The trajectory of political Catholicism in Germany took a rather odd turn in the aftermath of the Second World War. On one hand, many of the Centre's leading intellectual figures became prominent leaders within the charter generation of the FRG's political establishment. The Adenauer government was able to entrench a good deal of conservative social legislation within the FRG's laws and implement a number of planks of the pre-1933 Centre's social policies. Conversely, the refounded Centre party itself lost massive votes to the CDU and became a regionally-based party in North Rhine Westphalia, the only Land where it could reliably count on enough votes. Unlike the other main pre-1933 political party that became part of the establishment, the SPD, the Centre could not really break out of its Land cul-de-sac.
One of the chief reasons for the decline of the Centre obviously resides in the fact that many of its leading intellectuals and politicians went into the CDU. This was not just limited to the figure of Adenauer, but consisted of a whole panoply of Centre luminaries like Jakob Kaiser, Andreas Hermes, and Theodor Scharmitzel. Not only did the proto-CDU siphon off many of the Centre's leadership, but the process of party formation in the Western zones was largely organized by Catholic figures, some of whom were previously affiliated with the Centre. These activists helped laid the groundwork for licensing the CDU with the occupation governments and paved the way for the CDU to quickly become an umbrella party for very various Christian groups and individuals. This process of denuding the Centre of potential leadership and management talent limited any possibility of a resurgent Centre during the postwar, and the successes of the CDU on a national scale helped cement this process.
But the CDU was not really a stalking horse for a postwar Centre, even though its leadership and the tone of its politics was heavily Catholic. One of the reasons why the CDU's electoral program was so successful was that its meshed well with both preexisting trends in German political Catholicism and the experience of many German Christians both during the Third Reich as well as the immediate postwar years. Much of the CDU's leadership was predisposed to craft an interdenominational party on the basis of their previous experiences with the Centre. Kaiser and other CDU luminaries had memories of the Centre's Turm that ultimately proved counterproductive; while the Centre could accrue Catholic votes, it could not break out of its confessional base. Therefore, the Centre had to govern as a coalition partner, but its explicitly Catholic orientation hamstrung its ability to craft these political alliances. For Kaiser, this pattern of parochial politics was counterproductive for the wider goals of Christianity in Germany. In statements emanating from the Berlin executive, Kaiser would assert that the most important facet of the CDU was its acceptance of all German Christians. Although this acceptance of all German Christian denominations was selective in practice, it was powerful enough that it was able to appeal to mainstream German Protestants and attract figures like Eugen Kogon.
This form of interdenominational umbrella politics was quite powerful and attractive during the postwar milieu. One of the emerging meta-narratives for German Christians was that their principled resistance to Hitler and Nazism was undercut by Hitler's ability to isolate the churches and prevent them from working together. While there are a number of flaws and self-serving exculpatory simplifications in this narrative (as well as instances of genuine resistance- Kogon, for example, was imprisoned in Buchenwald), it reinforced the political idea that German Christianity had to rise above the squabbles of denomination to meet the challenges of the postwar order. In an appeal to the CDU in the Rhineland in November 1945, Karl Zimmermann ambitiously framed the CDU's mission:
A new page of history has turned, whose first lines speak of the necessity of union of the two Christian confessions in politics.
Zimmermann's claim of union contained both the historic sense of mission of the CDU -moving past the Reformation- but also how such a Christian form of politics would restore Germany's moral standing. This redemptive quality of religiously-infused politics found a wide degree of resonance among Catholics and Protestants alike. It simultaneously deflected charges of moral complicity in the crimes of the Third Reich by castigating the latter as fundamentally anti-Christian as well as orientating postwar politics against the rise of communism. The CDU's anticommunism acted as a unifying force for its pan-confessionalism and the actions of the Soviet zone's military government to control the CDU and the churches invited comparisons to Hitler's church policies.
In this environment, it was perhaps inevitable that the Centre would find itself adrift in Stunde Null. Many of the former Centre members found that crafting policies and electioneering was much easier when unburdened by having to tow policies set by Rome. Both during Weimar and the Kaissereich, Centre politicians had to walk a fine line between honoring Papal encyclicals and engaging in practical party politics. Not only was the CDU's pan-confessional politics far more coherent than the prewar Centre's, but the factors behind the CDU's success denuded the postwar Centre of voters to make itself felt on a national level.
Sources
Cary, Noel D. The Path to Christian Democracy: German Catholics and the Party System from Windthorst to Adenauer. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Heidenheimer, Arnold J. Adenauer and the CDU; The Rise of the Leader and the Integration of the Party. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1960.