Kurt Schumacher

During the remainder of Adenauer's first term in office, Schumacher continued to oppose his government, but the rapid rise in German prosperity, the intensification of the Cold War and Adenauer's increasing success in getting Germany accepted in the international community all worked to undermine Schumacher's position. The SPD began to have serious doubts about going into another election with Schumacher as leader, particularly after he had a stroke in December 1951. They were spared having to deal with this dilemma when Schumacher died suddenly in August 1952.

Schumacher wanted a new constitution with a strong national presidency since he was confident that he would occupy that post. However, the first draft of the 1949 Grundgesetz provided for a federal system with a weak national government, as was favoured both by the Allies and the CDU. Schumacher refused to give way and eventually, the Allies, keen to get the new German state functioning in the face of the Soviet challenge, conceded some of Schumacher's demands. The new federal government would be dominant over the states although the president would have limited powers.

However, Schumacher met his match in Konrad Adenauer, the former mayor of Cologne, whom the Americans, not wanting to see socialism of any kind in Germany, were grooming for leadership. Adenauer united most of the prewar German conservatives into a new party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Schumacher campaigned throughout 1948 and 1949 for a united socialist Germany and particularly for the nationalisation of heavy industry, whose owners he blamed for funding the Nazis' rise to power. When the occupying powers opposed his ideas, he denounced them. Adenauer opposed socialism on principle and also argued that the quickest way to get the Allies to restore self-government to Germany was to co-operate with them.

In January 1946, the British and the Americans allowed the SPD to reform itself as a national party, with Schumacher as leader. As the only SPD leader who had spent the whole Nazi period in Germany without collaborating, he had enormous prestige. He was certain that his right to lead Germany would be recognised by both the Allies and the German electorate.

Further, the onset of the Cold War, particularly the behaviour of the Soviets and the German communists in the Soviet Zone, produced an antisocialist reaction in Germany as elsewhere. The SPD would very plausibly have won an election in 1945, but the tide had turned against it by 1949. That came even as the SPD became increasingly critical of the new East German government. Schumacher was especially critical and once called the communists "red-painted fascists". Schumacher attempted a heavy distinction in the public consciousness between his vision of "democratic socialism" and the realities in East Germany but still found his party partially damaged by association.

In 1943, when Schumacher was near death, his brother-in-law succeeded in persuading a Nazi official to have him released into his custody. Schumacher was arrested again in late 1944 and was in Neuengamme concentration camp when the British arrived in April 1945.

Schumacher was staunchly anti-Nazi. In a Reichstag speech on 23 February 1932, he excoriated Nazism as "a continuous appeal to the inner swine in human beings" and stated the movement had been uniquely successful in "ceaselessly mobilizing human stupidity". Schumacher was arrested in July 1933, two weeks before the SPD was banned, and was severely beaten in prison. He spent the next ten years in concentration camps at Heuberg, Kuhberg, Flossenbürg and Dachau. The camp at Dachau was intended for people whom the Nazis wanted to keep alive, and the fact that he was a disabled ex-service man gained him some leniency.

Schumacher was elected to the state legislature, the Württemberg Landtag in 1924. In 1928, he became the SPD leader in the state. When the National Socialists rose to prominence, Schumacher helped organise socialist militias to oppose them. In 1930, he was elected to the national legislature, the Reichstag. In August 1932, he was elected to the SPD leadership group. At 38, he was youngest SPD member of the Reichstag.

He returned to his law and political studies in Halle, Leipzig and Berlin from which he graduated in 1919.

Inspired by Eduard Bernstein, Schumacher became a dedicated socialist and in 1918 joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He led ex-servicemen in forming Workers and Soldiers Councils in Berlin during the revolutionary days following the fall of the German Empire but opposed various attempts by Communist groups to seize power. In 1920, the SPD sent him to Stuttgart to edit the party's newspaper there, the Schwäbische Tagwacht.

Kurt Schumacher was born in Kulm in West Prussia (now Chełmno in Poland), the son of a small businessman who was a member of the liberal German Free-minded Party and deputy in the municipal assembly. The young man was a brilliant student, but when the First World War broke out in 1914, he immediately abandoned his studies and joined the German Army. In December, at Bielawy west of Łowicz in Poland, he was so badly wounded that his right arm had to be amputated. After contracting dysentery, he was finally discharged from the army and was decorated with the Iron Cross Second class.

Kurt Schumacher was born on October 13, 1895 in Kulm, West Prussia, German Empire as Curt Ernst Carl Schumacher.