Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman. As the first post-war Chancellor of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963, he led his country from the ruins of World War II to a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with old enemies France and the United States. During his years in power Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity ("Wirtschaftswunder", German for "economic miracle"). He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a Christian Democratic party that under his leadership became, and has since remained, the most powerful party in the country.

Adenauer, dubbed "Der Alte" ("the old one"), belied his age as the oldest elected leader in world history by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of market-based liberal democracy and anti-communism. A shrewd politician, Adenauer was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. He worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction of World War II to a central position in Europe, founded the Bundeswehr in 1955, and to come to terms with France, which made possible the economic unification of Western Europe. Adenauer opposed rival East Germany and made his nation a member of NATO and a firm ally of the United States.

A devout Roman Catholic, he was a leading Centre Party politician in the Weimar Republic and had served as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council (1922–1933).

The 1968–1969 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.

Early life and education
Konrad Adenauer was born as the third of five children of Johann Konrad Adenauer (1833–1906) and his wife Helene (née Scharfenberg; 1849–1919) in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, on 5 January 1876. His siblings were August (1872–1952), Johannes (1873–1937), Lilli (1879–1950) and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth in c. 1880. One of the formative influences of Adenauer's youth was the Kulturkampf, an experience that as related to him by his parents left him with a lifelong dislike for "Prussianism", and led him like many other Catholic Rhinelanders of the 19th century to deeply resent the Rhineland's inclusion in Prussia. At the Gymnasium that Adenauer attended, one of Adenauer's close friends, Heinrich Lehmann recalled about their social circle that: "'At the Gymnasium I had a circle of friends who, for the most part came from staunch Catholic families which had-at the very least-a critical approach to Bismarck and the Prussianisation of Germany. After history lessons pupils would engage in debates in which the idealisation of Frederick the Great was criticized, with references to Onno Klopp and other historians, and Bismarck's cultural policy was vehemently condemned...I did not detect any real sympathy for Prussia among my Cologne-born fellow pupils from Catholic families and this, for the first time, made me aware of the differences among the German tribes. I can still vividly the day one of my schoolmates told me: 'We Rhinelanders are the true Germans. The Prussians are Obotrites, Wends, Slavs and the like who put together their state by theft and violence.''" Adenauer's biographer Hans-Peter Schwarz argued that given that Adenauer was a member of the social circle from "staunch Catholic families" described by Lehmann, and in view of the marked anti-Prussian views that he was later to display, that it is quite likely that he shared the anti-Prussian views held by the social circle described by Lehmann.

In 1894, he completed his Abitur and started to study law and politics at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Bonn. He was a member of several Roman Catholic students' associations under the K.St.V. Arminia Bonn in Bonn. He graduated in 1900 and afterwards worked as a lawyer at the court in Cologne. Adenauer had ill health as a young man, had been rejected for military service at age 20 because of his lungs. He was greatly interested in the use of medicinal herbs, according to famous French herbalist Maurice Messugue, whom he met and befriended. Adenauer credited his strong health in older age to the use of an infusion of barley water taken at night, but also maize stigma, mallow, sage, and yellow roses, which he used for coughs he was prone to. These were his favourite medicinal plants according to Messugue, though he had extensive knowledge of a wide range of plants. He agreed with MM that plants had to be free of sprays and not grown too artificially. He told Messugue that he owed his good health to "the plants, to nature."

Adenauer found relaxation and great enjoyment in the Italian game of bocce and spent a great deal of his post political career playing this game. His favorite holiday place to do this was in Cadenabbia, Italy, in a rented villa overlooking Lake Como, which has since been acquired as a conference centre by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the political foundation established by Adenauers political party Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Leader in Cologne
As a devout Catholic, he joined the Centre Party in 1906 and was elected to Cologne's city council in the same year. In 1909, he became Vice-Mayor of Cologne, an industrial metropolis with a population of 635,000 in 1914. Avoiding the extreme political movements that attracted so many of his generation, Adenauer was committed to bourgeois common-sense, diligence, order, Christian morals and values, and was dedicated to rooting out disorder, inefficiency, irrationality and political immorality. From 1917 to 1933, he served as Mayor of Cologne and became qua office a member of the Prussian House of Lords.

Adenauer headed Cologne during World War I, working closely with the army to maximize the city's role as a rear base of supply and transportation for the Western Front. He paid special attention to the civilian food supply, as the city financed large warehouses of food that enabled the residents to avoid the worst of the severe shortages that beset most German cities during 1918–1919. He set up giant kitchens in working-class districts to supply 200,000 rations per day. In the face of the collapse of the old regime and the threat of revolution and widespread disorder in late 1918, Adenauer maintained control in Cologne using his good working relationship with the Social Democrats. As a Catholic Rhinelander who deeply disliked Prussia, in a speech on 1 February 1919 Adenauer called for the dissolution of Prussia, and for the Prussian Rhineland to become a new Land (state) in the Reich. Adenauer made it clear that he expected the new Land to be an autonomous state with very wide-ranging powers, and argued that the Reich government would accept this under the grounds that this was the only way to prevent France from annexing the Rhineland (at the time the Paris peace conference was still in session, and many believed that the French would demand the annexation of the Rhineland as one of the peace terms). Both the Reich and Prussian governments were totally against Adenauer's plans for breaking up Prussia. When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were presented to Germany in June 1919, Adenauer again suggested to Berlin his plan for an autonomous Rhineland state, arguing that if Berlin agreed to this, then perhaps the Allies might modify the terms of the Versailles treay, and again his plans were rejected by the Reich government.

He was mayor during the postwar British occupation. He established a good working relationship with the British military authorities, using them to neutralize the workers' and soldiers' council that had become an alternative base of power for the city's left wing. During the Weimar Republic, he was president of the Prussian State Council (Preußischer Staatsrat) from 1921 to 1933, which was the representation of the provinces of Prussia in its legislation. Since the early 20th century, a major debate within the Zentrum concerned the question if the Zentrum should "leave the tower" (i.e. allow Protestants to join to become a multi-faith party) or "stay in the tower" (i.e. continue to be a Catholic only party). The debate had been started in 1906 when the Catholic journalist and Cologne politician Julius Bachem wrote a widely publicized article under the title "We Must Come Out Of The Tower!", which had sparked much debate within the Zentrum. Adenauer was one of the leading advocates of "leaving the tower", which led to a dramatic clash between him and Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber at the 1922 Katholikentag, where the Cardinal publicly admonished Adenauer for wanting to take the Zentrum "out of the tower".

Adenauer flirted with Rhenish separatism (a Rhenish state as part of Germany, but outside Prussia). Adenauer's relations with France and the Rhinish separatist movement in 1923 was to be the source of considerable controversy both at the time and later in his career with many accusing Adenauer of treason while Adenauer's defenders have argued that he was a loyal German who merely was coping with very difficult conditions caused by the hyper-inflation of 1923 that had destroyed the German economy. In October–November 1923, Adenauer was involved in talks with the French and the Reich government under what terms might an autonomous Rhineland state be created, arguing that this was the only way to save the economy. This was especially the case when in mid-October 1923, the Chancellor Gustav Stresemann announced that Berlin would cease all financial payments to the Rhineland and that the new Rentemark, which had replaced the now worthless Mark would not circulate in the Rhineland, a policy in effect would economicially sever the Rhineland from the rest of Germany by forcing the Rhinelanders to use the worthless mark while the rest of Germany was using the new Rentemark. On 24–25 October 1923, Adenauer met with Stresemann to discuss the ramifications of the new currency policy with Adenauer arguing that Stresemann had abandoned the Rhineland, and if this continued, then he would have no other choice, but to reach an accommodation with the French to save the Rhineland economy and Stresemann telling Adenauer that in effect that he could care less about the Rhineland, and that the Rhinelanders have to do whatever necessary to survive. From Stresemann's viewpoint, his first priority was to save the German economy, and the Rhineland would to be written off for the moment with the additional caveat that the Rhinelanders would have to engage in talks with the French that could be disallowed if Stresemann disapproved of their direction that they were going. Adenauer for his part remained loyal to Germany, but at the same time his first priority was in rescuing the Rhineland economy from the effects of the hyper-inflation by working out whatever arrangement with the French necessary to save the Rhineland economy.

Faced with this situation, Adenauer opened talks with the French in late October 1923 for a Rhinish republic, using Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte as his middle-men to arrange talks with  the French High Commissioner Paul Tirard. During his talks with Tirard, Adenauer showed himself to be one of the few German politicians who were sensitive to French concerns about sécurité ("security" i.e. the French fear if Versailles were to be undone, then that Germany's greater population and larger economy would allow Germany to destroy a France gravely weakened by the war), and argued for a "grand design" which would achieve Franco-German reconciliation. Adenauer maintained to Tirard that to sever the Rhineland from Germany as opposed to Prussia would end any possibility of Franco-German reconciliation and that the best way of achieving that reconciliation would was a Rhineland republic which would be in a sort of economic union with France. At the same time, Adenauer clung to the hope that the Rentemark might still circulate in the Rhineland. Adenauer protested furiously against the new currency policy at a Cabinet meeting in Berlin that he was allowed to attend on 13 November 1923, arguing to the Reich Finance Minister Hans Luther had abandoned the Rhineland, stating that: "the Rhineland must be worth more than one or two or even three new currencies. But if the Reich Finance Minister wants to save the new currency, his ulterior motive is to abandon the Rhineland in order to rid of reparations". The meeting ended with Stresemann telling Adenauer again that the Rentemark would not circulate in the Rhineland, and that the Rhinelanders were on their own for the time being, a policy that encouraged Adenauer to expand upon his talks with Tirard. Adenauer's plans came to nought when Stresemann, who was resolutely opposed to Adenauer's "grand design", which he viewed as borderline treason and who seems to have regretted his advice to Adenauer to work out an arrangement with the French when he learned how far he was prepared to go, was able to negotiate an end to the crisis on his own. The fear that Adenauer might be able to successfully negotiate his "grand design" with the French, which Stresemann believed would set in motion not only the dissolution of Prussia, but also the Reich played a major role in motivating Stresemann to reach his own settlement with the French. In 1926, the Zentrum suggested that Adenauer become Chancellor, an offer that he was interested in, but in the end he rejected when the German People's Party insisted that one of the conditions for entering into a coalition under Adenauer's leadership was Gustav Stresemann stay on as a Foreign Minister. Adenauer who disliked Stresemann as "too Prussian" rejected that condition, which marked the end of his chance of becoming Chancellor in 1926.

Years under Nazi regime
Election gains of Nazi party candidates in municipal, state and national elections in 1930 and 1932 were significant. Adenauer, as mayor of Cologne and president of the Prussian State Council, still believed that improvements in the national economy would make his strategy work: ignore the Nazis and concentrate on the Communist threat. He was "surprisingly slow in his reaction" to the Nazi electoral successes, and even when he was already the target of intense personal attacks, he thought that the Nazis should be part of the Prussian and Reich governments based on election returns. Political manoeuvrings around the aging President Hindenburg then brought the Nazis to power on 30 January 1933.

By early February Adenauer finally realized that all talk and all attempts at compromise with the Nazis were futile. Cologne's city council and the Prussian parliament had been dissolved; on 4 April 1933, he was officially dismissed as mayor and his bank accounts frozen. "He had no money, no home and no job." After arranging for the safety of his family, he appealed to the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Maria Laach for a stay of several months. His stay at this abbey, which lengthened to a full year, was cited by the abbot after the war when the monastery was accused by Heinrich Böll and others of collaboration with the Nazis. According to Albert Speer in his book Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his civic projects, the building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer concluded that Adenauer's political views and principles made it impossible for him to play any role in Nazi Germany.

