West German federal election, 1949

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The issue is that the pre-1930s German liberal parties - one of which was in any case highly conservative - were part of the same electoral camp (i.e. not Socialist, not Catholic) as the Nazis. And that's where their voters stampeded to after the Depression hit. So, fast forward to the late 1940s and there's a new party in the German Liberal tradition, and it is part of a new party system that is a) being carefully watched over by the Allied Powers and b) dominated by the SPD and the Zentrum (even if it had been desectarianised and rechristened as the CDU). Given that, it's only natural that many ex-Nazis found the FDP to be a rather congenial option, all things considered.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The FDP didn't have a "Libertarian" platform back then. It had a Liberal (and thus sort of Libertarian) minority wing and a Nationalist majority wing.

And I seem to remember that parts of the various even more overtly so parties (i.e. those parts that didn't head down the overtly neo-Nazi track) ended up joining the FDP in the 50s.