AHC/WI: Alternate Successor to Adenauer?

[Nanwe]

In 1963, Konrad Adenauer was succeeded as West German Chancellor by Ludwig Erhardt. Erhardt had been Adenauer's successful Economy Minister since 1949, and was seen as the father of the German economic miracle of the post-war era. He was also far more anglophile and anti-EEC, francophobe than Adenauer had been, which meant that the relations between the two countries worsened while Erhardt became an important ally to Britain within the EEC as it tried to enter it.

Now, say that for whatever reason Adenauer or the CDU/CSU decide that someone else should succeed Adenauer, who could it be and how could that happen?

 

[Byzantion]

In 1963, Konrad Adenauer was succeeded as West German Chancellor by Ludwig Erhardt. Erhardt had been Adenauer's successful Economy Minister since 1949, and was seen as the father of the German economic miracle of the post-war era. He was also far more anglophile and anti-EEC, francophobe than Adenauer had been, which meant that the relations between the two countries worsened while Erhardt became an important ally to Britain within the EEC as it tried to enter it.

Now, say that for whatever reason Adenauer or the CDU/CSU decide that someone else should succeed Adenauer, who could it be and how could that happen?

Former secretary of defense Franz-Joseph Strauss(CSU) maybe if the SPIEGEL-affair didn't happen and he didn't have to leave his office.

 

[Politibrit]

Former secretary of defense Franz-Joseph Strauss(CSU) maybe if the SPIEGEL-affair didn't happen and he didn't have to leave his office.

I don't know a great deal about the coalition dynamic, but is it really plausible that the CDU could endorse a CSU candidate for Chancellor when they possess a minority of the union's combined MPs? Certainly in other countries where similar arrangements exist between parties it is hard to see something like that happening. And wasn't Strauss regarded as being pretty far on the right? I'm not sure the CDU would want such a radical shift in direction when they had so much success sticking to the centre.

 

[David T]

How about "the other" Gerhard Schröder? https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...omes-chancellor-of-the-frg-not-a-dbwi.390602/

 

[SlideAway]

I don't know a great deal about the coalition dynamic, but is it really plausible that the CDU could endorse a CSU candidate for Chancellor when they possess a minority of the union's combined MPs? Certainly in other countries where similar arrangements exist between parties it is hard to see something like that happening. And wasn't Strauss regarded as being pretty far on the right? I'm not sure the CDU would want such a radical shift in direction when they had so much success sticking to the centre.

I don’t know if it could’ve happened in the 1960s but the CDU has twice backed CSU figures as chancellor candidates for their coalition: Strauss himself in 1980 and Edmund Stoiber in 2002.