktor, 139 Pertner, Hans, 126 Pethe, Ferenc, 139 Pethő, Sándor, 136 Petitpierre, Max, 38, 40 Petr, Antonín, 160 Pfeiffer, Zoltán, 163, 144 Pflimlin, Pierre, 79, 80, 188 Philip, André, 4 Piasecki, Bolesław, 109, 110 Picard, Max, 159

Index

237

Piccioni, Attilio, 89, 195 Pietroszek, Leopold, 106 pillarization/de-pillarization (Netherlands), 47, 52, 64–5, 69 Piłsudski, Józef, 109 Pinay, Antoine, 76, 188 PIS—Right and Justice (Poland), 117 Pitterman, Bruno, 125 Pius X (Pope), 75 Pius XII (Pope), 89, 90, 104, 123, 177 Pleven Plan (France), 185 Pleven, René, 83 Plojhar, Josef, 161, 176 pluralism, ideological/sociological, 60 PNV (Partido Nacional Vasco), 14 Poher, Alain, 83 Poinso-Chapuis, Germaine, 78; decree (1948), 79 Poland, 103–38; Caritas organization, 103, 107, 109, 110, 112; Catholic Church (1944–47), 103–21; Catholic Church (1947–50), 105–3; Catholic Church (1950–56), 107–5; Catholic Church (1956–66), 111–32; Catholic Church (1960s onwards), 114–4; Catholic Church (1989 onwards), 116–6; Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), 103–19; Catholic Youth Association, 103; Centre Party (PC), 117; ‘Christian Culture Weeks’, 115; Citizens’ Platform, 117; Clubs for Catholic Intelligence (KIK), 113, 114; Communist Party, 103, 104, 106–3, 108, 112; concentration camps, 103; Democratic Union, 117; Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS), 117; Freedom Union, 117; and Germany, 103, 113, 114; Great Novena programme, 112; Joint Commission of bishops, 112; Labour Party, 104, 109; League of Polish Families (LPR), 117; Ministry for Home Affairs, 112; National Christian Union (ZChN), 117; National Council, 104; nationalism in, 12, 13; ‘Oases’ (youth camps), 115; Office of Religion, 112; ‘patriotic priests’ movement, 106, 108;

Index

238

Pax Association (1945–56), 108–8, 113; Peasants’ Party (PSL), 117–6; PIS—Right and Justice, 117; political crisis (1956), 111–9; progressives, 106; Provisional Government of National Unity (Lublin), 103; public life, Catholic (1956–65), 113–2; PZPR party, 107–4, 112–30, 116; reactionaries, 106; Second Republic, 103; Socialist Union of the Democratic Left (SLD), 117; Solidarity movement, 115, 116–5; Soviet occupation (1939–41), 103; Union of Young Poles (ZMP), 105; and Vatican, 103, 107, 110, 114, see also Tygodnik Powszechny (Polish newspaper); Tygodnik Warszawski (Polish newspaper) Żegota organization, 109; ZNAK organization, 113, 114, 175 Polgári Demokrata Párt (Bourgeois Democratic Party), Hungary, 139 polis, Greek, 10 Polish Popular Party (PSL), 103, 105 Polish Youth Vows (Jasna Góra), 111 Political Circle of NEI see Geneva Circle Polo per la Libertá, 97 Pompidou, Georges, 83 Popiel, Karol, 104 Populorum progressio (encyclical), 79 PPI (Partito Popolare Italiano), 16, 88, 90, 98 Prigent, Robert, 78 Primavera (political wing), 94 Prohászka, Ottokár, 135 Protestant movements, 8–9 Provisional Government of National Unity (Lublin), 103 Przetakiewicz, Zygmunt, 110 PSC (Belgian Christian Social Party): domestic policies, 195; and France, 84; middle-class character, 65, 69; MRP, conflict with, 198; NEI, joining, 196; on regionalism, 63, see also CVP/PSC (Belgian Christian People’s Party/Christian Social Party) PSI (Partito Socialista Italiano), 88 PSL (Peasants’ Party), Poland, 117–6 PSL (Polish Popular Party), 103, 105 Public against Violence (VPN), 161 Publiekrechtelijke Bedrijfsorganisatie (PBO), 51, 57 Pulzer, Peter, 8–20

