The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
between 1918 and 1933, an underground
resistance movement
A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objective ...
in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, and a minor party in
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
in the postwar period until it was banned by the
Federal Constitutional Court
The Federal Constitutional Court (german: link=no, Bundesverfassungsgericht ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme constitutional court for the Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law () of Germany. Since its in ...
in 1956.
Founded in the aftermath of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
by
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
s who had opposed the war, the party joined the
Spartacist uprising
The Spartacist uprising (German: ), also known as the January uprising (), was a general strike and the accompanying armed struggles that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the November Revolutio ...
of January 1919, which sought to establish a
soviet republic in Germany. After the defeat of the uprising, and the murder of KPD leaders
Rosa Luxemburg,
Karl Liebknecht
Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag from ...
and
Leo Jogiches
Leon "Leo" Jogiches (Russian: Лев "Лео" Йогихес; 17 July 1867 – 10 March 1919), also commonly known by the party name Jan Tyszka, was a Polish Marxist revolutionary and politician, active in Poland, Lithuania, and Germany.
Jogiche ...
, the party temporarily steered a more moderate, parliamentarian course under the leadership of
Paul Levi
Paul Levi (11 March 1883 – 9 February 1930) was a German communist and social democratic political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. After being ...
. During the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote and was represented in the national and in state parliaments. Under the leadership of
Ernst Thälmann
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann (; 16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was a German communist politician, and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933.
A committed Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist, Thälmann played a major r ...
from 1925 the party became thoroughly Stalinist and loyal to the leadership of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, and from 1928 it was largely controlled and funded by the
Comintern in Moscow. Under Thälmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany.
Saskia Esken has been the ...
, which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as "
social fascists
Social fascism (also socio-fascism) was a theory that was supported by the Communist International (Comintern) and affiliated communist parties in the early 1930s that held that social democracy was a variant of fascism because it stood in the way ...
"; the KPD considered all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be "
fascists
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and th ...
".
The KPD was banned in the Weimar Republic one day after the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
emerged triumphant in the
German elections in 1933. It maintained an underground organization in Nazi Germany, and the KPD and groups associated with it led the internal resistance to the Nazi regime, with a focus on distributing
anti-Nazi
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were ...
literature. The KPD suffered heavy losses between 1933 and 1939, with 30,000 communists executed and 150,000 sent to
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
.
The party was revived in divided postwar West and
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
and won seats in the first (West German Parliament) elections in 1949, but its support collapsed following the establishment of the
German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
in the former
Soviet Occupation Zone
The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
in the east. The KPD was banned as extremist in West Germany in 1956 by the
Constitutional Court
A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ...
. In 1969, some of its former members founded an even smaller fringe party, the
German Communist Party
The German Communist Party (german: Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, ) is a communist party in Germany. The DKP supports left positions and was an observer member of the European Left. At the end of February 2016 it left the European party.
His ...
(DKP), which remains legal, and multiple tiny splinter groups claiming to be the successor to the KPD have also subsequently been formed.
In East Germany, the party was merged, by Soviet decree, with remnants of the
Social Democratic Party
The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology.
Active parties
Fo ...
to form the
Socialist Unity Party (SED) which ruled East Germany from 1949 until 1989–1990; the merger was opposed by many Social Democrats, many of whom fled to the western zones. After the
fall of the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain and one of the series of eve ...
, reformists took over the SED and renamed it the
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS); in 2007 the PDS subsequently merged with the SPD splinter faction
WASG to form .
Early history
Before the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
the
Social Democratic Party
The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology.
Active parties
Fo ...
(SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the world's most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
party, by 1914 it had become in practice a reformist party. In 1914 the SPD members of the
Reichstag voted in favour of the war. Left-wing members of the party, led by
Karl Liebknecht
Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag from ...
and
Rosa Luxemburg, strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split, with the leftists forming the
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, USPD) was a short-lived political party in Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The organization was establish ...
(USPD) and the more radical
Spartacist League. The League formed the core of what would become the KPD. In November 1918,
revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
broke out across Germany. The KPD held its founding congress in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
from 30 December 1918 to 1 January 1919, in the reception hall of the City Council. Rosa Luxemburg was initially against the setting up of a new party but joined the KPD after her initial hesitation. Apart from the Spartacists, another dissent group of socialists called the
International Communists of Germany
International Communists of Germany (Internationalen Kommunisten Deutschlands; IKD) was a Communist political grouping founded in November 1918 during the German Revolution. The small party was, together with the better known Spartacist League, ...
, also dissenting members of the Social Democratic party but mainly located in
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
,
Bremen
Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...
and
Northern Germany
Northern Germany (german: link=no, Norddeutschland) is a linguistic, geographic, socio-cultural and historic region in the northern part of Germany which includes the coastal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lower Saxony an ...
