... had really duplicated the model that had been present in the Weimar period and claimed to make revolutionary changes that they had never made before and didn't know how to make. During this time the SPD did very little to change German society for the better. The denazification process was also reducing people's interest in politics. The SPD was "selling an unwanted product with a bad brand image" (Padgett and Burkett 1986 p47). At the end of the Third Reich, where food and material comforts were very hard to come by, the priority of the German population was for the welfare of their families and themselves. This was the crusade of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its leader Konrad Adenauer and not the SPD. One of the biggest mistakes Schmacher and his party made in the 1950's was economic rather than political. At this time the German population tended to ...

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