Index

239

PvdA (Labour Party), Netherlands, 47, 48, 49–8 PVV/PRL (Partij voor Vrijheid en Vooruitgang), 62 PZPR (Polish party), 107–4, 112–30, 116 Quadragesimo anno (encyclical), 51, 135 Quaroni, Pietro, 96 Raab, Julius, 121, 123, 126, 128 racialism, völkisch, 12 Radical Party (France), 74, 83 Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), 76 Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), 83 Rassemblement Wallon (RW), 63 Red Army, 103 Reichspartei, Austrian Christian Social Party, 12 Reiff, Ryszard, 110 Renan, Ernest, 14 Renard, André (trade unionist), 63 Renner, Karl, 124 Rerum novarum (encyclical), 13, 51 Rexism, 61 Reynaud, Paul, 76 RMP (Ruch Młodej Polski), 115, 117 Rocard, Michel, 84 Rohracher, Andreas, 124 Rokkan, Stein, 170 Rome Treaties (1957), signature, 17, 203 Romme, Carl, 50–8, 53–4 Rónay, György, 135 Ronca, Roberto, 91 ROPCIO (Ruch Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela Konfederacja Polski Niepodległej), 115 Röpke, Wilhelm, 125 Rosenberg, Martin, 34, 36, 38, 183, 196 Rostworowski, Abbot Tomasz, 106 RPF (Rassemblement du Peuple Français), 76 RPR (Rassemblement pour la République), 83 Ruch Młodej Polski (RMP), 115, 117 Ruch Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela Konfederacja Polski Niepodległej (ROPCIO), 115 Rumor, Mariano, 197 Rumpfeuropa (truncated Europe), 39 Rüstow, Alexander, 125 RW (Rassemblement Wallon), 63 Šrámek, Jan, 151, 162; arrest of, 160; and foreign relations, 156; and intra-party crisis, 154; leadership of, 151, 162, 176;

Index

240

left-wing approach of, 173; and Third Republic, People’s Party in, 152, 153 St Niklausen meeting (1947), 181 Salij, Abbot Jacek, 115 Sangnier, Marc, and nationalism, 14, 16 Scelba, Mario, 89, 96 Schaffner, Hans, 40 Schärf, Adolf, 124 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 27 Schengen agreement, 3, 204 Schmelzer, Norbert, 55 Schmitz, Wolfgang, 125 Schneiter, Pierre, 78 School Pact, Belgium (1958), 62, 176 Schreiber, Jean-Jacques Servan, 83 Schröder, Gerhard, 21, 23, 26, 27 Schumacher, Kurt, 200–9 Schuman, Robert, 3, 9, 53; cabinet of, 78; on economic issues, 80; and ECSC, 81, 95; and Geneva Circle, 183–11, 185; Schuman Plan, 82, 185, 188, 202 Schumann, Maurice, 76, 81, 82 Schuschnigg, Kurt, 122 Schüssel, Wolfgang, 2, 130 Schwarzenbach, James, 36–2 SDAP (Social Democratic Workers’ Party), Netherlands, 47, 50–9 Second World War, 2, 5; and Belgium, 59; Catholic/Protestant relations, 194; and Czechoslovakia, 162, 163; and Italy, 94; and Poland, 103; and Switzerland, 33 Secrétariat des Partis Démocratiques d’Inspiration Chrétienne, 16 Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), 74, 83 Ségelle, Pierre, 78 Segni, Antonio, 89 Segni, Mario, 98 Segnis, Antonio, 93 Seipel, Ignaz, 128 Seitlinger, Jean, 196 self-determination principle, 14, 17, 18 separatism, 14, 60 SER (Sociaal-Economische Raad), 51 Serrarens, P.J.S., 183, 200 SFIO (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière), 74, 83