Adenauer was imprisoned for two days after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934, but already on 10 August 1934, manoeuvring for his pension, he wrote a 10-page letter to Hermann Göring (the Prussian interior minister) stating among other things that as Mayor he had even violated Prussian laws in order to allow NSDAP events in public buildings and Nazi flags to be flown from city flagpoles, and added that in 1932 he had declared publicly that the Nazis should join the Reich government in a leading role. Indeed at the end of 1932, Adenauer had demanded a joint government by his Zentrum party and the Nazis for Prussia. And on 29 June 1933, i.e., several months after Hitler was made Chancellor and the Nazis were given full police power over Germany, and while the Nazis were still busy terrorizing and murdering Communists, Social Democrats, and Labor Union officials, Adenauer wrote in a letter: "In my opinion the only salvation is a monarch, a Hohenzollern[...], even Hitler in my opinion, a lifetime Reichpresident [...]".

During the next two years, Adenauer changed residences often for fear of reprisals against him, while living on the benevolence of friends. With the help of lawyers in August 1937 he was successful in claiming a pension; he received a cash settlement for his house, which had been taken over by the city of Cologne; his unpaid mortgage, penalties and taxes were waived. With reasonable financial security he managed to live in seclusion for some years. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944, he was imprisoned for a second time as an opponent of the regime. He fell ill and credited Eugen Zander, a former municipal worker in Cologne and communist, with saving his life. Zander, then a section Kapo of a labor camp near Bonn discovered Adenauer's name on a deportation list to the East and managed to get him admitted to a hospital. Adenauer was subsequently rearrested (and so was his wife), but in the absence of any evidence against him was released from prison at Brauweiler in November 1944.

Post World War II and the founding of the CDU
Shortly after the war ended the American occupation forces installed him again as Mayor of heavily bombed Cologne. After the transfer of the city into the British zone of occupation the Director of its Military Government, General Gerald Templer, dismissed Adenauer for incompetence in December 1945. As Mayor, Adenauer clashed with the British military government a number of times in the summer and fall of 1945, and a speech lamenting the devastation of Cologne by Allied bombing was seen as implicitly anti-British since it was British bombers that wreaked the devastation that Adenauer bemoaned. Adenauer always believed that the Labour government in Britain had favored their fellow socialists in the SPD in their zone of occupation in Germany, and that he was sacked by the British to improve the SPD's odds. In a 1962 television interview, Adenauer commented that his sacking was a blessing in disguise, and that he would never had become Chancellor if he not been sacked. Adenauer's sacking by the British military government gave him a reputation as a man who would stand up to the Allies, and contributed much to his subsequent political success and allowed him to pursue a policy of alliance with the West in the 1950s without facing charges of being a "sell-out". Adenauer never forgave the British for firing him, and in the 1950s-60s, many British officials believed that Adenauer's unfriendly attitude towards them was due to his resentment of the humiliation of being ordered out of the Lord Mayor's office by British officers.

After his dismissal as Mayor of Cologne, Adenauer devoted himself to building a new political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which he hoped would embrace both Protestants and Roman Catholics in a single party. In January 1946, Adenauer initiated a political meeting of the future CDU in the British zone in his role as doyen (the oldest man in attendance, Alterspräsident) and was informally confirmed as its leader. Adenauer had become a leader almost by default. During the Weimar Republic, Adenauer had often been considered a future Chancellor and after 1945, his claims for leadership were even stronger. Of the other surviving leaders of the Zentrum Wilhelm Marx was too old and in bad health; Heinrich Brüning's austerity policies during his time as Chancellor in 1930-32 had earned the name the "Hunger Chancellor" and had made him into one of Germany's most hated men; and Andreas Hermes lacked Adenauer's national reputation, and had began his post-war political career in the Soviet zone, which led many people to see him as a Soviet "collaborator". Since the core of the new CDU was formed by men who served in the Zentrum, it was considered essential to have a Catholic leader, which ruled out Protestant conservatives such as Robert Lehr and Hans Schlange-Schöningen who had belonged to the German National People's Party.

Reflecting his background as a Catholic Rhinelander who had long chaffed under Prussian rule, Adenauer believed that Prussianism was the root cause of National Socialism, and that only by driving out Prussianism could Germany become a democracy. In a December 1946 letter, Adenauer wrote that the Prussian state in the early 19th century had become an "almost God-like entity" that valued state power over the rights of individuals. Adenauer continued that after German unification was unfortunately achieved by Prussia in 1871, the Prussian-German state had become an inhuman "sovereign machine" that cared nothing for "Christian natural law" and freely tramped over the rights of individuals. Adenauer concluded that "National Socialism was nothing, but a logical further development of Prussian statism". In a September 1948 speech, Adenauer said "Prussia is identical to centralism, and centralization is identical to depersonalization." In December 1945, Adenauer told the British historian Noel Annan that the greatest mistake Britain had done with Germany was "It at the Congress of Vienna, when you foolishly put Prussia on the Rhine as a safeguard against France and another Napoleon".

Through he did not use the term Sonderweg, Adenauer like most of the other Zentrum veterans who formed the core of the CDU believed in a Sonderweg version of German history, where the Reformation had led to the Protestant areas of Germany to diverge from Western civilization (seen here as identical with Catholicism), and that in its turn Lutheranism led to the oppressive Prussian state with its materialist, state-worshipping ideology of Prussianism and the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf, and Prussianism in its turn culminated in National Socialism. Adenauer's dislike of Prussia led him to oppose Berlin as a future capital because as he wrote in 1946: "We in the West reject much of what generally is called the Prussian spirit. Our former war enemies have no reason to handle us particularly kindly. It is up to us to slowly destroy that mistrust. As soon as Berlin becomes the capital again, that distrust abroad will be inextinguishable. Whoever makes Berlin the new head creates spiritually a new Prussia".

Despite Adenauer's dislike of Protestantism, he was determined to build a new Zentrum that would be "out of the tower", and allow Protestants in to form a new political party that would represent all Christians in Germany, not just Catholics. Adenauer took the view that the decision to keep the Zentrum "in the tower" before 1933 had been a huge mistake, and to revive the Zentrum within "the tower" again would inevitably lead to German politics being dominated again by the Social Democrats, the Communists or the Nazis. Adenauer argued that only a party that united conservative Catholics and Protestants would stop these possible outcomes. The need for a cross-confessional right-of-the-center party was the more pressing in Adenauer's viewpoint because most of the conservative German Protestants had been National Socialists, and even those were not were still followers of the ideology of Prussianism. As such what was needed was a party led by Catholic politicians such as himself which would save conservative Protestants from themselves by weaning away from Prussianism. Furthermore, it was understood by Adenauer that only a party that won the vote of the millions who were National Socialists or the Mitläufer who went along with the regime would win a majority in post-war elections, and that to bring back Zentrum "within the tower" would leave right-wing Protestant voters open to the appeal of National Socialism or an ideology like it. Adenauer argued that it was better to integrate right-wing Protestant voters into a "responsible Christian party" in order to have a better future without much thought as whom these voters had supported in the past. Adenauer's determination to integrate the right-wing nationalists who supported the Nazis into the CDU and thus into an acceptance of democracy explains much of the apparent paradox between his dislike of National Socialism and his willingess to accept men who had been very active in supporting the National Socialist dicatorship.

Adenauer viewed the most important battle in the post-war world as between the forces of Christianity and Marxism, especially Communism, writing in August 1945 that Germany needed a Christian alliance to provide: "strong resistance against the state system and ideology from the East-Russia-and a thoughtful and cultural and with that also a foreign policy alliance with the Western Europe. Only a planned integration of all Christian and democratic forces can protect us from the dangers threatening from the East." In May 1946, Adenauer wrote that "great battle between Christianity and materialistic Marxism" meant all Christians needed to join forces to fight for the "freedom and dignity of the individual". The same anti-Marxist viewpoints led Adenauer to denounce the Social Democrats as the heirs to Prussianism and National Socialism. In a speech, Adenauer declared: "As a German, I can only with the greatest regret establish that the old Prussian spirit, that ruthless undemocratic aspiration to exclusive power, speaks through the official announcements of the SPD in a way in which it has, up until now, only obsessed Prussian Junkerdom".

Adenauer worked diligently at building up contacts and support in the CDU over the next years, and he sought with varying success to impose his particular ideology on the party. His was an ideology at odds with many in the CDU, who wished to unite socialism and Christianity; Adenauer preferred to stress the dignity of the individual, and he considered both communism and Nazism materialist world views that violated human dignity.

Adenauer's leading role in the CDU of the British zone won him a position at the Parliamentary Council of 1948, called into existence by the Western Allies to draft a constitution for the three western zones of Germany. He was the chairman of this constitutional convention and vaulted from this position to being chosen as the first head of government once the new "Basic Law" had been promulgated in May 1949.

First government
The first election to the Bundestag of West Germany was held on 15 August 1949, with the Christian Democrats emerging as the strongest party. During the 1949 election, Adenauer-who was something of an Anglophobe-charged that the British government was backing the Social Democrats because a socialist government would ruin Germany economically, and thus eliminate a potential British economic rival. There were two clashing visions of a future Germany held by Adenauer and his main rival, the Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher. Adenauer looked towards the West, and favored integrating the Federal Republic with other Western states, especially France and the United States in order to fight the Cold War, even if the price of this was the continued division of Germany. Schumacher by contrast, through an anti-Communist, was in favor of neutrality in the Cold War, and wanted to see a united, socialist and neutral Germany. As such, Adenauer was in favor of joining NATO, something that Schumacher was adamantly opposed to.

The Free Democrat Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Republic, and Adenauer was elected Chancellor (head of government) on 15 September 1949 with the support of his own CDU, the Christian Social Union and the liberal Free Democratic Party. At age 73, it was initially thought that he would only be a caretaker Chancellor. However, he would go on to hold this post for 14 years, a period spanning most of the preliminary phase of the Cold War. During this period, the post-war division of Germany was consolidated with the establishment of two separate German states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

As part of his politics of integration, where those who had supported the Nazis were to be integrated into the democratic system, Adenauer's first important speech as Chancellor occurred on 20 September 1949, where he denounced the entire denazification process pursued by the Allied military governments between 1945-49. Adenauer attacked the "much misfortune and mischief" that he argued had been caused by denazification. Adenauer stated that those "truly guilty" of crimes during the National Socialist era deserved to be punished, but he argued that denazification was morally and practically wrong as it sought to punish the millions of Germans who supported the Nazi regime, which Adenauer claimed was unjust and unworkable. Adenauer ended that it was time for the distinction between "two classes of human beings in Germany", those were "politically objectionable" because they had supported the Nazi regime and those were "politically unobjectionable" because they had opposed the Nazi regime needed to "vanish as fast as possible". Despite his claim that he believed in punishing those guilty of crimes, Adenauer announced in the same speech that he was to bring in an amnesty law for the Nazi war criminals and he planned to apply to "the High Commissioners for a corresponding amnesty for punishments imposed by the Allied military courts". Adenauer's speech caused some controversy outside of Germany because his sole reference to the Holocaust in his entire speech was to the "anti-Semitic endeavors manifest here and there."

