Two votes short: the vote that saved Willy Brandt, 1972

01The stakes

Brandt had made peace treaties with Moscow and Warsaw. The opposition set out to stop them with a new chancellor

Willy Brandt’s SPD–FDP coalition signed treaties with the Soviet Union on 12 August 1970 and with Poland on 7 December 1970, the heart of his new Ostpolitik. The CDU/CSU opposition under Rainer Barzel rejected them. Brandt’s coalition had started with a majority of only twelve, and as the treaties came up for ratification, members of the SPD and FDP began crossing the floor to the opposition.

On 24 April 1972 Barzel tabled a constructive vote of no confidence (Basic Law, Article 67): the Bundestag would remove Brandt by electing Barzel in his place. It had never been tried. To succeed, he needed a majority of all 496 full-voting members, not just of those who voted.

Black-and-white photograph of Willy Brandt speaking at a lectern with several microphones, members of parliament seated behind him. — Bonn, 28 January 1971: Chancellor Willy Brandt speaks in the Bundestag.Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F033246-0009 / Wegmann, Ludwig / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

249votes Barzel needed: a majority of the 496 members with a full vote

12the coalition’s majority when it took office, before the floor-crossings

11West Berlin members voted as well; their votes did not count towards the result

02Four roll calls, one chamber

496 members. Watch where the votes went

Each dot is one member of the Bundestag with a full vote. Scroll, and the chamber fills in with four roll calls of 1972, each drawn from the official record.

YesNoAbstainedDid not voteMissing from a majority

496membersThe Bundestag, 1972
full-voting members

Member with a full vote

Rainer Barzel, CDU poster, 1972KAS/ACDP 10-001: 1502 / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

24 April 1972 · motion tabled

To replace Brandt, Barzel needed 249 of 496

A constructive vote of no confidence is an election. Barzel had to win the votes of a majority of the members: 249. Abstaining, or not voting at all, counted the same as voting against him.

Source: Bundestag Plenarprotokoll 6/183 · Basic Law, Art. 67

Black-and-white photograph of a long modernist building on the Rhine with a row of flags in front. — The Bundeshaus, BonnBundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F010479-0006 / photographer unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

27 April 1972 · 183rd sitting

260 members voted. 247 of them chose Barzel

The ballot was secret, and most SPD and FDP members did not take part. The count: 247 yes, 10 no, 3 abstentions.

Source: Bundestag Plenarprotokoll 6/183 · bpb chronicle, 27 April 1972

27 April 1972 · 13.22

Two votes short. At least two of Barzel’s own side had failed him

At 13.22 the Bundestag’s president, Kai-Uwe von Hassel, announced that Barzel had not won a majority of the members. The opposition had counted on those votes; they had to have been withheld from inside it.

Source: Bundestag Plenarprotokoll 6/183 · bundestag.de, 2012 · BStU report to the Bundestag, 2013

28 April 1972 · the chancellor’s budget

The next day the chamber split exactly in half

On 28 April the Bundestag voted by roll call on the budget of the chancellor and his office: 247 yes, 247 no, 1 abstention. On a tie a motion falls, so the budget was rejected. Brandt had survived, but he no longer had a majority.

Source: Bundestag Plenarprotokoll 6/184 · bpb chronicle, 27 April 1972 · bpb, Vertrauensfrage 1972

Black-and-white photograph of two delegations of men in dark coats walking out of a building. — Brandt in Erfurt, March 1970Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F031406-0017 / Unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

17 May 1972 · the treaties

The treaties passed, because the opposition abstained

On 17 May the Moscow Treaty was ratified with 248 yes, 10 no and 238 abstentions. The CDU/CSU group had agreed to abstain (KAS). The Warsaw Treaty passed the same day, 248 to 17.

Source: Bundestag Plenarprotokoll 6/187 · KAS, 17 May 1972

22 September 1972 · vote of confidence

Then Brandt asked for a vote of confidence, and lost it on purpose

With the House deadlocked, Brandt asked the Bundestag for its confidence so that he could lose it and call an election. He lost it deliberately: 233 yes, 248 no. He was 16 short of 249.

Source: Bundestag Plenarprotokoll 6/199 · bpb, Vertrauensfrage 1972

03The voters' answer

Seven months later the SPD won the best result in its history. Brandt had his majority back

The country voted again on 19 November 1972. Turnout was 91.1 per cent, a record that still stands. The SPD took 45.8 per cent of the second votes, its best result to date and more than the CDU and CSU together; with the FDP the coalition again held a clear majority of seats. The Bundestag re-elected Brandt on 14 December 1972, and a week later his government signed the Basic Treaty with East Germany, on 21 December 1972.

