Although the BHE sought from the outset to reach out not only to displaced persons but also to other target groups, such as victims of the bombing campaign, those affected by the currency reform, or civil servants dismissed for political reasons after 1945 – all of whom were referred to in the party’s name by the addition ‘Entrechtete’ – it was, first and foremost, a party for displaced persons. This focus on their interests was the reason for the party’s initially rapid rise: Between 1950 and 1966, the BHE was briefly represented at federal level (1953–1955), but was involved in forming state governments for a much longer period: in Baden-Württemberg from 1952 to 1964, in Bavaria from 1950 to 1962, in Hesse from 1954 to 1966, in Lower Saxony from 1951 to 1963 and in Schleswig-Holstein from 1950 to 1958. A characteristic feature of the BHE was that its ranks included many former National Socialists, such as the chairs during the founding phase, Waldemar Kraft and Theodor Oberländer. In 1952, the former expressly emphasised that the BHE was the party ‘also of the former Nazis, but not of those who are still Nazis today’ (Winkler, 359). Although the BHE was not, in this respect, a far-right party, it played a central role in bringing an end to denazification measures and in the professional reintegration of individuals with Nazi ties in the early Federal Republic. The BHE’s policy was aimed not only at rapidly improving the living conditions of displaced persons, but also at securing jobs for its supporters through targeted patronage, particularly in public administration. In this respect, the BHE was able to operate successfully not least because, as a result of its predominantly interest-based political orientation, it was not automatically tied to centre-right coalitions. Particularly in Hesse and Lower Saxony, and for a short time in Bavaria too, it supported SPD-led governments, whereby its social policy demands – geared towards the redistribution of wealth from the local population to the displaced persons – formed an ideological bridge, as did the SPD’s initially hostile stance towards Adenauer’s policy towards the West. This pragmatic approach by the BHE had far-reaching consequences, particularly for post-war history in Hesse, where it was only the displaced persons’ party’s willingness to form coalitions over many years that made the SPD the structural majority party for decades. From the outset, one problem for the BHE was that it was unable to compete with the head start enjoyed by the major mainstream parties – particularly those – stemming from the former licensing requirements: In the 1953 federal election, when the party stood nationwide for the first time and entered the Bonn parliament with a (disappointing) 5.9 per cent, only 34 per cent of the displaced persons voted for the BHE. In no Federal State, not even in its strongholds of Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria, did it reach 50 per cent. In the 1957 federal election, when the BHE narrowly failed to reach the threshold with 4.6 per cent – a result that heralded the end of the party – only 26 per cent of displaced persons voted for it; even in its strongholds, it no longer managed to exceed 35 per cent (Bavaria). The BHE’s attempt to counter this trend by presenting itself as a national, bourgeois party for all Germans (hence its renaming in 1952 to the All-German Block/BHE or GB/BHE) failed. This is all the more remarkable given that such an orientation (‘Third Force’) certainly corresponded to the self-image of many members, particularly that of the Sudeten Germans, who were significantly over-represented in the party and who, for the most part, must be counted amongst the ‘national-liberal’ or ‘völkisch’ camp – a group that was politically homeless in the early Federal Republic and predominantly organised within the Witiko League. It succeeded neither in significantly expanding its own electorate to include locals, nor in establishing itself permanently within a national bourgeois bloc alongside competing bourgeois or right-wing parties. The BHE’s participation in Adenauer’s second government (1953–1955) proved to be a mistake, as it enabled the Chancellor to split the parliamentary group in the Bundestag and thereby permanently weaken the party. Kraft and Oberländer left the BHE in 1955 and later joined the CDU. The merger of the BHE with the German Party (DP), which was also in decline, to form the All-German Party (GDP, known as the GPD from 1966) in April 1961 was, in essence, merely the meagre remnant of once-ambitious plans, which were finally consigned to the scrapheap following the party’s failure in the 1961 Bundestag election (2.8 per cent). This development was exacerbated by the fact that many former DP members soon left the GDP again, thereby reducing it once more to the remnants of the old BHE support base. By 1966, the GDP had lost all its seats in the state parliaments. Since then, the mainstream parties – the CDU, CSU and SPD – had made every effort, with considerable success, to absorb the remaining BHE supporters. Through electoral agreements, four more GDP MPs were elected to the Bundestag in 1965: Heinz Kreutzmann and the federal chairman Hermann Ahrens for the SPD, and Walter Becher and Herbert Prochazka for the CSU. However, they did not form a GDP group but were guests within the parliamentary groups through whose state lists they had been elected; with the exception of Ahrens, they later defected to their respective host parties. This course of action essentially foreshadowed the future fate of the GDP/GPD: by 1969, the party had only around 5,000 members left, meaning it had lost 45,000 (= 90 per cent) of its members within four years, predominantly to the Union parties, and to some extent also to the SPD (particularly in the Hesse regional association). In this way, a number of former National Socialists found acceptance into the mainstream parties, for example the long-standing BHE/GDP federal chairman (1958–1962) and temporary Chairman of the Witiko Federation, Frank Seiboth, who defected to the SPD in 1967 and served as State Secretary in the Hessian Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry until 1974. As for the Union parties, particular mention should be made of Erich Schellhaus, the long-serving Lower Saxony Minister for Displaced Persons, who joined the CDU in 1964.