Word: wehner
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...their quest for power, West Germany's Social Democrats have depended for nearly two decades on the guidance of Herbert Wehner, a brusque, brilliant tactician whose devotion to the Socialist cause is equaled only by his towering rage at any dissent within his party. Second in the hierarchy after Party Leader Willy Brandt, Wehner formulated the policy that has shaped the party's destiny, including the decision to join the rival Christian Democrats in West Germany's historic Grand Coalition. Last week, in a move that was certain to have profound effects not only on the party...
...role of back-room Moses, Wehner led the Social Democrats out of their postwar desert of opposition into full participation in government. A onetime Communist who broke with his Red masters during World War II, Wehner perceived in the 1950s that the Social Democrats' Marxist shibboleths and anti-everything attitude left them locked in what he called the "30% ghetto," unable to attract a wider following among West German voters. With characteristic iron will power, he set about remolding his party into one that would appeal to all Germans...
...Thanks. Wehner succeeded so well that in the 1965 national elections, even though the ruling Christian Democrats carried the day, the Social Democrats attracted a high enough percentage of the votes-39.3%-to give them serious thoughts about some day coming to power. In December 1966, Wehner led his party into a coalition with the Christian Democrats as its final preparation in the art of government...
...dominant parties, which are united in the Grand Coalition. The leaders of the coalition are now engaged in a debate about how to handle the National Democrats, who pose, in the opinion of many Bonn politicians, a threat to West Germany's 18-year-old federal republic. Herbert Wehner, the strong-willed Socialist tactician, wants to outlaw them under the clause in the Bonn constitution that bans anti-democratic parties. But Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger and most of his Christian Democrats would rather get at the National Democrats through a change in the electoral laws. At present, Germans vote...
...Wehner and Socialist ministers in the coalition defended their actions as necessary for Germany's welfare, promised to press hard for Socialist goals when the country can better afford them. Brandt managed to defuse the conference by warning the Christian Democrats not to expect the Socialists to be "meek as lambs." "I call the Grand Coalition neither a marriage of love nor a shotgun marriage," he said, "but a question of practical politics." After that, the Socialist delegates departed, considerably meeker themselves...