There are three things that describe Adenauer at is best: He was old, he was clean and he had his own will. Those were also the reasons why the Nazis never really trusted him, he was too quick witted for them. He maybe never saw an equal in them. During the Weimarer Republic he recognized them most certainly only as the smaller damage compared to the social democrats and communists.
He started his political career in 1906 and became a Member of the conservative christian Zentrum- Party, a logical choice for an active Catholic. He was Mayor of Köln starting 1917 until 1933 when the NSDAP operatives removed him from his office.
During the war he changed as his living place regularly, but he was captured, after the NSDAP take massive actions against suspicious people following the “Operation Walküre”. The irony of life led to the fact that a communist saved his live in a KZ, from which he managed to escape.
In 1949, at the time of his election to the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany he was already 73 years old. During his fourteen year tenure he gave the people what they wanted and needed most after thirty-five years of never-ending changes and excitement: Stability. (And most ironically is the very fact, that he was two years longer in charge than Hitler and he only gave up because of pressure from his own party the CDU)
What he said would have been done. No one wanted a new German army, but he organized one, because he wanted the country integrated in the NATO. The people worried about the new splinted Germany, he followed a strict West policy and he established Bonn as the new Capitol. Despite that he also managed it to bring home the prisoners of war from Russia.
During this trip he let his colleagues swallow a spoon full of Oil, because he was aware, that the real politics in Russia took place during the drinking.
His political career spanned over sixty years and he was one of the people who helped shaping the new German state.
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