Second votes, federal election of 19 November 1972 (per cent)

Source: Bundeswahlleiterin, 1972

Black-and-white photograph of Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel smiling behind a cluster of microphones, surrounded by journalists and photographers. — Election night, 19 November 1972: Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel of the FDP make their first statement as winners, in Bonn.Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F038347-0030 / Schaack, Lothar / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Black-and-white photograph of two men seated at a press conference table with microphones. — East Berlin, 21 December 1972: after signing the Basic Treaty, the GDR’s Michael Kohl (right) and the Federal Republic’s Egon Bahr answer journalists’ questions.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-L1221-0020 / Hubert Link / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

04The two missing votes

A year later a back-bencher confessed. It took until 2000 to name the second man

On 29 May 1973 Julius Steiner, a CDU member from Baden-Württemberg who had sat in the Bundestag since 1969, said in an interview that he had not voted for Barzel. He then said he had been paid 50,000 DM by Karl Wienand, the SPD group’s parliamentary manager. Wienand denied it all his life. A Bundestag committee of inquiry sat from 15 June 1973 to 27 March 1974 and could not settle it; federal prosecutors closed their case against Steiner in 1975.

The search for the two votes, 1972–2013

Black-and-white portrait of Markus Wolf, grey-haired, in a dark suit. — Markus Wolf, head of the HV A, the Stasi’s foreign intelligence service, from 1952 to 1986, photographed in December 1989. He later wrote that he had paid Steiner 50,000 DM for his abstention.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-1208-421 / Schöps, Elke / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

According to the Federal Prosecutor, Steiner had been in touch with full-time HV A officers since 1970/71 and met them about ten to fifteen times in East Berlin up to 1972/73. BStU report, 2013

Black-and-white photograph of several men in suits talking in a wood-panelled corridor; the man on the left wears heavy glasses. — Bonn, 17 May 1973: Leo Wagner, the CSU’s parliamentary manager (left), with Richard Stücklen and Gerhard Schröder outside the CDU/CSU group’s room in the Bundestag.Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F039716-0006 / Gräfingholt, Detlef / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

The second vote was very probably Leo Wagner’s, for many years the CSU’s parliamentary manager in the Bundestag

In 1980, when a Bonn court convicted him of credit fraud, the investigation found that he had received 50,000 DM from an unknown source in 1972: the same sum the HV A had paid Steiner. BStU report

In November 2000 Der Spiegel reported that the Federal Prosecutor had identified him as the second missing vote, on a tip from a former MfS officer. The Stasi Records report of 2013 judges that Wagner “very probably” swung the vote as a bribed member; the Stasi’s foreign service opened a file on him only in December 1975, years afterwards. Wagner always denied it.

The Stasi’s own files hold nothing on it. Honecker said it out loud

“Not one document has been found in the MfS archive that sheds light on what happened then and shows the MfS as the instigator.” So the Stasi Records report to the Bundestag concluded in 2013. What is known comes from Steiner’s confession, the inquiry, the prosecutors’ spy trials of the 1990s and the memories of those involved. But a few weeks after the vote, in Bucharest, Erich Honecker told Romania’s leader Nicolae Ceaușescu:

“Shortly before the no-confidence vote the CDU/CSU brought in the Bundestag, we took certain measures to support the Brandt government.”Erich Honecker to Nicolae Ceaușescu, May 1972; minutes of the conversation, SED archive, quoted in the BStU report. Our translation.

Colour photograph of a grey multi-storey office building behind a forecourt. — Haus 1 of the former Stasi headquarters in Berlin-Lichtenberg, now the Stasimuseum, 2015.Angela Monika Arnold (=44Pinguine), 2015. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.5.

Panoramic photograph of long rows of grey shelving packed with files and boxes. — A depot of the Stasi Records Archive in Berlin-Lichtenberg, 2018. No document on the operation of April 1972 has been found in its files.Maximilian Schönherr / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

05Ten years later

The opposition finally won a constructive vote in 1982. It is still the only one that has ever succeeded

On 1 October 1982 the Bundestag replaced Helmut Schmidt with Helmut Kohl: the Union achieved what it had failed to do in 1972. The Bundestag has removed a chancellor this way only once (bpb). The full line of chancellors is in Germany’s federal chancellors.

Colour portrait of Helmut Schmidt. — Helmut Schmidt, July 1977.Jack Kightlinger, 1977. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Colour portrait of Helmut Kohl. — Helmut Kohl, 1996.Christian Lambiotte, 1996. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0.

Bonn · 27 April 1972

The first attempt to replace a West German chancellor failed by two votes, and at least one of them had been bought in East Berlin.

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Rainer Barzel fell two votes short of toppling Willy Brandt. The Stasi had bought at least one of them, very probably both