Index

241

Siła-Nowicki, Władysław, 117 Simonnet, Maurice-René, 83 Skalnik, Kurt, 122 Skoumal, Aloys, 159 SKVP (Conservative People’s Party), Switzerland, 33–46: Switzerland Action Programme (1971), 41; Catholic Church, relationship with, 34–1, 173–174; Central Committee, 33, 35; as Conservative Christian Social People’s Party, 34; decentralization policy, 37; economic and societal programme, 37–4; Escher, Joseph, President of, 38, 194; ethnic issues, 178; European policy, 37–7; on family, role of, 37; Free Democratic Party (FDP), opposition to, 175; Geneva Circle, participation in, 182; Lucerne meeting (1947), 37, 194–3; Luxembourg congress (1948), 38; membership details, 170–6; party leadership, 34; Protestant dominance, protest against, 172, 173; Rosenberg as secretary-general, 33, 36, 37, 38; and Second World War, 33; social basis, 33–34; societal change, 35–2; Study Committee (foreign policy), 38; subsidiarity principle, 37.37; transnational co-operation, 194, 198; and twenty-first century, 40–42; and Vatican, 195; and women, position of, 33, 37, see also CVP (Christlich-demokratische Volkspartei); KCVP (Konservativ-christlichsoziale Volkspartie), Slachta, Margit, 137, 138, 139 SLD (Socialist Union of the Democratic Left), Poland, 117 Slovakian Democratic Party, 160 Slovene People’s Party, 13–14 Słowo Powszechne (Polish journal), 109 Sociaal-Economische Raad (SER), 51 Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP), Netherlands, 47, 50–9 ‘social democratization’, 6 Social Democrats: Switzerland, 33, 37, see also SKVP (Conservative People’s Party), Switzerland Social Democrats, Germany see SPD (German Social Democrats) ‘social market economy’, 3 Socialist International, 129

Index

242

Socialist Union of the Democratic Left (SLD), Poland, 117 Socialist Workers’ Movement (Belgium), 62, 67 Sodalis Marianum, 104 solidarism (Austrian People’s Party’s support for), 122, 125 Solidarity movement (Poland), 115, 116–5 Soviet Union (former): Austrian relations, 187; and Czechoslovakia, 156–1, 158; foreign policy image, 189; and Geneva Circle, 184–12, 185; Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, 181; Poland, occupation of (1939–41), 103 Soyeur, Jules, 69 Spaak Committee (1955), 203 Spaak, Paul-Henri, 17 Spain: Basque nationalism, 13; Partido Popolar, 4, 198–7 SPD (German Social Democrats): CDU, alignment with, 23; coalition with Liberals, 21; electoral defeats, 27 Spiecker, Carl, 200 SPÖ (Austrian Social Democrats): and Catholicism, 123, 124, 125; ÖVP contrasted, 125; Success/failure, 129, 130 Spychalski, Marian, 113 stakeholders, citizens as, 1 Stalin, Joseph, 111, 157, 189; ‘Stalin note’ (1952), 185 standen (social class organizations), 60 Ständerat (Swiss Second Chamber), 33 Ständestaat (Austria), 2, 121 Stokman, Sigfried, 47 Strauss, Franz Josef, 26, 202 Sturzo, Luigi, 15, 16, 176 subsidiarity concept, 3; Austria, 125; Belgium, 59, 66; Netherlands (welfare state), 51; Switzerland (social policy), 37 Suez crisis (1956), 24 Sulyok, Dezső, 138–9, 140, 163 Surján, László, 145 SVP (Swiss People’s Party), 33, 34, 42 Sweden, social security system, 51 Swiss People’s Party (SVP), 33, 34, 42

