Electoral calculations with expellee voters outweighed Ostpolitik openings for Adenauer.

Evidence

GB/BHE was bound to lose in 1961 would go either to the CDU/CSU or the SPD, Adenauer’s political archrival, which at the time was paying special attention to the expellees as a part of its campaign to transform itself into a middle-of-the-road mass party free of excessive Marxist heritage. To Adenauer, who had once again demonized the SPD as the gravedigger of the Federal Republic’s freedom and security just a few months earlier, the 1961 elections were thus “immensely important” as a way to “consolidate and stabilize” the system which his government had built up since 1949.144 As a consequence, for him the presumed electoral advantages to be gained by continued good ties to the expellee lobby far outweighed the uncertain foreign policy benefits which an opening toward Eastern Europe might yield—particularly once the opening in question had generated unexpectedly vicious reactions in the expellee camp. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 245

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how grievance groups sustain power and what happens when their grievance loses salience — here the voter base calculation keeps the expellee lobby influential. — connects to: Expellee organizations supported rigid indefinite continuation of Ostpolitik non-recognition policy. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 53; Adenauer avoided an Ostpolitik toward Poland chiefly out of fear of upsetting expellee leaders. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 134; Expellee leaders sought direct representation in Ostpolitik negotiations after unifying in 1958. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 185 (+2 more)

Related

• Adenauer avoided an Ostpolitik toward Poland chiefly out of fear of upsetting expellee leaders. (similarity 0.85)
• Expellee-organization opposition, not state-interest reasoning, drove Adenauer’s Ostpolitik reversals. (similarity 0.84)
• Expellee organizations supported rigid indefinite continuation of Ostpolitik non-recognition policy. (similarity 0.84)
• Expellee leaders sought direct representation in Ostpolitik negotiations after unifying in 1958. (similarity 0.83)
• Adenauer’s long tenure institutionalized expellee groups as de facto veto holders. (similarity 0.82)
• Adenauer weaponized expellee grievances to stall reunification and extract concessions (similarity 0.82)
• Electoral competition over expellee voters locked parties into rigid Cold War stances. (similarity 0.81)
• Adenauer backed the expellee cause mainly to preempt social unrest. (similarity 0.81)
• Adenauer supported expellee demands instrumentally to shore up his Western policy, not from conviction. (similarity 0.80)
• Expellee groups could veto policy options but not shape policy positively (similarity 0.80)
• Main parties competed for leadership over the expellee constituency for instrumental reasons. (similarity 0.80)
• Adenauer publicly endorsed the expellees’ revisionist territorial claims. (similarity 0.79)
• Expellee organizations claimed a veto role over East policy. (similarity 0.79)