One of Adenauer's central projects as Chancellor, through rarely described publicly was a redefinition of German conservatism in order to put an end to the Sonderweg by anchoring Germany firmly into the West. A central feature of the original, positive version of Sonderweg theory put forward by followers of Prussianism in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was the idea that the Prussian-German national state as a great Central European power neither of the West nor of the East. Instead Germany's "mission" was to offer in the form of reactionary modernism a superior "Third Position" between capitalist, liberal Western democracy and Russian autocracy/Soviet communism. Adenauer argued that there were two sorts of German conservatism; the brutal, militarist, statist, authoritarian Prussian conservatism, which Adenauer loathed and another sort which Adenauer associated with the cosmopolitan, cultured and peaceful middle classes of the Rhineland, which Adenauer himself belonged to. Adenauer argued that Prussianism by glorifying war as the highest achievement in humanity, and by preaching mindless obedience to the state as the highest virtue had made the National Socialist dictatorship possible, and only by ending the Prussianism type of conservatism and replacing it with the Rhineland conservatism could the future of German democracy be secured. Adenauer argued in a speech that the purpose of education was not to foster "a readiness to let oneself be controlled and led" as had traditionally been the case, but rather should be to encourage "the will and ability to incorporate oneself as a free individual aware of one's responsibility into the whole". The American historian Jeffrey Herf argued that what Adenauer was trying to create was an "anti-authoritarian right" which would defend the rights of the individual against the state in place of the traditional Prussianist right which had defended the state against the rights of the individual.

To redefine German conservatism by purging Prussianism out of German life required the CDU to win the votes of those who once supported the Nazis in order to lead them away from their former beliefs to an acceptance of democracy. Thus, Adenauer frequently made it clear that the rank and file of those who supported the NSDAP were more than welcome in the CDU provided that they were willing to accept democracy. Adenauer made it clear those been part of the leadership cadre of the NSDAP together those who continued to believe in National Socialism were not welcome in the CDU, but for those Nazis or Mitläufer "who did not oppress others, who did not enrich themselves and broke no laws should be left in peace", a frequent remark that always drew applause from German audiences when Adenauer made it. For this reason, Adenauer was opposed to denazification arguing that it would "foster a growing and extreme nationalism" as the millions who supported the Nazi regime would find themselves excluded from German life forever. For Adenauer, the key word governing all his policies was integration. In foreign policy, integration meant integrating Germany firmly into the Western institutions and alliances to end the Sonderweg, which Adenauer argued had caused two world wars while in domestic policy integration meant persuading those who supported the Nazis into supporting democracy. What Adenauer wanted in foreign policy was to lock the Federal Republic so firmly into Western institutions such as NATO and the European Coal and Steel Community that it would be impossible for a future German leader to act against the West, and German foreign policy initiatives could only come in conjunction with the other Western powers. The policies of Western integration were thus meant to end the Sonderweg forever by integrating and embedding Germany so firmly into the West that it would be impossible for Germany to go to war with the Western nations as had happened in 1914 and again in 1939. Also, to integrate Germany into Western institutions would require Germany to be an acceptable alliance partner for the Western states, which of course mean following the democratic norms of the West. Adenauer believed that as long Germany was not locked into the West, then the Sonderweg would continue in one form or another and inevitably another war would occur. This is a major reason why Adenauer objected so strongly to Schumacher's idea of a neutral Germany in the Cold War as opening the door to another world war. In domestic policy, Adenauer claimed that treating Nazis like "second class persons" would only ensure the continuation of National Socialism while a strategy of integration of Nazis would ensure the success of democracy. For as part of strategy of integration, Adenauer always took a nationalist line on everything, always stressing his great pride in being German and sometimes went out of his way to annoy his Western allies just to prove that he was not the "Chancellor of the Allies" in order to win over nationalist voters to the CDU. Adenauer wanted to win people over to his sort of nationalism which emphasized values such as justice and freedom as things that all Germans should cherish.

A major part of his strategy of integration led Adenauer to make paradoxical and contradictory arguments about German history. On one hand, Adenauer argued that the Prussian-German state and its values had led straight to National Socialism while on the other hand in his attempt to win votes for the CDU, Adenauer portrayed the Nazi regime as a gang of few criminals entirely unrepresentative of German society, who somehow managed to dupe millions of good Germans into following them. For electoral purposes, Adenauer liked to promote the idea of the National Socialist regime as a small criminal gang with the vast majority of their supporters being people who Hitler had tricked into following him, and who done nothing wrong under the Third Reich. In marked contrast to the collective guilt theories popular in some quarters in the Allied countries where all Germans were considered equally guilty of National Socialist crimes, Adenauer went to the other extreme of collective exoneration where all living Germans were equally innocent of National Socialist crimes with his thesis that all of the Nazi crimes were the work of a small clique of men who were conveniently all dead. Such a version of the past not only absolved almost all Germans of any responsibility for what had happened in the years 1933-45, but also allowed the story of the Third Reich to be presented as first and foremost as a story of German victimization at the hands of both their own regime and at the Allies. For this reason, Adenauer insisted that a memorial day could be set aside for the victims of National Socialism as long as one included all of the Germans killed by Allied bombing or fighting in the Wehrmacht as being equally being victims of National Socialism as those who died in the concentration camps or killed in the death camps. For Adenauer a painful confrontation with the Nazi past was out of the question as it would cause feelings of shame and disgust amongst the Germans, which he believed would cause a nationalist backlash, and what was needed was a version of the past that would inspire pride in being German. Herf wrote that for Adenauer neither memory nor justice mattered much in the pursuit of integration, and all that he cared about was that he achieve his aims.

In the controversial selection for a "provisional capital" of the Federal Republic of Germany, Adenauer championed Bonn over Frankfurt am Main. The British had agreed to detach Bonn from their zone of occupation and convert the area to an autonomous region wholly under German sovereignty; the Americans were not prepared to grant the same for Frankfurt. At the Petersberg Agreement in November 1949 he achieved some of the first concessions granted by the Allies, such as a decrease in the number of factories to be dismantled, but in particular his agreement to join the International Authority for the Ruhr led to heavy criticism. In the following debate in parliament Adenauer stated:
 * "The Allies have told me that dismantling would be stopped only if I satisfy the Allied desire for security, does the Socialist Party want dismantling to go on to the bitter end?"

The opposition leader Kurt Schumacher responded by labeling Adenauer "Chancellor of the Allies", accusing Adenauer of putting good relations with the West for the sake of the Cold War ahead of German national interests.

Right from the beginning of his Chancellorship, Adenauer refused to accept the Oder–Neisse line as Germany's eastern frontier, and made it quite clear if Germany ever reunified, the Federal Republic would lay claim to all of the land that had belonged to Germany as of 1 January 1937 that now belonged to Poland and the Soviet Union. In pursuit of this, the Adenauer government went to the Constitutional Court to receive a ruling that declared that legally speaking the frontiers of the Federal Republic were those of the German Reich as of 1 January 1937, that the Potsdam Declaration of 1945 which announced that the Oder-Neisse line was Germany's "provisional" eastern border was invalid, and that as such the Federal Republic considered all of the land east of the Oder-Neisse line to be "illegally" occupied by Poland and the Soviet Union. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg pointed out that in claiming the frontiers of 1937 that these were the frontiers established by the Treaty of Versailles-which the entire interwar German leadership had claimed to be totally unacceptable-which perhaps indicated that Versailles was no-where near as harsh as claimed, especially when compared with the far greater territorial losses imposed by the Oder-Neisse line. Adenauer's refusal to accept the Oder-Neisse line was in large part motivated by domestic politics, namely his desire to win the votes of the right-wing nationalists who once voted for the Nazis to the CDU. The various groups that represented the Germans who fled or were expelled from Eastern Europe formed a powerful lobby in the Federal Republic in the 1950s that no politician was willing to anger as 16% of the electorate in 1950 were people who fled or were expelled after the war. As a result, the CDU, the CSU, the FDP and the SPD all issued statements opposing the Oder-Neisse line and supporting Heimatrecht ("right to one's homeland", i.e. that the expelles be allowed to return to their former homes). Adenauer never formally laid claim to the Sudetenland, which had become part of Germany in 1938, but he argued in public for the right of the Sudeten Germans expelled in 1945-46 for Heimatrecht together with the related demand made by the Sudeten expelle leaders that a referendum be held in which the Sudeten expelles would vote to decide if the Sudetenland would be returned to Germany or stay part of Czechoslovakia. In this way, Adenauer came close to laying claim to the Sudetenland without actually doing so. Adenauer greatly feared the power of the expellee lobby, and told his cabinet in 1950 that he was afraid of "unbearable economic and political unrest" if the government did not champion all of the demands of the expelle lobby. In addition, Adenauer's rejection of the Oder-Neisse line was intended to be a deal-breaker if negotiations ever began to reunite Germany on terms that Adenauer considered unfavorable such as the neutralization of Germany as Adenauer knew well that the Soviets would never consider revising the Oder-Neisse line. Finally Adenauer's biographer, the German historian Hans Peter Schwarz has argued that Adenauer may have genuinely believed that Germany had the right to retake the land lost east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, despite all of the image problems this created for him in the United States and western Europe. By contrast, the Finnish historian Pertti Ahonen&mdash;citing numerous private statements made by Adenauer that Germany's eastern provinces were lost forever and expressing contempt for the expellee leaders as delusional in believing that they were actually going to return one day to their former homes&mdash;has argued that Adenauer had no interest in really challenging the Oder-Neisse line. Ahonen wrote that Adenauer "saw his life's work in anchoring the Federal Republic irrevocably to the anti-Communist West and no burning interest in East European problems&mdash;or even German reunification." Adenauer's stance on the Oder-Neisse line was to create major image problems for him in the Western countries in the 1950s, where many regarded his revanchist views on where Germany's eastern borders ought to be with considerable distaste, and only the fact that East Germany was between the Federal Republic and Poland prevented this from becoming a major issue in relations with the West.

On 8 May 1950 Adenauer received a letter from the French foreign minister Robert Schuman suggesting that a "High Authority" with supranational authority controlling the coal and steel industries of France and West Germany as the best way to promote economic growth and end the Franco-German enmity. Schumann had written the letter at the instigation of the French diplomat Jean Monnet who had conceived of what came to be known as the "Schuman plan". Adenauer immediately accepted Schuman's proposal. On 23 May 1950, Adenauer met with Monnet for the first time, who later recalled that the Chancellor "...was not a confident man, but one curious about what I had to say and who found it difficult to free himself of a certain mistrust. Apparently he could not believe that we really offering him equal rights, and the years of difficult negotiations and wounded pride still marked his attitude". The Franco-German talks began in Paris on 20 June 1950, which marked the first that the Federal Republic had appeared as an equal on the international stage. As the Franco-German talks proceeded, other European nations decided to join the proposed coal and steel community.

