Thomas Dehler - Internal Party Politics and The Naumann Affair

Internal Party Politics and The Naumann Affair

In the early 1950s, the FDP was divided between different ideologies and strategies. While the "determined liberals", which included Dehler, Reinhold Maier of Württemberg-Baden and others considered the FDP as a strictly liberal party (including both left-wing liberals and national liberals), others conceived of it as a party of "national gathering" which should appeal more to the right-wing of the political spectrum and integrate it into the democratic system. The chief proponent of this strategy was Friedrich Middelhauve of North Rhine-Westphalia.

In this context, Werner Naumann, formerly an aide to the Nazi regime's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and other high-ranking Nazi officials, conspired in an attempt to infiltrate the FDP and gradually turn it into a National-Socialist force, especially targeting the North Rhine-Westphalia branch. They were warmly welcomed by Middelhauve, whose cooperation went so far as to present a German programme, a nationalist manifesto penned by the conspirators at the federal party convention in November 1952. However, the draft was rejected in favour of a liberal manifesto, and the conspirators were arrested by British authorities in January 1953. Before the arrests, the British authorities had consulted three high-ranking FDP politicians - Theodor Heuss as Federal President, Franz Blücher as Vice-Chancellor and federal party chairman, and Dehler as Minister of Justice - who had advised them to intervene. Dehler, alongside of Fritz Neumayer and Alfred Onnen, formed an internal fact-finding committee, which reproached parts of the North Rhine-Westphalia branch.