Solidarity

Solidarity (German: Solidarität) was a Westphalian political party that held power between 1946 and 1950. It was formed shortly after the country's foundation in 1946 to support the policies of Westphalia's first President, Erich von Manstein, and to effect the reconstruction of a region that had been shattered by World War II. Its policies were broadly authoritarian, nationalistic, and conservative, though it avoided emulating the policies of the Nazi Party, which had controlled Germany between 1932 and 1945 and driven the country headlong into warfare and ruin.

Solidarity renominated Manstein and his Vice President, Eugen Gerstenmaier, for a second term in 1950. The party would later support President Manstein's plan to suspend the election of 1950 and declare martial law, but when Manstein was assassinated by bomb on June 6 of that year, the blast wiped out Solidarity's central leadership in the Westphalian legislature, sending the party into disarray.

Manstein was succeeded as President by Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen was rather more interested in ruling as an autocrat than Manstein, and had little use for a formal political party to develop his policies. When elections were finally held in 1956, Gehlen's supporters had reformed into the German Liberty Party, which held similar policies to those of Solidarity, but with an autocratic tinge that supported concentrating more power into the hands of the executive.