Office of the Historian

195. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon1

Washington, March 15, 1971.

SUBJECT

  • Berlin Elections

The Social Democrats barely held on to their absolute majority in yesterday’s Berlin elections.2 They will have just over 50% of the vote and lose approximately 8 seats in the city parliament. Losses for the SPD had been expected, but not quite of this proportion. In the last election the SPD had approximately 57% of the vote. The reasons for the losses are partly the lackluster character of Mayor Schuetz, but also, significantly, the dissatisfaction of the Berlin population because of continued Communist harassment, which the SPD had promised would be likely to be reduced because of its Eastern policy.

The FDP picked up a few percentage points and probably two seats in the parliament, and the present SPD/FDP coalition will therefore probably continue, although there had been some pre-election suggestion of a coalition of all the three major parties. The CDU picked up approximately five percentage points in the voting and probably also seven seats in the parliament.

The election outcome in Berlin thus follows the trend established previously in German local elections during the last year,3 with the SPD [Page 580] steadily losing ground, the FDP picking up small percentages and the CDU picking up substantially. Still, for the moment, the effect on the policy of the Bonn coalition, particularly regarding the East, will probably not be large. The coalition has already reduced to some extent the momentum of its policy toward the East.

There are two additional local elections in Germany this Spring, in both of which the general trends as now again illustrated by the Berlin election are expected to be confirmed.4 However, it appears for the time being the Bonn coalition is not in danger of being voted out of office as a result of these elections. A more serious threat to its survival is the potential disaffection of FDP members over agricultural policy, which periodically leads to threats of resignation from the government of individual FDP members.

We will do a further analysis of the Berlin election when more detailed results of the voting have come in.5

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 691, Country Files, Europe, Germany (Berlin), Vol. III. Confidential. Butterfield stamped the memorandum indicating that the President had seen it.↩
  2. Kissinger and Nixon discussed the results of the election in Berlin by telephone on March 15. The transcript records the following exchange: “K: Brandt’s party took a clobbering in Berlin. N: What? That’s his city. That’s amazing. K: They still have a majority but this used to be a city he dominated. N: It does indicate some concern about his policies. K: Right. It will make the Soviets more eager to use our channel. N: Right.” (Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box 366, Telephone Conversations, Chronological File) In a March 15 intelligence brief to Rogers, Cline assessed the result as follows: “The spanking which West Berlin voters administered to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on March 14—a drop of 6.5 percentage points as compared with the 1967 Berlin election—will undoubtedly cause Chancellor Brandt and other party leaders some concern because it extends the series of setbacks that the SPD has suffered in state elections since taking over the government in Bonn. However, the loss in Berlin is not sufficient to threaten internal stability or the parliamentary position of the Federal Government, nor does it constitute a serious blow to Brandt’s Eastern policy.” (National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 14 GER W)↩
  3. For an analysis of the June 1970 elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, and the Saarland, see Document 90. Regarding the November 1970 elections in Hesse and Bavaria, see footnote 2, Document 133.↩
  4. In a memorandum to the President on March 22, Kissinger reported: “As expected the Christian Democrats (CDU) won an absolute majority in the [March 21]Rhineland-Palatinate regional elections. The Social Democrats also made gains at the expense of the smaller parties. Another regional election will be held later this year [April 25] in Schleswig-Holstein.” (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 32, President’s Daily Briefs, March 15–31, 1971)↩
  5. No further analysis from the NSC staff to the President on the Berlin elections has been found.↩