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German Democracy at Work, edited by James K. Pollock
- Abstract
The authors of this study traveled to West Germany in the summer of 1953 “to observe the German political scene in the period of its greatest activity,” on the eve of the Federal elections in September of that year. Their purpose was to investigate how the electoral system was operating, and more generally how the West Germans were taking to their brand-new Federal institutions. From internal evidence it appears that they were also concerned to gauge the true strength of Dr. Adenauer’s party in relation to the Social Democrats, and to assess the significance of neutralist and “anti-American” sentiment. By contrast, they do not seem to have regarded the strength of nationalist and neo-Nazi tendencies as worth investigating. Remarks on this topic are brief and cursory, and there is no discussion of the extent to which the Federal bureaucracy has been staffed with former National Socialists.
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