Index

243

Switzerland, 33–172; Association of Medium-Sized Business, 33, 34; Catholic Farmers’ Organization, 33, 34; Civil War (1847–48), 33; coalition (1959), 33–9; Council of Europe, entry into, 39, 40; ‘Democratic Germany’ association, 181; EFTA, member of, 198; federal structure, 39; free trade treaty, EC (1972), 40; Geneva meetings, 181–9; National Front, 33; neutrality of, 39; parties, role in political system, 33, see also CVP (Christlich-demokratische Volkspartei); Geneva Circle; Liberal Party (Switzerland); SKVP (Conservative People’s Party), Switzerland; SVP (Swiss People’s Party) SZDSZ (Alliance of Free Democrats), Hungary, 144, 145 Széchényi, Count György, 135 Szekfº, Gyula, 136 Szelazek, Bishop Adolf, 103 Taviani, Paolo Emilio, 194 Teitgen, Pierre-Henri, 75, 76, 77, 80, 82, 84; and Geneva Circle, 185, 187 Temps Présent, 82 Tenchio, Ettore, 40 Terrenoire, Louis, 82 The Hitler In Us (Max Picard), 159 Thesen zur Wirtschafts-und Sozialpolitik, 37 Third Reich, 103 ‘Third Way’ model, 1, 3 Tigrid, Pavel, 154, 157, 159 Tindemans, Leo, 197 Tirpitz, Alfred von, 12 Tiso, Josef, 156 Tobler, János, 140 Tone, Wolfe, 13 totalitarianism, 6, 11, 160, 243 transnational party co-operation, 194–36; European Christian Democrats’ programme, 198; European integration, 194, 201–3, 204; Lucerne meeting (1947), 37, 194–3; organizational structure, 194–7; reforms, 194–7 Treaty of Accession to European Union, Hungarian signature, 147

Index

244

Treaty on European Union, 204 Tygodnik Powszechny (Polish newspaper), 104, 109–6, 114, 176 Tygodnik Warszawski (Polish newspaper), 104, 105, 109, 117 tyrannicide, 12 UDC (Union du Centre), 83 UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Française), 83 UDR (Unione dei Democratici per la Repubblica), 97 Ugrin, József, 136, 145 Ulram, Peter, 130 UNEDIC (Union Nationale pour l’Emploi dans l’Industrie et le Commerce), 78 Union du Centre (UDC), 83 Union Nationale pour l’Emploi dans l’Industrie et le Commerce (UNEDIC), 78 Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF), 83 Union pour la Nouvelle Majorité (UNM), 83 Union of Young Poles (ZMP), 105 Unione dei Democratici per la Repubblica (UDR), 97 Unita (Italian Communist newspaper), 194 United Kingdom (UK) see Britain United Nations (UN): Charter of, 140; foundation, 137; as organ for peace, 68 United States of America, Germany, relationship with, 25 Unity Law (1961), Belgium, 63, 65 Universitá Cattolica (Milan), 89 UNM (Union pour la Nouvelle Majorité), 83 Uri, Pierre, 189 UURO (unified trade union), 160 USSR see Soviet Union (former) Valay, Gabriel, 80 Van Zeeland, Paul, 52 Varga, Béla, 138, 139 Varga, László, 137, 145 Vaterland (Swiss newspaper), 34, 39, 42 Vatican: anti-communism, 2; and Italy, 89, 90, 91; and ÖVP, 123, 195; and Poland, 103, 107, 110, 114; Sangnier, relations with, 16 Vatican Council: Gladstone on, 11; papal infallibility doctrine, 8; and patriotism, 12; Second, 75, 92, 112, 114, 173 Vatican State, occupation (1870), 18