By 1950 with the outbreak of the Korean War, the U.S. and Britain agreed that West Germany had to be rearmed to strengthen the defenses of Western Europe against a possible Soviet invasion. It was widely believed at the time that Stalin had ordered the North Korean attack on South Korea in order to draw away American forces from Europe as part of a "general plan" so that the Red Army could overrun Western Europe. These fears of a Soviet invasion in 1950 were especially strong because of the imbalance between Anglo-French-American forces in West Germany and Soviet forces in East Germany with most military experts predicating in the spring of 1950 before the Korean War had started that the Red Army could easily overrun most of West Germany within days and that the Rhine would be the first line of defense. In 1950, there were two and half American divisions, two British divisions and "a few" French divisions of dubious quality (the best French troops have been sent to fight in Vietnam) stationed in West Germany, which was widely considered to be no match for Soviet forces comprising 172 divisions based in East Germany. It was generally accepted that a Soviet invasion of West Germany would see a repeat of the same widespread atrocities committed against German civilians that the Red Army had committed during operations in Germany in 1944-45. As the terror, especially the mass gang rapes waged by Soviet troops in 1944-45 had scarred the German national psyche, most Germans had an obsessive fear of the Red Army, and it estimated that at the onset of a Soviet invasion, at least 8-10 million German civilians would flee west to France and the Low Countries, hindering the movement of NATO forces coming to the front and causing a breakdown in society. Adenauer used the crisis atmosphere produced by the Korean War to argue that the Federal Republic needed a military, something that he had already believed in, but now saw a chance to achieve. What was needed was a viable democratic German Army, free of the militarism and outlook of its wartime predecessor. The idea was that it would be essential for the defense of Germany and indeed all of Western Europe. On 11 August 1950, the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a widely publicised speech which he warned that given the crisis in Korea that World War III could break out at any moment, and what was needed was a European Army, which would include troops from the Federal Republic under Allied command, which marked the first time that a politician from the one of the Allied nations had urged German rearmament, albeit under Allied control. Adenauer was able to overcome grave French objections and created the non-nuclear "Bundeswehr" based on democratic principles and practices that met the Allies' criteria.

In 1950, a major controversy broke out when it emerged that Adenauer's State Secretary Hans Globke, who been a high ranking civil servant under the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich had a dubious past under the latter. Globke had played a major role in drafting anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany and was praised on 25 April 1938 by the Reich Interior Minister Dr. Wilhelm Frick as "the most capable and efficient official in my ministry" when it came to drafting anti-Semitic laws. On 12 July 1950 Adolf Arndt, a SPD member of the Bundestag brought up Globke's career in Nazi Germany and accused him of having "committed mass murder with the help of legal paragraphs" on the floor of the Bundestag. In his reply, Adenauer stated he was saw nothing wrong with Globke's past that warranted his dismissal. Adenauer kept Globke on as State Secretary as part of his strategy of integration, namely to show the millions who had supported Hitler that if a man like Globke-despite everything he had done under the Third Reich-could go on to a good career in the Federal Republic, serving as Adenauer's right-hand man, then so could they. Starting in August 1950, Adenauer began to pressure the Western Allies to free all of the war criminals in their custody, especially those from the Wehrmacht, whose continued imprisonment Adenauer claimed made West German rearmament impossible as he maintained that Germans would not fight for the West against the Soviet Union as long as the Western nations imprisoned German officers for war crimes. Besides for the Wehrmacht war criminals, Adenauer also wanted the release of the so-called "Spandau Seven" as the seven war criminals convicted at Nuremberg imprisoned at Spandau prison were known. The "Spandau Seven" were Albert Speer, Admiral Karl Dönitz, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, Admiral Erich Raeder and Baldur von Schirach. Adenauer had been opposed to the Nuremberg trial in 1945-46, and demanded right from the moment that he became Chancellor in 1949 that the Western Allies do everything in their power to free the "Spandau Seven" as a sign of friendship with Germany and claimed that this was essential to allow Germans to fight against the Soviets in case World War Three should break out. In response during a lengthy correspondence over 1950-51 the three Allied High Commissioners informed Adenauer that conditions at Spandau were not inhumane as he claimed and that "the prisoners sentenced by the International Military Tribunal, serve their terms..in accordance with the principles adhered to in all democratic countries".

On 18 April 1951, the Treaty of Paris was signed establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, which was the predecessor to the European Economic Community established in 1957. The treaty was not popular with most Germans with Schumacher denouncing it from the left as part of a plot by French capitalists to exploit German workers and to extend the Occupation statute while from the right the treaty was seen as an attempt by Jean Monnet to take over German industry for the benefit of France. This was especially the case because the talks with the French, Adenauer had given in to Monnet's demand that the French and Germans have equal voting rights in the coal and steel community instead of the German demand that voting rights be based on coal and steel production (which had favored the Germans). Monnet told Adenauer that French public opinion would not like the German plan for voting rights, and it would be hard to get the treaty ratified by the National Assembly if the treaty conceded to the German plan for voting rights. For Adenauer, what was truly important was the proposed coal and steel community come to life, and he did not care if the particular terms were more favorable to the French than to the Germans. Adenauer told his cabinet when facing objections to the coal and steel community treaty that "The people must be given a new ideology, it can only be an European one".

During the early years of his chancellorship and with a broad consensus within the West German establishment in favor of amnesty and integration, Adenauer pressed for the ending of denazification efforts. The denazification process was viewed by the United States as counterproductive and ineffective, and its demise was not opposed. Adenauer's intention was to switch government policy to reparations and compensation for the victims of NS rule (Wiedergutmachung), claiming that the main culprits had been prosecuted. On 16 November 1950, Adenauer met with the three Allied High Commissioners for Germany, namely John J. McCloy, André François-Poncet and Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, where he demanded that the Allies stop all war crimes trials, end the extradition of war crimes suspects to eastern Europe and free all of the men already imprisoned or facing execution for war crimes, which he maintained was the basic quid pro quo for German rearmament and alliance with the West against the Soviet Union. Adenauer was especially insistent that McCloy pardon all of the war criminals sentenced to death by American military courts at the Landsberg prison arguing to most Germans the Landsberg prisoners were heroes and if the Americans were to hang those men, it was impossible for West Germany to play its part if World War III were to break out with the Soviet Union. To prove Adenauar's point about popular support for the condemned of Landsberg, in the last half of 1950 and the first half of 1951, thousands of Germans took part in demonstrations outside of Landsberg prison to demand pardons for all of the war criminals while the German media coverage was overwhelmingly on the side of the condemned. In response to this pressure, McCloy on 31 January 1951 reduced the sentences of most of 102 men at Landsberg, confirming only 7 of the death sentences while the rest of the condemned to death were spared. The seven death sentences confirmed by McCloy were the so-called "worst of the worst" namely Oswald Pohl, Paul Blobel, Otto Ohlendorf,Werner Braune, Eric Naumann, Georg Schallermair and Hans Schmidt. Neither Adenauer nor German public opinion was satisfied by McCloy's decision, and as a result, throughout the first half of 1951 the Federal Republic continued to lobby McCloy to pardon the seven condemned men while the huge demonstrations for amnesty continued at Landsberg. Despite Adenauer's best efforts to save them together with massive pressure from German public opinion, on 7 June 1951 the Americans hanged Pohl, Blobel, Ohlendorf, Braune, Naumann, Schallermair and Schmidt.

Adenauer made a historic speech to the Bundestag in September 1951 in which he recognized the obligation of the German government to compensate Israel, as the main representative of the Jewish people, for The Holocaust. This started a process that led to the Bundestag approving a pact between Israel and Germany in 1953 outlining the reparations Germany would pay to Israel. As a result, Germany started negotiations with Israel for restitution of lost property and the payment of damages to victims of the Nazi persecutions. The British historian Tony Judt wrote about Wiedergutmachung and reparations to Israel:"'In making this agreement Konrad Adenauer ran some domestic political risk: in December 1951, just 5 percent of West Germans surveyed admitted feeling ‘guilty’ towards Jews. A further 29 percent acknowledged that Germany owed some restitution to the Jewish people. The rest were divided between those (some two-fifths of respondents) who thought that only people ‘who really committed something’ were responsible and should pay, and those (21 percent) who thought ‘that the Jews themselves were partly responsible for what happened to them during the Third Reich.’ When the restitution agreement was debated in the Bundestag on March 18th 1953, the Communists voted against, the Free Democrats abstained and both the Christian Social Union and Adenauer’s own CDU were divided, with many voting against any Wiedergutmachung (reparations)." In the Luxemburger Abkommen, Germany agreed to pay compensation to Israel. Jewish claims were bundled in the Jewish Claims Conference, which represented the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany. Germany then initially paid about 3 billion Mark to Israel and about 450 million to the Claims Conference, although payments continued after that, as new claims were made. Israel was divided in accepting the money. The agreement was condemned by some Israelis as simply an expedient whereby Germany would buy off Jewish survivors to regain credibility on the international stage, and Adenauer was criticised for being too lenient towards politically compromised individuals whose past treatment of Jews was at best questionable. But ultimately the fledgling state under David Ben-Gurion agreed to take it, opposed by more radical groups like Irgun, who were against such treaties. Those treaties were cited as a main reason for the assassination attempt by the radical Jewish groups against Adenauer.

By 1951 laws were passed by the Bundestag ending denazification. Officials were allowed to retake jobs in civil service, with the exception of people assigned to Group I (Major Offenders) and II (Offenders) during the denazification review process. The amnesty legislation had benefited 792,176 people, among them:
 * 3,000 functionaries of the SA, the SS, and the Nazi Party who participated in deporting victims to prisons and camps
 * 20,000 other Nazi perpetrators sentenced for "deeds against life" (presumably murder);
 * 30,000 sentenced for causing bodily injury
 * 5,200 charged with "crimes and misdemeanors in office."

Moreover, Adenauer promoted and protected several high-profile ex-Nazis and Wehrmacht criminals in his administration, the newly created Bundeswehr, the justice system, and local public administrations, despite his declarations that former Nazis would be tolerated only if they have been passive party members. In a Bundestag debate on 23 October 1952, Adenauer admitted that 66% of the diplomats of the Auswärtiges Amt had belonged to the NSDAP, but justified their employment as "I could not build up a Foreign Office without relying upon such skilled men". Among the most publicly denounced former Nazis promoted by Adenauer were Hans Globke, who rose to become one of his closest aides, and the former Nazi general Reinhard Gehlen, whom Adenauer made head of the new West German Secret Service. Globke, in particular, had misused his public official powers to harass Jews already before the Nazis took power and during the war he helped organize the deportation of 20,000 Jews from Greece to extermination camps in Poland. Adenauer's massive promotion and defense of ex-Nazis, criminal and not, included suppressing book publications and harassing whistle-blowing journalists.

