[2] During his years in power, he worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction of World War II to a central position in Europe with a market-based liberal democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity.

[6] After final school examination (Abitur) in 1894, Adenauer studied law and politics at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Bonn, demonstrating competent but not exceptional academic ability.

[12][13] In the face of the collapse of the old regime and the threat of revolution and widespread disorder in late 1918, Adenauer maintained control in Cologne using his good working relationship with the Social Democrats.

[16] He established a good working relationship with the postwar British military authorities, using them to neutralize the workers' and soldiers' council that had become an alternative base of power for the city's left wing.

According to Albert Speer in his book Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his civic projects, the building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks.

Adenauer was imprisoned for two days after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934; however, on 10 August 1934, maneuvering for his pension, he wrote a ten-page letter to Hermann Göring, the Prussian interior minister.

[29] Adenauer's dismissal by the British contributed much to his subsequent political success and allowed him to pursue a policy of alliance with the occupying Allies in the 1950s without facing charges of being a "sell-out".

[30] In January 1946, Adenauer initiated a political meeting of the future CDU in the British zone in his role as doyen (the oldest man in attendance, Alterspräsident) and was informally confirmed as its leader.

The British had agreed to detach Bonn from their zone of occupation and convert the area to an autonomous region wholly under German sovereignty; the Americans were not prepared to grant the same for Frankfurt.

[39] Adenauer argued the continuation of denazification would "foster a growing and extreme nationalism" as the millions who supported the Nazi regime would find themselves excluded from German life forever.

[49] Adenauer was keen to see Britain join the European Coal and Steel Community as he believed the more free-market British would counterbalance the influence of the more dirigiste French, and to achieve that purpose he visited London in November 1951 to meet with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Further contributing to the crisis atmosphere of 1950 was the bellicose rhetoric of the East German leader Walter Ulbricht, who proclaimed the reunification of Germany under communist rule to be imminent.

[57] Starting in August 1950, Adenauer began to pressure the Western Allies to free all of the war criminals in their custody, especially those from the Wehrmacht, whose continued imprisonment he claimed made West German rearmament impossible.

[60] The Allies were willing to do whatever necessary to get the much-needed German rearmament underway, and in January 1951, General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of NATO forces, issued a statement which declared the great majority of the Wehrmacht had acted honorably.

[61] On 2 January 1951, Adenauer met with the American High Commissioner, John J. McCloy, to argue that executing the Landsberg prisoners would ruin forever any effort at having the Federal Republic play its role in the Cold War.

[68] Contemporary critics accused Adenauer of cementing the division of Germany, sacrificing reunification and the recovery of territories lost in the westward shift of Poland and the Soviet Union with his determination to secure the Federal Republic to the West.

Given the realities of the Cold War, German reunification and recovery of lost territories in the east were not realistic goals as both of Stalin's notes specified the retention of the existing "Potsdam"-decreed boundaries of Germany.

[73] Israeli public opinion was divided over accepting the money, but ultimately the fledgling state under David Ben-Gurion agreed to take it, opposed by political parties such as Herut, who were against such treaties.

When the East German uprising of 1953 was harshly suppressed by the Red Army in June 1953, Adenauer took political advantage of the situation and was handily re-elected to a second term as Chancellor.

The French government then proposed that France, West Germany and Italy jointly develop and produce nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and an agreement was signed in April 1958.

[94] President John F. Kennedy, an ardent foe of nuclear proliferation, considered sales of such weapons moot since "in the event of war the United States would, from the outset, be prepared to defend the Federal Republic.

[98] In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Adenauer fully supported the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt, arguing to his Cabinet that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was a pro-Soviet force that needed to be cut down to size.

[37][107] Riding a wave of popularity from the return of the last POWs from Soviet labor camps, as well as an extensive pension reform, Adenauer led the CDU/CSU to an outright majority, something never previously achieved in a free German election.

[117] Adenauer gave his "explicit and unconditional approval" to the idea of non-aggression pacts in late January 1959, which effectively meant recognising the Oder–Neisse line, since realistically speaking Germany could only regain the lost territories through force.

[125] In his last years in office, Adenauer used to take a nap after lunch and, when he was traveling abroad and had a public function to attend, he sometimes asked for a bed in a room close to where he was supposed to be speaking, so that he could rest briefly before he appeared.

Erhard was in favor of allowing Britain to join to create a trans-Atlantic free trade zone, while Adenauer was for strengthening ties amongst the original founding six nations of West Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy.

[127] In Adenauer's viewpoint, the Cold War meant that the NATO alliance with the United States and Britain was essential, but there could be no deeper integration into a trans-Atlantic community beyond the existing military ties as that would lead to a "mishmash" between different cultural systems that would be doomed to failure.

In October 1962, a scandal erupted when police arrested five Der Spiegel journalists, charging them with espionage for publishing a memo detailing weaknesses in the West German armed forces.

[134] Adenauer ensured a generally free and democratic society, and laid the groundwork for Germany to re-enter the community of nations and to evolve as a dependable member of the Western world.

[149] Adenauer's requiem mass in Cologne Cathedral was attended by a large number of international guests which represented over one hundred countries and organizations :[150] Thereafter his remains were taken upstream to Rhöndorf on the Rhine aboard the Seeadler-class fast attack craft Kondor of the German Navy, with two more, Seeadler and Sperber, as escorts, "past the thousands who stood in silence on both banks of the river".