Abstract: | In comparison to the remaining parties taking place in western occupational zones, Sociodemocratic
Party of Germany (SPD) was in a more beneficial situation. In the case of sociodemocracy
it was not about the process of creating a completely new party, but the process of restoring
the formation acting legally in the territory of Germany for decades till 1933. The shape of the
system of the postwar Germany, almost from the very beginning of the reactivation of the SPD
action constituted one of the most important issues discussed among the party members. The
foundations of this discussion were laid a day before the final war failure of the Third Reich. In
1944 the programme compromise in the ranks of the Union of German Socialist Organizations
created in Great Britain in 1941 was reached. The effect of the very compromise constituted
Directives concerning a German state system published in autumn in 1945 in London. A groundbreaking
event for the works of the party on the conception of the system of the German state
was the establishment of the Political-System Committee by the party board in September 1946.
The head of the party board and minister of the foreign affairs of North-Rhine — Westfalia
was Walter Menzel. The result of a few months’ works of the Committee constituted Directives
concerning building the German Republic. They were accepted during the meeting of the party
board in March 1947 and successively approved of unanimously by the convention of the Western-
German SPD debating in Nurnberg in July 1947. The SPD politicians reservedly accepted the declaration of Western superpowers on the
necessity of building the German state only in western borderlines in occupational zones. Starting
from 1945 sociodemocracy was consistently in favour of regaining the unity of the postwar
Germany divided as a result of consequences. The majority of SPD politicians understood, at the
same time, that in face of the events taking place the division of the German state in the future
to be predicted is unavoidable. According to them, the very situation will be temporary and,
in a longer run, Germany will unite as a state and society. That is why the SPD was definitely
against treating the projected Western-German state in the categories of the state with any legal
and political consequences deriving from it. Therefore, the fact that both projects prepared in
1948 by W. Menzel were regarded as organizational statutes should not be surprising. Not only
their form, but also systematicity and content of particular decisions did express the party’s
objection to the idea of giving constitution to the Western-German state in the right meaning of
the word. |