Weimar Parties --> West German Parties

[The Mikado]

I'd like resident Weimar obsessive Al to post his thoughts here.

My main thought is that the link between Zentrum and the CDU is accurate, but less direct. The CDU is more like a party which saw Zentrum and went "where did those guys/our fathers screw up and what could we do better?" Zentrum was, through and through, a Catholic identity party first and a center-right democratic-ish party second. The CDU could never have been as successful as it ended up if it remained the Catholic Party for Catholics. Even though the CDU always had a strong Catholic element, it was much, much more effective at not being a "Catholic" party and doing well in Protestant areas. The CDU was also much less...democracy-ish and more democratic. Zentrum's politicians were more resistant to the fascists for longer than the rest of the Weimar right and didn't openly question the existence of the Weimar constitution like the entire rest of the right did, but they weren't particularly big believers in the rule of law or the democratic institutions, preferring to rule through emergency decrees through President von Hindenburg. If you wanted to be snarky, you could even date the end of Weimar democracy to 1930 when Brüning just started openly doing an end-run around the Reichstag and just ruling through Hindenburg's decrees rather than passing legislation.