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Adenauer's Christian Democrats steered West Germany into a close alliance with the West and presided over the great economic boom—the Wirt-schaftswunder—that brought unparalleled prosperity to the country. The Socialists meanwhile remained locked in the "30% ghetto," unable to broaden their support beyond workers and left-wing intellectuals. The Socialists' leader, Dr. Kurt Schumacher, was strangely out of tune with the political realities of West Germany. He favored neutrality at a time when West Germans wanted the Western Allies to protect them from the Russians; he called for a tightly controlled economy at a time when Germany was just emerging from the tightly centralized direction of the Nazi period. At a time of great social flux, Schumacher retained the party's unfortunate old image of proletarians who were not salonfähig—fit to be brought into the parlor.
Dumping Marx
Willy Brandt also felt locked into a more personal ghetto. Though the Socialists ruled West Berlin, the fact that he was not a native Berliner handicapped his rise within the party. As he turned 40, Brandt was an extremely frustrated man. Then, in the course of one night in 1956, Brandt became the hero of West Berlin. The occasion was a protest rally in West Berlin against the Soviet suppression of Hungary. A crowd of nearly 100,000 West Berliners was headed toward the Soviet sector of Berlin at Brandenburg Gate, crying "Russians, get out!" Brandt commandeered a sound truck and managed to divert most of the marchers to the memorial for the victims of Communist tyranny, far back from the sector borders. But even as Brandt addressed the crowd, word came that a small breakaway group had pushed through police lines near the gate and was advancing toward the East German guards. Rushing to the scene, Brandt averted a certain blood bath by persuading the column to turn back. His plucky courage impressed even the self-assured Berliners, to whom he suddenly became "unser Willy"—our Willy. The following year Brandt was elected governing mayor of West Berlin.
Brandt's victory coincided with a changing mood within the Socialist Party in West Germany. Restless Socialists, less interested in rigid dogmas than a chance to get into the parlor, demanded a change. Under the guidance of Herbert Wehner, an irascible former Communist who is the party's chief strategist, the Socialists at a crucial meeting at Bad Godesberg in 1959 dumped their Marxist ballast and sought to transform themselves from a party of the workers into one of the people. Instead of the old dogma about class warfare and the rule of the proletariat, the Socialists endorsed a mixed economy, the profit motive, parliamentary democracy and a close military alliance with the West. They even settled their old feud with the church. "Socialism," proclaimed the Bad Godesberg platform, "is not a substitute for religion."
Brandt became the standard-bearer for the revitalized party. In the 1961 elections, he waged a U.S.-style campaign, stomping the country and pumping hands, that raised the S.P.D. share of the vote to 36.2%. In 1965, the Socialists' showing rose to 39.3%, but the C.D.U.