However, most German conservatives had collaborated enthusiastically with the Nazis so that many historians have argued that "it would have been folly to deprive the fledgling republic of the services of [these civil servants and professionals] for that reason alone." Officially Adenauer pressured his rehabilitated ex-Nazis by threatening that stepping out of line could trigger the reopening of individual de-Nazification prosecutions. The construction of a "competent Federal Government effectively from a standing start was one of the greatest of Adenauer's formidable achievements". This can hardly be said of Gehlen's "services" which were repeatedly accused of misinforming and misleading NATO partners and were full of former Nazi mass murderers. In February 1952, Adenauer met with Otto Kranzbühler, the lawyer for Admiral Dönitz who was now also acting as the lawyer for Albert Speer to discuss ways to win freedom for the "Spandau Seven". Adenauer told Kranzbühler, who highly committed to winning freedom for his clients that for he done everything possible on behalf on the Spandau Seven by lobbying the Allied High Commissioners, and at present he focusing his efforts only on behalf of Baron von Neurath, whom Adenauer especially wanted to see freed. Adenauer further informed Kranzbühler that his main concern at present was winning freedom for the men imprisoned by the Americans at Landsberg and by the British at Werl prison, and he did not wish to antagonize the Anglo-Americans by bringing up the subject of the Spandau Seven, and as such Kranzbühler should refrain from bringing up the subject of his two clients at Spandau. Spandau prison was jointly run by the British, the French, the Americans, and the Soviets, and any change in the status of the prisoners would require permission from all four governments. The Allied High Commissioners were always highly annoyed by Adenauer's demands that they should pressure the Soviet government to agree to free the war criminals of Spandau as any effort to free the Spandau Seven always enraged the Soviets and allowed the Soviet propaganda to paint the Allies as trying to undo the work of Nuremberg. Contemporary critics accused Adenauer of cementing the division of Germany, sacrificing reunification and the recovery of territories lost in the westward shift of Poland and the Soviet Union with his determination to secure the Federal Republic to the West. "In his view, he said with the greatest emphasis, full integration into Western Europe was a precondition of the reunification of Germany." During the Cold War, the United States was "aiming for a West German armed force, after their [U.S.] costly experience in the Korean War". and Adenauer linked this rearmament concept to West German sovereignty and entry into NATO. In 1952, the Stalin Note, as it became known, "caught everybody in the West by surprise". It offered to unify the two German entities into a single, neutral state with its own, non-aligned national army to effect superpower disengagement from Central Europe. Adenauer and his cabinet were unanimous in their rejection of the Stalin overture; they shared the Western Allies' suspicion about the genuineness of that offer and supported the Allies in their cautious replies. In this, they were supported by leader of the opposition Kurt Schumacher (a very rare occurrence), and recent (21st century) findings of historical research.

Adenauer's flat rejection was, however, still out of step with public opinion; he then realized his mistake and he started to ask questions. Critics denounced him for having missed an opportunity for German reunification. The Soviets sent a second note, courteous in tone. Adenauer by then understood that "all opportunity for initiative had passed out of his hands," and the matter was put to rest by the Allies. Given the realities of the Cold War, German reunification and recovery of lost territories in the east were not realistic goals as both of Stalin's notes specified the retention of the existing "Potsdam"-decreed boundaries of Germany.

As chancellor, Adenauer tended to make most major decisions himself, treating his ministers as mere extensions of his authority. While this tendency decreased under his successors, it established the image of West Germany (and later reunified Germany) as a "chancellor democracy".

On 27 March 1952, a package addressed to Chancellor Adenauer exploded in the Munich Police Headquarters, killing one Bavarian police officer. Two boys who had been paid to send this package by mail had brought it to the attention of the police. Investigations led to people closely related to the Herut Party and the former Irgun armed organization. The West German government kept all proof under seal in order to prevent antisemitic responses from the German public. Five Israeli suspects identified by French and German investigators were allowed to return to Israel. One of the participants, Eliezer Sudit, later revealed that the alleged mastermind behind this assassination attempt was Menachem Begin, who would later become the Prime Minister of Israel. Begin had been the former commander of Irgun and at that time headed Herut and was a member of the Knesset. His goal was to put pressure on the German government and prevent the signing of the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany, which he vehemently opposed. David Ben-Gurion, the Labour Prime Minister of Israel, appreciated Adenauer's response in playing down the affair and not pursuing it further, as it would have burdened the already-delicate relationship between the two new states.

In June 2006 a slightly different version of this story appeared in one of Germany's leading newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, quoted by The Guardian. Begin had offered to sell his gold watch as the conspirators ran out of money. The bomb was hidden in an encyclopaedia and it killed a bomb-disposal expert, injuring two others. Adenauer was targeted because of the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany, signed at that time, which was violently opposed by Begin. Sudit, the story's source, explained that the "intent was not to hit Adenauer but to rouse the international media. It was clear to all of us there was no chance the package would reach Adenauer". The five conspirators were arrested by the French police, in Paris. They "were [former] members of the ... Irgun" (the organisation had been disbanded in 1948, 4 years earlier).

Second government
When a rebellion in East Germany was harshly suppressed by the Red Army in June 1953, Adenauer took full advantage of the situation and was handily re-elected to a second term as Chancellor. During the 1953 election, the CDU released a controversial poster with a sinister figure in red with series of red roads leading to him, under which was written "All Marxist roads lead to Moscow". Many saw the poster with its message that there was no difference between the Social Democrats and the Communists as red-baiting. Until 1959, the SPD was officially a Marxist party committed to achieving a Marxist society through non-violent methods, and the poster was saying that to vote for the Marxist SPD was to deliver the Federal Republic into Soviet hands just as surely if one were to vote for the Marxist Communists. The CDU/CSU came up one seat short of an outright majority. Adenauer could have governed alone without the support of other parties, but retained the support of nearly all of the parties in the Bundestag that were to the right of the SPD. For all of his efforts as West Germany's leader, Adenauer was named Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1953. In 1954, he received the Karlspreis (English: Charlemagne Award), an Award by the German city of Aachen to people who contributed to the European idea, European cooperation and European peace.

The German German Restitution Laws (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz) were passed in 1953 that allowed some victims of Nazi prosecution to claim restitution. Under the 1953 restitution law, those who had suffered for "racial, religious or political reasons" could collect compensation, which were defined in such a way as to sharply limit the number of people entitled to collect compensation. A study done in 1953 showed that of the 42, 000 people who been held at the Buchenwald concentration camp, only 700 were entitled to compensation under the 1953 law. The German historian Alf Lüdtke wrote that Adenauer's Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer "tried to save every last penny" when it came to compensating Nazi victims. To be eligible for collecting compensation, one had to prove that one was part of the "realm of German language and culture", a requirement that excluded millions of people from Eastern Europe who taken to Germany to work as slave laborers during the war as most of the survivors did not know German or at least enough German to considered part of "realm of German language and culture". Communist concentration camp survivors were excluded from compensation under the grounds that in 1933 the KPD had been seeking "violent domination" by working for a Communist revolution. In 1956, the law was amended to allow Communist concentration camp survivors to collect compensation if they could prove that they not associated with Communist causes after 1945, but as almost all the surviving Communists belonged to the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime, which had been banned in 1951 by the Hamburg government as a Communist front organisation, the new law did not help many of the KPD survivors. The same law excluded homosexuals, the Roma and the Sinti, Asoziale ("Asocials"-people considered by the National Socialist state to be anti-social, a broad category comprising anyone from petty criminals to people who just were merely eccentric and non-conformist), and homeless people for their suffering in the concentration camps under the grounds that all these people were "criminals". Lüdtke wrote that the decision to deny that the Roma and the Sinti had been victims of National Socialist racism and to exclude the Roma and Sinti from compensation under the grounds that they were all "criminals" reflected the same anti-Gypsy racism that made them the target of persecution and genocide during the National Socialist era. The decision to deny compensation to gay survivors of the concentration camps was not surprising given that the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 was not repealed until 1969. As a result, German homosexuals-in many cases survivors of the concentration camps-between 1949-69 continued to be convicted under the same law that had been used to convict them between 1935–45, through in the period 1949-69 they were sent to prison rather a concentration camp. Aside from that, other global treaties for compensation were made with other western European states in the following decades, to compensate for the Nazi crimes.

In 1954, Adenauer's lobbying efforts on behalf of the "Spandau Seven" finally borne fruit with one of the Spandau prisoners when won the release of Baron Konstantin von Neurath. After Neurath was released, Adenauer sent him a telegram that read: "The news that freedom has been restored to you after long, hard years has sincerely gladdened me. I express to you, your wife and your children the heartiest congratulations couple them with my best wishes for the restoration of your health". President Heuss went even further, sending a telegram that spoke of Neurath's "martyrdom" at Nuremberg, and strongly implied that Neurath had been framed by the Allies. The statements welcoming Neurath's release by Heuss and Adenauer sparked controversy all over the world with one Dutch newspaper writing that the telegrams sent by the President and Chancellor to Neurath were part of a "characterless policy of opportunism" intended to win the support of those Germans who supported the Nazis and argued that a "war criminal receiving clemency" should not be treated like a "hero" as Neurath had been. The British Daily Mirror newspaper ran a cartoon in which the ghosts of Hitler, Goebbels and Göring all complained that they had committed suicide too soon, and if only they were still alive in 1954, then Adenauer and Heuss would be celebrating their early release from Spandau as well. At the same time, Adenauer's efforts to win freedom for Admiral Karl Dönitz ran into staunch opposition from the British High Commissioner Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, who argued that the charismatic, popular war hero and National Socialist fanatic Dönitz who was utterly convinced that he was still Germany's president on the account that Hitler had named him to that post in his last will in 1945 could not have the early release that Adenauer was pressing for because Dönitz would be an active danger to German democracy. Adenauer then traded no early for Dönitz with an early release for Admiral Erich Raeder, supposedly on medical grounds.

Adenauer's achievements include the establishment of a stable democracy in West Germany and a lasting reconciliation with France, culminating in the Élysée Treaty. His political commitment to the Western powers achieved full sovereignty for West Germany, which was formally laid down in the General Treaty, although there remained Allied restrictions concerning the status of a potentially reunited Germany and the state of emergency in West Germany. Adenauer firmly integrated the country with the emerging Euro-Atlantic community (NATO and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation). Adenauer is closely linked to the implementation of an enhanced pension system, which ensured unparalleled prosperity for retired people. Along with his Minister for Economic Affairs and successor Ludwig Erhard, the West German model of a "social market economy" (a mixed economy with capitalism moderated by elements of social welfare and Catholic social teaching) allowed for the boom period known as the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") that produced broad prosperity. The Adenauer era witnessed a dramatic rise in the standard of living of average Germans, with real wages doubling between 1950 and 1963. This rising affluence was accompanied by a 20% fall in working hours during that same period, together with a fall in the unemployment rate from 8% in 1950 to 0.4% in 1965. in addition, an advanced welfare state was established.

In return for the release of the last German prisoners of war in 1955, the Federal Republic opened diplomatic relations with the USSR, but refused to recognize East Germany and broke off diplomatic relations with countries (e.g., Yugoslavia) that established relations with the East German régime. On 1 May 1956, the Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano admitted during a press conference in London that the Federal Republic's stance on the Oder-Neisse line was "somewhat problematic", and suggested that the Federal Republic should recognize the Oder-Neisse line in exchange for the Soviet Union allowing reunification. Brentano's remark caused such an uproar with the expellee leaders arguing that he should resign, that Adenauer was forced to disallow his foreign minister, and Brentano only kept his job by claiming that he was misquoted by the British press. In private, Brentano was willing to accept the Oder-Neisse as the price of reunification, and was not misquoted in London as he claimed afterwards. Away from the public limelight in a conversation with the Canadian ambassador Charles Ritchie in June 1956, Brentano called the leaders of the expellee groups "unteachable nationalists" who had learned nothing from World War II, and who did not have the right to control the Federal Republic's policy towards Eastern Europe by vetoing policy changes they disliked. Brentano's press conference was meant by Adenauer to be a trial balloon to see if the Federal Republic could have a more flexible policy towards Eastern Europe. The furious protests set off by Brentano's press conference convinced Adenauer that he did not the domestic support for such a policy. This caused considerable disappointment with Adenauer's Western allies, who had been applying strong pressure behind the scenes and would continue to apply such pressure for the rest of the 1950s for Bonn to recognize the Oder-Neisse line. This pressure become especially acute after the "Polish October" crisis of 1956 brought to power Władysław Gomułka as Poland's new leader. Gomułka was a Communist, but also a Polish nationalist, and it was believed possible in Washington that a split could be encouraged between Moscow and Warsaw if only Bonn would recognize the Oder-Neisse line. Because the Federal Republic's refusal to recognize the Oder-Neisse line together with the presence of such Nazi-tainted individuals like Theodor Oberländer in Adenauer's cabinet, Gomułka was obsessed with the fear that one day the Germans would invade Poland again, which in its would mean a return to the horrors of the German occupation. Gomułka feared the Germans more than he disliked the Russians, and thus he argued in both public and in private that it was necessary to keep Soviet troops in Poland to guard against any future German revanchism. Because Gomułka's obsession with the Oder-Neisse line and his reputation as a Polish nationalist who spoke of a "Polish road to socialism" independent of Moscow, it was believed possible at the time that Gomułka might follow Tito's example in 1948 if only Adenauer could be persuaded to accept the Oder-Neisse line. One scholar wrote in 1962 that most Poles deeply disliked Communism, but were willing to accept Gomułka's regime as the lesser evil because they believed Gomułka's warnings that if without the Red Army, the Germans would invade again.

