[1] This was the first West German federal election to take place in the Saarland, which–as Saar protectorate–had been a separate entity under French control between 1946 and 1956.

[1] Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had some solid advantages over his Social Democratic Party (SPD) opponent, Erich Ollenhauer; West Germany had become fully sovereign in 1955 and The Law on Pension Reform (backdated to 1 January 1957) was enormously popular when passed in the spring of 1957, while the economy had been growing on average 7% per year since 1953 in part due to young, skilled and highly educated workers immigrating from East Germany keeping productivity high and earnings growth low.

On 12 April eighteen physicists from the Max Planck Institute released the Göttingen Manifesto calling on West Germany to not produce, test or use nuclear weapons.

The row continued, having been fuelled by an aggressive note from the Soviet Union in April and ended at the NATO Spring conference in May.

The 1957 election was the last time that a right-wing populist party would return members to the Bundestag until Alternative for Germany's entrance in 2017.