I'm gonna make this its own post - I did a lot of reading abt prewar Germany political parties, less abt postwar parties
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Replying to @arthur_affect
The dominant postwar party, the Christian Democratic Union, is literally a coalition of all the parties that didn't get purged by the Nazis
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Replying to @arthur_affect
The Allies found them to be more reliable than the Social Democrats or the Communists, who did get purged by the Nazis
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Replying to @arthur_affect
The biggest anti-Nazi party before the war, the Social Dems, were frozen out of the coalition for 20 years
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Your best bet to end up a powerful politician in 1950s Germany was to not have literally been a Nazi but also not fought them too hard
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I think on this bc before the war the SPD was one of the most successful left-labor parties in Europe/the world
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Replying to @arthur_affect
And their defeat by the rise of the Nazis was so total it lasted until 1969
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Replying to @arthur_affect
You can argue abt why (voting for WWI, turning on the KPD after the revolution) but WWII was a massive long-term loss for the Left
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It needs to be said because the triumphalist "And then everything was awesome" view of the end of WWII is so common in America
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Replying to @arthur_affect
And British and French returned to colonial oppression. Killing people to keep control of Kenya or Vietnam or Algeria.
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