The Democratization of Local Politics in the British Zone of Germany

In 1945, during the weeks following the arrival of Allied troops in Germany, the average German citizen appeared to British observers as 'dazed and stunned' and quite indifferent to important international events around him such as the Potsdam Conference, which, after all, was to determine the future of his country.' There was enormous relief, particularly in the big cities such as Hanover, that the fighting was over and the senseless destruction had come to an end, and while in some quarters Allied occupation was welcomed as a liberation, in others it was resented. The vast majority of the population passively accepted their fate as inevitable. For everyone, however, the 'Stunde Null', zero hour, had arrived, in the sense that with the end of National Socialism something else would have to be put in its place. Those who felt liberated by the Allies were on the whole those who had not only benefited least from the Third Reich but had opposed it and had often suffered appallingly for their stand. These anti-fascists (all shades of the left, some liberals and Christians, surviving Jews) firmly expected some kind of reckoning not only with the nazis themselves, but also with those elements in society who were perceived as having made the nazi rise to power possible. But it was not only among anti-fascists that political, economic and social changes were expected. The theme of a change in society to bring about fairer conditions, a different perception of the social role and responsibility of capital etc. ran through the public pronouncements of churchmen, politicians and journalists of the time. How seriously these ideas were taken by, for example, indus

Democracy · Democratization · Economic history · German · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Power (physics · Sociology · Demography · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

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