, joined the KPD. The
Revolutionary Shop Stewards, a network of dissenting socialist trade unionists centered in Berlin, were also invited to the congress, but ultimately did not join the KPD because they deemed the founding congress too
syndicalist
Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of pr ...
-leaning.
There were seven main reports given at the founding congress:
* "Economical Struggles" – by Paul Lange
* Greeting speech – by
Karl Radek
* "International Conferences" – by
Hermann Duncker
* "Our Organization" – by
Hugo Eberlein
Max Albert Hugo Eberlein (4 May 1887 – 16 October 1941) was a German Communist politician. He took part of the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany (Dec–Jan 1919), and then in the First Congress of the Comintern (2–6 March 19 ...
* "Our Program" – by
Rosa Luxemburg
* "The Crisis of the USPD" – by
Karl Liebknecht
Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag from ...
* "The National Assembly" – by
Paul Levi
Paul Levi (11 March 1883 – 9 February 1930) was a German communist and social democratic political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. After being ...
These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartacist League, but members of the
International Communists of Germany
International Communists of Germany (Internationalen Kommunisten Deutschlands; IKD) was a Communist political grouping founded in November 1918 during the German Revolution. The small party was, together with the better known Spartacist League, ...
also took part in the discussions.
Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a revolution in Germany, and attempts to bring down the interim government and create a revolutionary situation continued during 1919 and 1920. Germany's SPD leadership, which had come to power after the fall of the monarchy, was vehemently opposed to a socialist revolution. With the new regime terrified of a
Bolshevik Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks, Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was ...
in Germany, Defense Minister
Gustav Noske
Gustav Noske (9 July 1868 – 30 November 1946) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as the first Minister of Defence (''Reichswehrminister'') of the Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1920. Noske has been a cont ...
recruited former right-wing military officers and demobilized veterans and formed various ''
Freikorps
(, "Free Corps" or "Volunteer Corps") were irregular German and other European military volunteer units, or paramilitary, that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively fought as mercenary or private armies, regar ...
'' and
anti-communist
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
paramilitaries
A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...
to violently suppress all revolutionary activity. During the failed
Spartacist uprising
The Spartacist uprising (German: ), also known as the January uprising (), was a general strike and the accompanying armed struggles that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the November Revolutio ...
in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated the uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the ''Freikorps'' and murdered.
At its peak, the party had 350–400,000 members in 1920.
The party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the much smaller
Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD).
Following the assassination of
Leo Jogiches
Leon "Leo" Jogiches (Russian: Лев "Лео" Йогихес; 17 July 1867 – 10 March 1919), also commonly known by the party name Jan Tyszka, was a Polish Marxist revolutionary and politician, active in Poland, Lithuania, and Germany.
Jogiche ...
,
Paul Levi
Paul Levi (11 March 1883 – 9 February 1930) was a German communist and social democratic political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. After being ...
became the KPD's leader. Other prominent members included
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin (; ; ''née'' Eißner ; 5 July 1857 – 20 June 1933) was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights.
Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She then joined the ...
,
Paul Frölich
Paul Frölich (7 August 1884 – 16 March 1953) was a German journalist and left-wing political activist and author, a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, ''Die Rote Fahne.'' A Communist Party deputy ...
,
Hugo Eberlein
Max Albert Hugo Eberlein (4 May 1887 – 16 October 1941) was a German Communist politician. He took part of the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany (Dec–Jan 1919), and then in the First Congress of the Comintern (2–6 March 19 ...
,
Franz Mehring
Franz Erdmann Mehring (27 February 1846 – 28 January 1919) was a German communist historian, literary critic, philosopher, and revolutionary socialist politician who was a senior member of the Spartacus League during the German Revolution of 191 ...
,
August Thalheimer
August Thalheimer (18 March 1884 – 19 September 1948) was a German Marxist activist and theorist.
Early life
He was born in 1884 in Affaltrach, now called Obersulm, Württemberg, Germany in to a Jewish working-class family. He studied at the ...
,
Wilhelm Pieck
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck (; 3 January 1876 – 7 September 1960) was a German communist politician who served as the chairman of the Socialist Unity Party from 1946 to 1950 and as president of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to ...
and
Ernst Meyer. Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and
trade union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
officials. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time.
