Editing Willy Brandt (section)

=== Domestic policies ===

==== Brandt's popularity ====
[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F064862-0019, Dortmund, SPD-Parteitag, Willy Brandt.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Brandt talking at an [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|SPD]] meeting in [[Dortmund]], 1983]]

Brandt's predecessor as chancellor, [[Kurt Georg Kiesinger]], had been a member of the Nazi party, and was a more old-fashioned conservative-liberal intellectual. Brandt, having fought the Nazis and having faced down communist Eastern Germany during several crises while he was the mayor of Berlin, became a controversial, but credible, figure in several different factions. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Kiesinger's [[grand coalition]] cabinet, Brandt helped to gain further international approval for West Germany, and he laid the foundation stones for his future ''Neue Ostpolitik''. There was a wide public-opinion gap between Kiesinger and Brandt in the West German polls.

Both men had come to their own terms with the new baby boomer lifestyles. Kiesinger considered them to be "a shameful crowd of long-haired drop-outs who needed a bath and someone to discipline them". On the other hand, Brandt needed a while to get into contact with, and to earn credibility among, the "[[Ausserparlamentarische Opposition]]" (APO) ("the extra-parliamentary opposition"). The students questioned West German society in general, seeking social, legal, and political reforms. The unrest led to a renaissance of right-wing parties in some of the [[Bundesland (Germany)|Bundeslands]]' (German states under the Bundesrepublik) Parliaments.

Brandt, however, represented a figure of change, and he followed a course of social, legal, and political reforms. In 1969, Brandt gained a small majority by forming a coalition with the FDP. In his first speech before the Bundestag as the chancellor, Brandt set forth his political course of reforms ending the speech with his famous words, "Wir wollen mehr Demokratie wagen" (literally: "Let's dare more democracy", or more figuratively, "We want to take a chance on more Democracy"). This speech made Brandt, as well as the Social Democratic Party, popular among most of the students and other young West German baby-boomers who dreamed of a country that would be more open and more colorful than the frugal and still somewhat-authoritarian Bundesrepublik that had been built after World War II. However, Brandt's ''Neue Ostpolitik'' lost him a large part of the German refugee voters from East Germany, who had been significantly pro-SPD in the postwar years.
{{Social democracy sidebar |expanded=People}}
{{Socialism sidebar}}