In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Adenauer completely supported the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt, arguing to his Cabinet that Nasser was a pro-Soviet force that needed to cut down to size. Adenauer went on to tell his Cabinet that the French were justified because of Nasser's support for the FLN in Algeria, but the British were partly to blame because they "inexplicably" shut down their Suez Canal base in 1954. What appalled Adenauer about the Suez crisis was that the United States had come out against the attack on Egypt, when led Adenauer to fear that the United States and Soviet Union would "carve up the world" according to their own interests with no thought for European interests. Right at the height of the Suez crisis, Adenauer visited Paris to meet the French Premier Guy Mollet in a show of moral support for France. The day before Adenauer arrived in Paris, the Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin sent the so-called "Bulganin letters" to the leaders of Britain, France, and Israel threatening nuclear strikes if they did not end the war against Egypt. One of Adenauer's aides Fritz von Eckardt commented about the opening ceremony in Paris where Mollet and Adenauer stood side by side while the national anthems were played that: "'When the Chancellor met members of the French government at the station, the place was full of people, who greeted Adenauer with considerable enthusiasm. A company of the Garde civile gave the salute. The German national anthem and the Marseillaise rang out. The Chancellor took the salute like a statue, motionless. I was thinking of the scene at the National Cemetery at Arlington near Washington. Even the most hard-boiled must have been touched by the significance of the moment and its symbolism. In the most serious hour France had experienced since the end of the war, the two government were standing shoulder by shoulder'." During the summit in Paris, Mollet commented to Adenauer that a Soviet nuclear strike could destroy Paris at any moment, which added considerably to the tension of the summit and helped to draw the French and Germans closer together as they worked together in a city that they believed could have been vaporised in a moment. Adenauer began the summit by giving Mollet a long list of complaints about the Americans, whom he accused of being unfaithful and inconsistent allies, and said he hoped to forge a Franco-German friendship that would allow the two nations to weather together any sort of crisis. The Paris summit helped to forge a psychological bond between Adenauer and the French, who saw themselves as fellow European powers living in a world dominated by Washington and Moscow.

As a result of the Suez crisis, Adenauer reached the conclusion that the United States was not as dependable ally as he had believed, and the Europeans would have to do more to look after their own defense, and above all the link with France needed to be strengthened. Adenauer was deeply shocked by the Soviet threat of nuclear strikes against Britain and France, and even more by the apparent quiescent American response to the Soviet threat of nuclear annihilation against two of NATO's key members. The Bulganin letters threatening Soviet nuclear strikes against the main British and French cities showcased Europe's utter dependence upon the United States for its security against Soviet nuclear threats while at the same time seeming to show that the American nuclear umbrella was not as reliable as billed. Adenauer was especially worried by the fact that the American embassy in Bonn would not provide a clear answer as to what was the American policy in response to the Bulganin letters. As a result, Adenauer through not abandoning the idea of an Atlantic alliance with the United States, become more interested in the French idea of a European "Third Force" in the Cold War as an alternative security policy. This helped to lead to the formation of the European Economic Community in 1957, which was intended to be the foundation stone of the European "Third Force". When, in 1967, after his death at the age of 91, Germans were asked what they admired most about Adenauer, the majority responded that he had brought home the last German prisoners of war from the USSR, which had become known as the "Return of the 10,000". Adenauer reached an agreement for his "nuclear ambitions" with a NATO Military Committee in December 1956 that stipulated West German forces to be "equipped for nuclear warfare". Concluding that the United States would eventually pull out of Western Europe, Adenauer pursued nuclear cooperation with other countries. The French government then proposed that France, West Germany and Italy jointly develop and produce nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and an agreement was signed in April 1958. With the ascendancy of Charles de Gaulle, the agreement for joint production and control was shelved indefinitely. President John F. Kennedy, an ardent foe of nuclear proliferation, considered sales of such weapons moot since "in the event of war the United States would, from the outset, be prepared to defend the Federal Republic." The physicists of the Max Planck Institute for Theoretical Physics at Göttingen and other renowned universities would have had the scientific capability for in-house development, but the will was absent, nor was there public support. With Adenauer's fourth term election in November 1961 and the end of his chancellorship in sight, his "nuclear ambitions" began to taper off.

Third government
1957 saw the reintegration of the Saarland into West Germany. The election of 1957 essentially dealt with national matters. His re-election campaigns centered around the slogan "No Experiments". Riding a wave of popularity from the return of the last POWs from Soviet labor camps, as well as an extensive pension reform, Adenauer led the CDU/CSU to the first—and as of 2013, only—outright majority in a free German election. In 1957, the Federal Republic signed the Treaty of Rome and become a founding member of the European Economic Community. In September 1958, Adenauer first met President Charles de Gaulle of France, who was to become a close friend and ally in pursuing Franco-German rapprochement.

Throughout the 1950s, the East German leader Walter Ulbricht had been pressuring the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for an end to West Berlin, maintaining that the German Democratic Republic could not prosper as long as West Berlin existed as an escape valve for unhappy East Germans. In February 1958, the Soviet Ambassador to East Germany Mikhail Pervukhin suggested to Khrushchev that "the Berlin question can be resolved independently from resolving the entire German problem, by the gradual political and economic conquest of West Berlin". On 10 November 1958, Khrushchev gave a bellicose speech warning that he wanted to see the end of West and then on 27 November another Berlin crisis broke out when Khrushchev submitted a six-month Ultimatum. Khrushchev demanded that the Allies would to pull their forces out of West Berlin and agree that West Berlin become a "free city", or else he would sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. A Soviet-East German peace treaty would mean at least officially the ending of the Soviet rights in their zone of Germany. Every since 1945, American, British and French forces had enjoyed access rights to West Berlin through East Germany, and to do so, they had dealt with the Soviet forces. Ending the Soviet rights in East Germany would mean to enjoy their access rights to West Berlin that the Allies would to deal with the East Germans. Under the Hallstein Doctrine, Adenauer had a policy of breaking off diplomatic relations with any state except for the Soviet Union that recognized East Germany. Thus, a Soviet-East German peace treaty would mean that the Allies would to recognize East Germany and have Adenauer break off relations with them or alternatively the Allies would have to give up on their access rights to West Berlin if they did not wish to deal with East Germany.

The U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles suggested that the American response to Khrushchev's ultimatum should be to recognize and deal with the East Germans as "agents" of the Soviet Union, something that Dulles hoped might be an acceptable compromise. In a message to the U.S President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adenauer stated that any form of American recognition of East Germany, even as Soviet "agents" would mean that West Germany would enforce the Hallstein Doctrine by breaking off diplomatic relations with Washington. Eisenhower complained privately that thanks to Adenauer's threat to enforce the Hallstein Doctrine that this was "another instance in which our political posture requires us to assume military positions that are wholly illogical" and that average American would have trouble understanding why thermonuclear war was being risked because "we worry about the shape of the helmet of the official to whom we present credentials". Eisenhower decided that then risk a rupture with Bonn, that the Americans would refuse to have any dealings with the East Germans, and come May 27, 1959 if a Soviet-East German peace treaty was signed, then an American platoon would be sent to fight its way across East Germany to West Berlin. If the platoon was repulsed, then an American armored division would be sent to fight its way to West Berlin in order to create a situation as the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff put to convince the world that U.S. "would use whatever degree of force may be necessary" to enjoy its access rights to West Berlin without dealing with the East German regime. Dulles during a visit to Bonn in February 1959 told Adenauer that if the division was rebuffed in its attempt to access West Berlin, the U.S. would go to war with the Soviet Union, a war "in which we obviously would not forego the use of nuclear weapons". Adenauer, who never much liked Berlin is said to have told Dulles in horror: "For God's sake, not for Berlin!". Adenauer had already been informed by NATO planners that the use of tactical tactical nuclear weapons alone in Germany should World War III break out would kill about 1.7 million German civilians and injure about 3.5 million civilians. As the May 27 deadline approached, the crisis was defused through not resolved by the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who visited Moscow to meet with Khrushchev to discuss the Berlin crisis over the objections of Adenauer who believed that Macmillan would seek a compromise that would in some way imply recognition of the German Democratic Republic. Macmillan failed to get the resolution of the Berlin crisis he was seeking, but to win time by getting Khrushchev to extend the deadline by promising more talks on a solution while committing himself or the other Western powers to concessions.

Briefly considered running for the office of Federal President in 1959. Adenauer's biographer Hans-Peter Schwarz commented that through Adenauer was normally very cautious and careful when making decisions, but at times, Adenauer would act recklessly and impulsively with no thought for the consequences. Adenauer had tarnished his image when he announced he would run for the office of federal president in 1959, only to pull out when he discovered that under the Basic Law, the president had far less power than he did in the Weimar Republic. Adenauer believed that he could re-reinterpret the powers of the presidency in such a way as to be an effective power-player instead holding a merely ceremonial post by attending cabinet meetings (the Basic Law was silent on whatever the president could attend cabinet meetings or not). In a letter that showed signs of much anger, President Heuss wrote to Adenauer that he had always worked to prevent him from attending cabinet meetings, and argued that having established that precedent, was now very annoyed by Adenauer's idea if he was elected president, he would chair cabinet meetings. Additionally, the departing and respected Theodor Heuss had established the precedent that the president be nonpartisan, which clashed with Adenauer's vision. After his reversal he supported the nomination of Heinrich Lübke as the CDU presidential candidate whom he believed weak enough not to interfere with his actions as Federal Chancellor. For a couple of weeks in 1959, Adenauer considered leaving the chancellorship and becoming Federal President. He initially believed the office could be fulfilled in a more politically active way than president Heuss did. He reconsidered, among other reasons, because he was afraid that Ludwig Erhard, whom Adenauer thought little of, would become the new chancellor.