Weimar Republic years
![Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-P046279, Berlin, Liebknecht-Haus am Bülowplatz](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-P046279%2C_Berlin%2C_Liebknecht-Haus_am_B%C3%BClowplatz.jpg)
Through the 1920s the KPD was racked by internal conflict between radical and moderate factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
and
Grigory Zinoviev in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
. Germany was seen as being of central importance to the struggle for socialism, and the failure of the German revolution was a major setback. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the
Comintern for "indiscipline". Further leadership changes took place in the 1920s. Supporters of the
Left
Left may refer to:
Music
* ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006
* ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016
* "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996
Direction
* Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right
* L ...
or
Right Opposition
The Right Opposition (, ''Pravaya oppozitsiya'') or Right Tendency (, ''Praviy uklon'') in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a conditional label formulated by Joseph Stalin in fall of 1928 in regards the opposition against certain me ...
to the
Stalinist-controlled Comintern leadership were expelled; of these,
Heinrich Brandler
Heinrich Brandler (3 July 1881 – 26 September 1967) was a German communist, trade unionist, politician, revolutionary activist, and political writer. Brandler is best remembered as the head of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the party ...
, August Thalheimer and
Paul Frölich
Paul Frölich (7 August 1884 – 16 March 1953) was a German journalist and left-wing political activist and author, a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, ''Die Rote Fahne.'' A Communist Party deputy ...
set up a splinter
Communist Party Opposition
The Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Opposition)), generally abbreviated as KPO or KPD(O), was a communist opposition organisation established at the end of 1928 and maintaining its existence un ...
in 1928.
During the years of the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, the KPD was the largest Communist party in Europe and was seen as the "leading party" of the
communist movement
The history of communism encompasses a wide variety of ideologies and political movements sharing the core theoretical values of common ownership of wealth, economic enterprise, and property. Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least ...
outside of the Soviet Union. The party abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested
Reichstag elections, with some success.
Fischer and Thälmann leaderships and the united front
A new KPD leadership more favorable to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
was elected in 1923. The party’s left around
Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer (11 December 1895 – 13 March 1961) was an Austrian and German Communist, and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) in 1918. Along with her partner Arkadi Maslow, she led the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) through ...
,
Arkadi Maslow
Arkadi Maslow ; russian: Аркадий Маслов , born Isaak Yefimowich Chemerinsky ; russian: Исаак Ефимович Чемеринский (March 9, 1891 – November 20, 1941) was a communist politician in the German Republic, ...
and
Werner Scholem took leadership of the KPD in 1924;
Ernst Thälmann
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann (; 16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was a German communist politician, and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933.
A committed Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist, Thälmann played a major r ...
was allied to this faction and became a member of the politburo and was appointed
KPD vice-chairman in January 1924. Stalin engineered the Fischer leadership’s removal in August 1925, and installed Thälmann as party chairman.
[
From 1923 to 1928, the KPD broadly followed the ]united front
A united front is an alliance of groups against their common enemies, figuratively evoking unification of previously separate geographic fronts and/or unification of previously separate armies into a front. The name often refers to a political ...
policy developed in the early 1920s of working with other working class and socialist parties to contest elections, pursue social struggles and fight the rising right-wing militias. For example, in 1926 it worked with SPD on a referendum to expropriate the German nobility, together mobilising 14.4 million voters.
The party's first paramilitary wing was the ''Roter Frontkämpferbund
The (, translated as "Alliance of Red Front-Fighters" or "Red Front Fighters' League"), usually called (RFB), was a far-left paramilitary organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the Weimar Republic. It was of ...
'' (Alliance of Red Front Fighters), which was founded in 1924 but banned by the governing Social Democrats in 1929.
By 1927, the party had 130,000 members, of whom 40,000 had been members in 1920. From 1928 onwards (after Stalin reinstated Thälmann as KPD leader against the majority of the KPD central committee in the wake of an embezzlement scandal involving Thälmann's ally John Wittorf
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second ...
[LaPorte, N. (Ed.), & Morgan, K. (2008).]
Kings among their subjects'? Ernst Thälmann, Harry Pollitt and the leadership cult as Stalinization
In N. LaPorte, K. Morgan, & M. Worley (Eds.), ''Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization'', 1917–53 (pp. 124–145). Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230227583_7
), the party followed the Comintern line and received funding from the Comintern. Under Thälmann's leadership, the party was closely aligned with the Soviet leadership headed by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
; Thälmann has been described as "the driving force behind Stalinization in the mid to late 1920s" and "Stalin’s right hand in Germany". After winning control from his former leftist allies, he expelled the party's Right Opposition
The Right Opposition (, ''Pravaya oppozitsiya'') or Right Tendency (, ''Praviy uklon'') in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a conditional label formulated by Joseph Stalin in fall of 1928 in regards the opposition against certain me ...
around Heinrich Brandler
Heinrich Brandler (3 July 1881 – 26 September 1967) was a German communist, trade unionist, politician, revolutionary activist, and political writer. Brandler is best remembered as the head of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the party ...
.
