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Documents - Political Parties in the West
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1.   German Social Democratic Party (SPD): Call to Rebuild the Party Organization (June 15, 1945)
On June 15, 1945, a few days after the KPD issued its founding manifesto, the Central Committee....
2.   Political Principles of the Social Democratic Party (May 1946)
Issued a few weeks after the merger of the SPD and the KPD in the Soviet occupation zone,....
3.   Godesberg Program of the SPD (November 1959)
After the SPD suffered election defeats by Konrad Adenauer’s CDU in 1953 and 1957, there was a growing awareness within the SPD that attracting new strata of voters would have to involve a fundamental....
4.   Appeal to the German People by the Christian Democratic Union (June 26, 1945)
On June 26, 1945, former members of the Catholic Center Party, along with politicians who had been close to the bourgeois resistance during the Third Reich, founded the Christian Democratic Union....
5.   The Ahlen Program of the CDU (February 1947)
Issued in February 1947, the Ahlen Program of the CDU in the British occupation zone was openly critical of the capitalist economic system. With its support for economic planning and guidance, the....
6.   The CDU and the "Social Market Economy": Düsseldorf Guidelines for Economic Policy, Agricultural Policy, Social Policy, and Housing (July 15, 1949)
By 1949, the idea of Christian Socialism had clearly lost influence within the CDU. In its stead, Konrad Adenauer, the chairman of the CDU in the British zone, advocated the “social market economy,”....
7.   Programmatic Guidelines for the Free Democratic Party (February 4, 1946)
The revival of political liberalism, which had largely collapsed during the final phase of the Weimar Republic, made itself felt in Germany after 1945, rounding out a party spectrum that also included....
8.   Petition Submitted by the Federal Government to the Federal Constitutional Court Requesting a Ban on the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) (November 22, 1951)
It was clear that the drafters of the Basic Law had learned the lessons of Weimar: for example,....
9.   Federal Constitutional Court Verdict Banning the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Concluding Justification (August 17, 1956)
On August 17, 1956, the Federal Constitutional Court issued a verdict banning the Communist Party of Germany. The verdict spelled an end to the proceedings against the KPD, which had begun five years....
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