By early 1959, Adenauer came under renewed pressure from his Western allies, especially the Americans and the French to recognize the Oder-Neisse line with the Americans being especially insistent. The Americans argued that Adenauer's revanchist statements about the Oder-Neisse line were a godsend to Communist propaganda in Poland, and that the best way of countering the Communist claim that the Federal Republic was out to stage a new Drang nach Osten, thereby requiring the Red Army to protect the Poles was for Adenauer to publicly accept the Oder-Neisse line. In response to the Franco-American pressure, the Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano suggested as a way of gaining "breathing space" was for the Federal Republic to sign non-aggression pacts with Poland and Czechoslovakia, which would imply recognition of the Oder-Neisse line without formally saying so. Since it was extremely unlikely that the Poles would ever return willing return the Recovered Territories to Germany, realistically war was the only way that the Germans could ever hope to challenge the Oder-Neisse line, so by signing a non-aggression pact with Poland would effectively mean accepting the Oder-Neisse line. In response to Brenatno's proposal, Adenauer gave his "explicit and unconditional approval" to the idea of non-aggression pacts in late January 1959, and for next several months, West German officials met with American, British and French diplomats to discuss in conditions of great secrecy the texts of the suggested non-aggression pacts. Crucially, Adenauer did not inform either the Ernst Lemmer, the Minister of All-German Affairs or the Theodor Oberländer Minister of Refugees as the former was close to the expelle lobby while the latter was one of the leaders of the expelle lobby. In March 1959, Adenauer had a rare public rift with his friend General de Gaulle of France, when de Gaulle publicly urged Adenauer to recognize the Oder-Neisse line, a statement which promoted a press release from Chancellor's office which firmly declared the Chancellor believed that "the German borders are still those of December 30, 1937". At the same time, the London Times ran an article documenting the most of the leaders of the powerful expelle lobby had been active National Socialists, and some had been war criminals such as the SS officer Hermann Krumey, who after the war led one of the Sudeten expelle groups. The article charged that by refusing to recognize the Oder-Neisse line and promoting the idea of Heimatrecht that Adenauer had been "keeping alive the sentiments and hatreds" expressed by the expelle lobby. By late April 1959, the texts of the proposed non-aggression pacts were largely finished, and all that remained was to present them to the governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia. But before that could happen, the New York Times on 21 May 1959 leaked the news of the proposed non-aggression pacts. The expelle lobby reacted with open dismay, charging that the non-aggression pacts were only the first step towards accepting the Oder-Neisse line and the loss of the Sudetenland, and called Adenauer's commitment to the cause of the expelle lobby "a mere illusion". Adenauer had never laid claim to the Sudetenland, but the Sudeten German expelle groups had been quite open in expressing their views that the Munich Agreement was still in effect in their opinion, and as such the Germans had the right to invade Czechoslovakia to take back the Sudetenland, which had been "illegally" occupied by Czechoslovakia since 1945. Adenauer insisted that he was still opposed to the Oder-Neisse line, and that the proposed non-aggression pacts did not change that fact, but this argument fooled almost no-one. The expelle lobby knew well that without the option of war that the Oder-Neisse line would remain unchanged (Adenauer's argument that the Poles could somehow be persuaded to peacefully return the land lost by the Oder-Neisse line did not impress many), which is why they were so outraged by the idea of a non-aggression pact with Poland.

In June 1959, Adenauer attended a four-day rally organized by the expelle lobby in Cologne during which he promised that his government would never cease demanding Heimatrecht for the expelles, declared that the explusion of the Germans was a "great crime", and announced that if diplomatic relations were ever established with Poland and Czechoslovakia that he would demand that the Poles and the Czechoslovaks pay reparations. Adenauer's speech was well received in West Germany, but attracted much outrage in Poland, when it was widely publicized by the Communist government as an example of why Poland needed the Red Army to counter the Adenauer's alleged new Drang nach Osten. The demand that the Poles and the Czechoslovaks pay reparations to Germany was considered very offensive in those nations as the Federal Republic had never paid any reparations to either Poland or Czechoslovakia for their war-time occupation by Germany. Adenauer's speech at the Cologne rally was intended to undo the damage done to his reputation amongst the expelle lobby by the news that he had been seeking non-aggression pacts with Poland and Czechoslovakia. In early July 1959, coming under strong Western pressure, Adenauer decided to revive the idea of the non-aggression pacts, authorizing Brentano to formally present the non-aggression pacts to the Polish and Czechoslovak governments after he had obtained the approval of the cabinet for the non-aggression pacts, which was expected to be a mere formality. At that point, the expelle lobby swung into action to scuttle the idea of the non-aggression pacts, and organized protests all over the Federal Republic while bombarding Adenauer and other members of the cabinet with thousands of letters and telegrams promising never to vote CDU again if the non-aggression pacts were signed. Faced with this pressure, Adenauer promptly capitulated to the expelle lobby, telling his cabinet on 22 July 1959 that there would be no vote on approving the non-aggression pacts while at same time telling Brentano to inform the American, French and British governments that the idea of the Federal Republic signing the non-aggression pacts was now dead. Adenauer explained to the cabinet he had killed his own plans for non-aggression pacts because of the "several hundreds of thousands of votes" held by the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights, which he believed that the CDU could win in the 1961 elections provided that the CDU stayed in the good graces of the expelle lobby.

In late 1959, a controversy broke out when it emerged that Theodor Oberländer, the Minister of Refugees since 1953 and one of the most powerful leaders of the expelle lobby had committed war crimes against Jews and Poles during World War II. Oberländer had been in command of the Nachtigall Battalion which between July 2-July 4, 1941 shot about 7, 000 people mostly Jews and Polish intellectuals in what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Oberländer admitted to having commanded the Nachtigall Battalion, but insisted in an interview with Die Zeit on 9 October 1959 that "not a shot was fired" by his men. Despite his past, on 10 December 1959, a statement was released to the press declaring that "Dr. Oberländer has the full confidence of the Adenauer cabinet". Der Spiegel ran a cover-story on Oberländer and an editoral commented that "This man should never have been appointed a minister". Even other Christian Democrats made it clear to Adenauer that they would have liked to see Oberländer out of the cabinet, and finally in May 1960 Oberländer resigned.

Fourth government
The mood had changed by election time in September 1961. Over the course of 1961, Adenauer had his concerns about both the status of Berlin and US leadership confirmed, as the Soviets and East Germans built the Berlin Wall. Adenauer had come into the year distrusting the new US President, John F. Kennedy. He doubted Kennedy's commitment to a free Berlin and a unified Germany and considered him undisciplined and naïve.

For his part, Kennedy thought that Adenauer was a relic of the past, stating "The real trouble is that he is too old and I am too young for us to understand each other." Their strained relationship impeded effective Western action on Berlin during 1961. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the sealing of borders by the East Germans made his government look weak. His "reaction was ... lame;" he eventually flew to Berlin, but he appeared to have "lost his once instinctive, ultra-swift power of judgement". Rather than visiting West Berlin right after the construction of the Berlin Wall had began to show solidarity with the people of Berlin, Adenauer chose to remain on the campaign trail, and a disastrous misjudgement in a speech on 14 August 1961 in Regensburg chose to engage in a personal attack on the SPD Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt saying that Brandt's illegitimate birth had disqualified him from holding any sort of office. Adenauer's attempt to make Brandt's illegitimate birth the major campaign issue at the time that the Berlin wall was going up was widely seen as a crude effort to distract attention from the Berlin Wall. After failing to keep their majority in the general election 36 days after the wall went up, the CDU/CSU again needed to include the FDP in a coalition government. To strike a deal, Adenauer was forced to make two concessions: to relinquish the chancellorship before the end of the new term, his fourth, and to replace his foreign minister. In his last years in office, Adenauer used to take a nap after lunch and, when he was traveling abroad and had a public function to attend, he sometimes asked for a bed in a room close to where he was supposed to be speaking, so that he could rest briefly before he appeared.

During this time, Adenauer came into increasing conflict with the Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard over just what precisely the Federal Republic was integrating into. Erhard was very much in favor of "widening" the EEC by allowing other nations, especially Britain to join while Adenauer was all for "deepening" the EEC by strengthening ties amongst the original founding six nations of West Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy. Erhard, a firm Atlanticist supported the idea of Britain joining the European Economic Community, which was only to the first step towards the creation of a gigantic trans-Atlantic free trade zone embracing all of Western Europe, the United States and Canada. Adenauer was against Erhard's Atlanticist plans, telling him that "We must first solidify the European economic and political community before we even consider the question of an Atlantic community". A month later, in a speech Adenauer rejected the idea of an Atlantic community with a stern warning that free trade with the United States would hinder German prosperity. Shortly afterwards, in an interview Adenauer stated that he was all in favor of an alliance with the United States, but at the same time there were important cultural differences between Americans/the British and continental Europeans that required a certain distance for the alliance to work. Adenauer argued that: "We Europeans have an ideology, the ideology of Christian humanism, which forms the foundation for the freedom of the individual and the state as a whole...But the Anglo-Saxons...make the same mistake; they have no ideology, no supporting idea driving resistance and the struggle against the totalitarian atheism of Russia and Red China". Thus, in Adenauer's viewpoint, the Cold War meant that the NATO alliance with the United States and Britain was essential, but the same time, there could be no deeper integration into a trans-Atlantic community beyond the existing military ties as that would lead to a "mishmash" between different cultural systems that was doomed to failure. Through Adenauer had tried to get Britain to join the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951-52, by the early 1960s Adenauer had come to share General de Gaulle's belief that Britain did not belong in the EEC. An more outspoken advocate of this viewpoint was his ambitious Defense Minister, the leader of the CSU, Franz Josef Strauss, who become by the early 1960s the leader of a fraction known as the "German Gaullists", so-called because they shared General de Gaulle's hostile views about the United States as an ally.





In October 1962, a scandal erupted when police arrested five Der Spiegel journalists, charging them with espionage for publishing a memo detailing weaknesses in the West German armed forces. Adenauer had not initiated the arrests, but initially defended the person responsible, Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, and called the Spiegel memo "abyss of treason". After public outrage and heavy protests from the coalition partner FDP he dismissed Strauss, but the reputation of Adenauer and his party had already suffered.

Adenauer managed to remain in office for almost another year, but the scandal increased the pressure already on him to fulfill his promise to resign before the end of the term. Adenauer was not on good terms in his last years of power with his economics minister Ludwig Erhard and tried to block him from the chancellorship. In January 1963, Adenauer privately supported General Charles de Gaulle's veto of Britain's attempt to join the European Economic Community, and was only prevented from saying so openly by the need to preserve unity in his cabinet as most of his ministers led by Ludwig Erhard supported Britain's application. A Francophile, Adenauer saw a Franco-German partnership as the key for European peace and prosperity and shared de Gaulle's view that Britain would be a disputative force in the EEC. Adenauer failed in his efforts to block Erhard as his successor, and in October 1963 he turned the office over to Erhard. He did remain chairman of the CDU until his resignation in December 1966.

Adenauer ensured a truly free and democratic society, which had been almost unknown to the German people before — notwithstanding the attempt between 1919 and 1933 (the Weimar Republic) — and which is today not just normal but also deeply integrated into modern German society. He thereby laid the groundwork for Germany to reenter the community of nations and to evolve as a dependable member of the Western world. It can be argued that because of Adenauer's policies, a later reunification of both German states was possible; and unified Germany has remained a solid partner in the European Union and NATO. The British historian Frederick Taylor argued that Federal Republic under Adenauer retained many of the characteristics of the authoritarian "deep state" that existed under the Weimar Republic, and that in many ways the Adenauer era was a transition in values and viewpoints from the authoritarianism that characterized Germany in the first half of the 20th century to the more democratic values that characterized the western half Germany in the second half of the 20th century.

