In domestic politics, the social-liberal coalition intended to promote a vast work of modernization and liberal and social reforms, from education to civil rights to social security. It aimed, with success, to overcome the rift that occurred at the end of the sixties between the official Germany and the young generation, assimilating the valid elements of the dispute and responding to the new request for participation (granting the vote to eighteen-year-olds). The Christian Democratic opposition, however, chose for its attack, inspired by the mirage of a rapid return to power, the terrain of Ostpolitik, denounced both as technically badly conducted and as erroneous in strategy and illusory in its premises. However, under the conflicting pressures of intransigents like Strauss and possibilists like Leisler-Kiep, he oscillated between the strategy of global conflict to the bitter end and the realism of the concern not to block diplomatic paths for the future, with a view to returning to the responsibilities of government. Thus, by abstaining, the majority of the CDU gave up preventing the ratification of the Moscow and Warsaw treaties (May 17, 1972). Having succeeded in depriving the government of its parliamentary majority, detaching some deputies, and encouraged by the successes obtained in regional elections, the CDU-CSU attempted, with a constructive vote of no confidence, to regain the chancellery. The stalemate, which instead resulted in a parity of votes, was overcome with the self-dissolution of the Bundestag and the early elections (November 19, 1972) conducted in a climate of strong polarization. By giving the Social Democrats a relative majority for the first time and making the Liberals take an unexpected leap forward, the elections constituted a popular ratification of the Ostpolitik is Brandt’s personal triumph. At the same time they revealed a complex reorganization of the German electorate in its geographical and social dimensions and the ability of the SPD (and to some extent of the FDP) to grasp its new chances.
However, according to RECIPESINTHEBOX.COM, the parable of the Brandt government descended rapidly: he was reproached for the failure to carry out the reforms, the inflationary push, but above all the weakness of leadership, especially in his own party, torn by contrasts of people and tendencies, under the pressure of the left, strengthened by the contribution of the 1968 generation, strongly ideologizing. The discovery of an East German spy in the closest entourage dealt the final blow to the frayed Brandt leadership. In May 1974 he replaced him at the chancellery H. Schmidt (v.), Which renewed the coalition with the liberals. Elected federal president, the leader Liberal Scheel, Genscher, former Minister of the Interior, succeeded him as Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister. In a Germany shaken by the Yom Kippur war and the energy crisis, fearful of domestic and international terrorism, worried about trends in some neighboring countries, traversed by a conservative backlash, it would have been difficult even for the standard bearer of pragmatism and governmental efficiency within the SPD, which is the Schmidt, re-establish the quotations of his party. Furthermore, he had to deal with a majority against the Bundesrat strengthened by some regional elections in favor of the opposition, while the Constitutional Court inflicted another reverse on him with the rejection of the liberalization of abortion. The decisive problem, however, was that of dominating the overwhelming inflation-recession mechanism set in motion by the oil crisis in 1973: a policy of hard sacrifices (taxes, reduction of public employment, etc.), together with the countercyclical use of public spending., made it possible, at the cost of over a million unemployed, to overcome the inflationary threat, lowering its rate below 6%, and to prepare the conditions for the recovery, which emerged in 1976. In the collapse of the international monetary system, European, the BRD constitutes the central nucleus of the “snake”, substantially a zone of the mark. redressement of the Schmidt government has made the BRD reach a higher international weight than ever. Its foreign policy is characterized by a management without illusions of the Ostpolitik, determined to oppose the recurrent attempts to erode the position of Berlin; a strong commitment in favor of a reorganization of the international monetary and economic system; by a growing role in NATO, also in the Mediterranean sector, and in the European Community, carried out in close agreement with Paris and London, both in terms of institutional and political development and economic policy. In the elections of October 1976, the social-liberal coalition managed, to a very close extent, to retain the majority in the Bundestag.. Worn out by centrifugal tendencies, especially in the SPD, and pressed by the advance of the Christian Democratic opposition, the Schmidt-Genscher government (whose composition was barely modified) had to face increasingly serious internal problems from the beginning (social security system to be rehabilitated, unemployment, budget and fiscal policy, energy policy); unsure of its strategy following the failed victory, the opposition for its part is going through a clear crisis, the most striking symptom of which is the persistent discussion on the possible break of Strauss’s Christian socialists with the CDU and on the constitution of a fourth party nationwide.