Index

245

Veil, Simone, 84 Verbond van Belgische Ondernemingen (Employers’ federation, Belgium), 67 Veress, Anna, 139 Veritas (Polish business), 109 Vespa group (Italy), 93 Viatte, Charles, 78 Vichy regime, France, 174 Vichy Work Charter, 74 Vlaams Bloc (Belgium), 2, 69, 70 Vlaams Nationaal Verbond, 60 Volksunie (Flemish Nationalist Party), 63 Volksverein, 35 Vollmachtenregime, 33 von Brentano, Heinrich, 24 von Hassel, Kai-Uwe, 22 von Vogelsang, Karl, 9 Vows of Jasna Góra (1956), 111, 112 Vows of Jean Casimir (1656), 111 Vows of the Nation (Poland), 111, 112 VPN (Public against Violence), 161 Vývoj (Czech newspaper), 157, 159 Vyšehrad (Czech journal), 159 Lech, 116 Walker, Maurice, 77 Wallonia, strikes in, 63 Walloon movement/Walloon Popular Movement, 63 Warsaw Pact, 188 Wassermann, Heinz, 127 Weimar Republic, 178, 200 Weinburger, Lois, 126 Weltanschauung, 171–7, 195 Wesselényi Reform Club (Hungary), 135 West Germany: Germany, inclusion in Western world, 182; Italian aim for equality with, 96; moral rehabilitation, 200; NATO, inclusion in, 187; re-armament, 63, 185; unification of economic sector, 185, see also FRG (Federal Republic of Germany); Westenterp, Tjerk, 198 Western European Union (WEU), 187, 188–17 Wick, Karl, 38, 200 Wigny, Pierre, 59 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow, 14 Winter, Ernst Karl, 125, 126 Wirth, Joseph, 181, 195

Index

246

Wirtschaftsbund (Austrian intra-party association), 128 Wohnout, Helmut, 128 Wojtyła, Primate Archbishop, 112, 113, 115 World Bank, Italian membership, 92 Wyszyński, Primate Archbishop, 117; arrest of, 108; ‘backward’, considered, 112; bishops, appointment of, 107; and Communists, 107; death, 115; Vatican, communication with, 114; and Vows of Nation festivities, 112 youth organizations: Association of Young Communists (ZMP), Poland, 107; Azione Cattolica (AC), Italy), 90; Catholic Youth Association (Poland), 103; Independent Youth Organization (FISZ), Hungary, 139; ‘Oases’ camps (Poland), 115; Protestant Christian youth organization (KIE), (Hungary), 139; Union of Young Poles (ZMP), 105; Youth Movement Volontaires de la Paix (France), 16 Zabłocki, Janusz, 110, 117 Zagadnienia istotne (Boleslaw Piasecki), 110 Zápotocký, Antonín, 160 Żaryn, Jan, 103–38, 171, 176 Zawieyski, Jerzy, 114 ZChN (National Christian Union), Poland, 117 Żegota organization (Poland), 109 Zentrum (German Centre Party), 12, 225 Zieja, Father Jan, 115 Zijlstra, Jelle, 52 ZMP (Association of Young Communists), 107 ZMP (Union of Young Poles), 105 ZNAK organization (Poland), 113, 114, 175 Zoltán Kovács, K., 145 Zomborszky, János, 143 Zukunftswerkstatt, 131 Zygmunt Kaczynski, 105

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Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

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Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

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Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Europe Since 1945 (The Short Oxford History of Europe)

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Memorialization in Germany since 1945

Religion in America Since 1945

Army Uniforms Since 1945

Britain since 1945

U.S.Submarines since 1945

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Migration and Activism in Europe since 1945 (Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series)

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Germany Since 1945 (Studies in Contemporary History)

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Combat Aircraft Prototypes Since 1945

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The International Economy since 1945

Christian Democracy in Europe since 1945

Europe Since 1945

Economic Growth in Europe since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

A Companion to Europe Since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Europe Since 1945 (The Short Oxford History of Europe)

Memorialization in Germany since 1945

The Development of Economics in Western Europe Since 1945

Memorialization in Germany since 1945

Religion in America Since 1945

Army Uniforms Since 1945

Britain since 1945

U.S.Submarines since 1945

Britain since 1945

France since 1945

Local Direct Democracy in Europe

Migration and Activism in Europe since 1945 (Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series)

Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe Since 1945

Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945 (Alterimage)

Germany Since 1945 (Studies in Contemporary History)

Combat Aircraft Prototypes Since 1945

Urban Planning Theory since 1945

Combat Aircraft Prototypes Since 1945

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