The German student movement of the late 1960s was essentially a left-wing protest against the conservatism that Adenauer—by then out of office—had personified. Radical student protesters and Marxist groups were further inflamed by strong Anti-Americanism fueled by the Vietnam War and opposition to the conservative Nixon administration.

In retrospect, mainly positive assessments of his chancellorship prevail, not only with the German public, which voted him the "greatest German of all time" in a 2003 television poll, but even with some of today's left-wing intellectuals, who praise his unconditional commitment to western-style democracy and European integration.

Death
Adenauer died on 19 April 1967 in his family home at Rhöndorf. According to his daughter, his last words were "Da jitt et nix zo kriesche!" (Cologne dialect for "There's nothin' to weep about!")

Konrad Adenauer's state funeral in Cologne Cathedral was attended by a large number of world leaders, among them United States President Lyndon B. Johnson. After the Requiem Mass and service, his remains were taken upstream to Rhöndorf on the Rhine aboard Kondor, with two more Jaguar class fast attack craft of the German Navy, Seeadler and Sperber as escorts, "past the thousands who stood in silence on both banks of the river". He is interred at the Waldfriedhof ("Forest Cemetery") at Rhöndorf.

Honours

 * Order of the Red Eagle, 4th class (Prussia, 1918)
 * Grand Decoration of Honour of the Order for Services to the Republic of Austria (first Austrian republic, 1927)
 * Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (1951)
 * Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1953)
 * Order of the Southern Cross (Brazil, July 1953)
 * Order of the Sun (Peru), 1953.
 * Grand Cross, Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (January 1954)
 * Charlemagne Prize (Aachen, May 1954) – as a "powerful promoter of a united Europe"
 * Order of the Condor of the Andes (Bolivia, 1955)
 * Order of the Golden Spur (Papal Order of Chivalry, December 1955)
 * Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (UK), 1956.
 * Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold with Sash for Services to the Republic of Austria (1956)
 * Bavarian Order of Merit (May 1958)
 * Honorary knight in the Teutonic Order (1958)
 * Order of the Netherlands Lion (1960)
 * Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur (France, 1962)
 * Order of the Rising Sun, Grand Cordon (Japan, 1960) - "because of its long-standing commitment to an understanding of the Japanese–German friendship, and for the peace and prosperity in the world"
 * Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, Grand Cordon (Japan, 1963)
 * Supreme Order of Christ (September 1963)
 * Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre (1964)
 * Order of Isabella the Catholic, Grand Cross (Spain), 1967.
 * Order of the Liberator General San Martin (Argentina)

Time magazine named Adenauer as Man of the Year in 1953.

Legacy
Adenauer was the main motive for one of the most recent and famous gold commemorative coins: the Belgian 3 pioneers of the European unification commemorative coin, minted in 2002. The obverse side shows a portrait with the names Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak and Konrad Adenauer.

First ministry

 * Konrad Adenauer (CDU) – Chancellor
 * Franz Blücher (FDP) – Vice Chancellor and Minister of Marshall Plan Affairs
 * Gustav Heinemann (CDU) – Minister of the Interior
 * Fritz Schäffer (CSU) – Minister of Finance
 * Thomas Dehler (FDP) – Minister of Justice
 * Ludwig Erhard (CDU) – Minister of Economics
 * Anton Storch (CDU) – Minister of Labour and Social Affairs
 * Wilhelm Niklas (CSU) – Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry
 * Hans-Christoph Seebohm (DP) – Minister of Transport
 * Eberhard Wildermuth (FDP) – Minister of Construction
 * Hans Schuberth (CSU) – Minister of Posts and Communications
 * Hans Lukaschek (CDU) – Minister of Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims
 * Jakob Kaiser (CDU) – Minister of All-German Affairs
 * Heinrich Hellwege (DP) – Minister of Bundesrat Affairs

Changes
 * 13 October 1950 – Robert Lehr (CDU) succeeds Heinemann as Minister of the Interior.
 * 15 March 1951 – Konrad Adenauer becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as Chancellor when the Allies allow this post to be revived.
 * 19 July 1952 – Fritz Neumayer (FDP) succeeds Wildermuth (died 9 March) as Minister of Construction.

Second ministry

 * Konrad Adenauer (CDU) – Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Franz Blücher (FDP) – Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economic Cooperation
 * Gerhard Schröder (CDU) – Minister of the Interior
 * Fritz Schäffer (CSU) – Minister of Finance
 * Fritz Neumayr (FDP) – Minister of Justice
 * Ludwig Erhard (CDU) – Minister of Economics
 * Anton Storch (CDU) – Minister of Labour and Social Affairs
 * Heinrich Lübke (CDU) – Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry
 * Hans-Christoph Seebohm (DP) – Minister of Transport
 * Viktor-Emanuel Preusker (FDP) – Minister of Construction
 * Franz-Josef Wuermeling (CDU) – Minister of Family Affairs
 * Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) – Minister of Special Tasks
 * Robert Tillmanns (CDU) – Minister of Special Tasks
 * Waldemar Kraft (GB/BHE) – Minister of Special Tasks
 * Hermann Schäfer (FDP) – Minister of Special Tasks
 * Siegfried Balke – Minister of Posts and Communications
 * Theodor Oberländer (GB/BHE) – Minister of Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims
 * Jakob Kaiser (CDU) – Minister of All-German Affairs
 * Heinrich Hellwege (DP) – Minister of Bundesrat Affairs

Changes
 * 7 June 1955 – Theodor Blank (CDU) becomes Minister of Defense when that post is revived.
 * 8 June 1955 – Heinrich von Brentano (CDU) succeeds Adenauer as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Hans-Joachim von Merkatz (DP) succeeds Hellwege as Minister of Bundesrat Affairs.
 * 19 October 1955 – Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) becomes Minister of Atomic Affairs
 * 12 November 1955 – Tillmanns leaves the cabinet.
 * 16 October 1956 – Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) succeeds Blank as Minister of Defense. Hans-Joachim von Merkatz succeeds Neumayr as Minister of Justice. Kraft and Schäfer leave the Cabinet. Siegfried Balke (CSU) succeeds Strauss as Minister of Atomic Affairs.
 * 15 November 1956 – Ernst Lemmer (CDU) succeeds Balke as Minister of Posts and Communications.

Third ministry

 * Konrad Adenauer (CDU) – Chancellor
 * Ludwig Erhard (CDU) – Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economics
 * Heinrich von Brentano (CDU) – Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) – Minister of Defense
 * Gerhard Schröder (CDU) – Minister of the Interior
 * Franz Etzel (CDU) – Minister of Finance
 * Fritz Schäffer (CSU) – Minister of Justice
 * Theodor Blank (CDU) – Minister of Labour and Social Affairs
 * Heinrich Lübke (CDU) – Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry
 * Hans-Christoph Seebohm (DP) – Minister of Transport
 * Paul Lücke (CDU) – Minister of Construction
 * Franz-Josef Wuermeling (CDU) – Minister of Family and Youth Affairs
 * Richard Stücklen (CSU) – Minister of Posts and Communications
 * Theodor Oberländer (CDU) – Minister of Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims
 * Ernst Lemmer (CDU) – Minister of All-German Affairs
 * Hans-Joachim von Merkatz (DP) – Minister of Bundesrat and State Affairs
 * Siegfried Balke (CSU) – Minister of Nuclear Energy and Water
 * Hermann Lindrath (CDU) – Minister of Federal Economic Possessions

Changes
 * 13 September 1959 – Werner Schwarz (CDU) succeeds Lübke as Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry.
 * 5 April 1960 – Oberländer resigns as Minister of Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims.
 * 4 May 1960 – Hans Wilhelmi (CDU) succeeds Lindrath (died 27 February) as Minister of Federal Economic Possessions.
 * 27 October 1960 – Hans-Joachim von Merkatz (CDU) becomes Minister of Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims.

Fourth ministry

 * Konrad Adenauer (CDU) – Chancellor
 * Ludwig Erhard (CDU) – Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economics
 * Gerhard Schröder (CDU) – Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) – Minister of Defense
 * Hermann Höcherl (CSU) – Minister of the Interior
 * Heinz Starke (FDP) – Minister of Finance
 * Wolfgang Stammberger (FDP) – Minister of Justice
 * Theodor Blank (CDU) – Minister of Labour and Social Affairs
 * Werner Schwarz (CDU) – Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry
 * Hans-Christoph Seebohm (CDU) – Minister of Transport
 * Paul Lücke (CDU) – Minister of Construction
 * Franz-Josef Wuermeling (CDU) – Minister of Family and Youth Affairs
 * Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt (CDU) – Minister of Health
 * Walter Scheel (FDP) – Minister of Economic Cooperation
 * Heinrich Krone (CDU) – Minister of Special Tasks
 * Richard Stücklen (CSU) – Minister of Posts and Communications
 * Wolfgang Mischnick (FDP) – Minister of Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims
 * Ernst Lemmer (CDU) – Minister of All-German Affairs
 * Hans-Joachim von Merkatz (CDU) – Minister of Bundesrat and State Affairs
 * Siegfried Balke (CSU) – Minister of Nuclear Energy and Water
 * Hans Lenz (FDP) – Minister of Federal Treasure

Changes
 * 19 November 1962 Ewald Bucher (FDP) succeeds Stammberger as Minister of Justice. Werner Dollinger (CSU) succeeds Lenz as Minister of Federal Treasure.
 * 14 December 1962 – Rolf Dahlgrün (FDP) succeeds Starke as Minister of Finance. Bruno Heck (CDU) succeeds Wuermeling as Minister of Family and Youth Affairs. Hans Lenz (FDP) enters the ministry as Minister of Scientific Research. Rainer Barzel (CDU) succeeds Lemmer as Minister of All-German Affairs. Alois Niederalt (CSU) succeeds Merkatz as Minister of Bundesrat and State Affairs. The Ministry of Nuclear Energy and Water is abolished, and Balke leaves the cabinet.
 * 9 January 1963 – Kai-Uwe von Hassel (CDU) succeeds Strauss as Minister of Defense.

References and bibliography

 * Ahonen, Pertti. "Domestic Constraints on West German Ostpolitik: The Role of the Expellee Organizations in the Adenauer Era," Central European History (1998) 31#1 pp 31–63 in JSTOR
 * Cudlipp, E. Adenauer (1985)
 * Frei, Norbert Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past The Politics of Amnesty and Integration New York: Columbia University Press, 2002
 * Granieri, Ronald J. The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949–1966 (2004) 250 pages excerpt and text search
 * Heidenheimer, Arnold J. Adenauer and the CDU: the Rise of the Leader and the Integration of the Party (1960)
 * Herf, Jeffrey Divided Memory The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997
 * Hiscocks, Richard. The Adenauer Era (1966)
 * Rovan, Joseph. Konrad Adenauer (1987) 182 pages excerpt and text search
 * Schwarz, Hans-Peter. Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution and Reconstruction. Vol. 1: From the German Empire to the Federal Republic, 1876–1952.
 * Schwarz, Hans-Peter. vol 2: Konrad Adenauer a German politician and statesman in a period of war, revolution and reconstruction (1995) 759 pp. excerpt and text search vol 2; also full text online
 * Williams, Charles. Konrad Adenauer: The Father of the New Germany (2001), 624pp
 * "Konrad Adenauer" in Encyclopædia Britannica (Macropedia) © 1989
 * Tammann, Gustav A. and Engelbert Hommel. (1999). Die Orden und Ehrenzeichen Konrad Adenauers,