The Third Period and "social fascism"
Aligning with the Comintern's ultra-left
The term ultra-leftism, when used among Marxist groups, is a pejorative for certain types of positions on the far-left that are extreme or uncompromising. Another definition historically refers to a particular current of Marxist communism, where ...
Third Period
The Third Period is an ideological concept adopted by the Communist International (Comintern) at its Sixth World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928. It set policy until reversed when the Nazis took over Germany in 1933.
The Comint ...
, under the slogan "Class against class", the KPD abruptly turned to viewing the Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany.
Saskia Esken has been the ...
(SPD) as its main adversary. In this period, the KPD referred to the SPD as "social fascists". The term social fascism was introduced to the German Communist Party shortly after the Hamburg Uprising
The Hamburg Uprising (german: Hamburger Aufstand) was an insurrection during the Weimar Republic in Germany as part of the so-called German October communist revolution attempt. It was started on 23 October 1923 by one of the most militant sec ...
of 1923 and gradually became ever more influential in the party; by 1929 it was being propagated as a theory. The KPD regarded itself as "the only anti-fascist party" in Germany and held that all other parties in the Weimar Republic were "fascist". After the Nazi electoral breakthrough in the 1930 Reichstag election, the SPD proposed a renewed united front with the KPD against fascism but this was rejected.
In the early 1930s, the KPD cooperated with the Nazis in attacking the social democrats, and both sought to destroy the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
. They also followed an increasingly nationalist course, trying to appeal to nationalist-leaning workers.
The KPD leadership initially first criticised but then supported the 1931 Prussian Landtag referendum
The 1931 Prussian Landtag referendum was an attempt to prematurely dissolve the sitting session of the ''Landtag'' (parliament) of the Weimar German state of Prussia. The referendum, which took place according to Article 6 of the 1920 Prussian ...
, an unsuccessful attempt launched by the far-right Stahlhelm to bring down the social democrat state government of Prussia by means of a plebiscite; the KPD referred to the SA as "working people's comrades" during this campaign.
The KPD maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote. It gained 100 deputies in the November 1932 elections, getting 16% of the vote and coming third. In the presidential election of the same year, its candidate Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%. In this period, while also opposed to the Nazis, the KPD regarded the Nazi Party as a less sophisticated and thus less dangerous fascist party than the SPD, and KPD leader Ernst Thälmann declared that "some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest f social democrats. In February 1932, Thälmann argued that “Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis ill ILL may refer to:
* '' I Love Lucy'', a landmark American television sitcom
* Illorsuit Heliport (location identifier: ILL), a heliport in Illorsuit, Greenland
* Institut Laue–Langevin, an internationally financed scientific facility
* Interlibra ...
arrive more quickly”. In November 1932, the KPD and the Nazis worked together in the Berlin transport workers’ strike.
Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy. For example, the Social Democratic Party criticized the KPD's thesis of "social fascism", and both Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
from the Comintern's Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed ''de facto'' by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet fou ...
and August Thalheimer
August Thalheimer (18 March 1884 – 19 September 1948) was a German Marxist activist and theorist.
Early life
He was born in 1884 in Affaltrach, now called Obersulm, Württemberg, Germany in to a Jewish working-class family. He studied at the ...
of the Right Opposition
The Right Opposition (, ''Pravaya oppozitsiya'') or Right Tendency (, ''Praviy uklon'') in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a conditional label formulated by Joseph Stalin in fall of 1928 in regards the opposition against certain me ...
continued to argue for a united front.[Marcel Bois,]
Hitler wasn't inevitable
, ''Jacobin'' 25 November 2015 Critics believed that the KPD's sectarianism scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the National Socialists
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
.
Thälmann repudiated these allegations, claiming that the right-wing leadership of the SPD rejected and actively worked against the KPD's efforts to form a united front against fascism. After Franz von Papen's government carried out a coup d'état in Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
the KPD called for a general strike and turned to the SPD leadership for joint struggle, but the SPD leaders again refused to cooperate with the KPD.
In 1932, as the party began to shift focus to the fascist threat, the KPD founded the Antifaschistische Aktion
''Antifaschistische Aktion'' () was a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933. It was primarily active as a KPD campaign during the Ju ...
, commonly known as Antifa, which it described as a "red united front
Front may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''The Front'' (1943 film), a 1943 Soviet drama film
* ''The Front'', 1976 film
Music
* The Front (band), an American rock band signed to Columbia Records and active in the 1980s and e ...
under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD". In February 1933, shortly before the end of the Weimar Republic, the KPD proposed a coalition with the SPD against Nazism, which the SPD rejected.
Nazi era
On 27 February, soon after the appointment of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
as chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire and Dutch council communist
Council communism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. Strong in Germany a ...
Marinus van der Lubbe
Marinus van der Lubbe (13 January 1909 – 10 January 1934) was a Dutch communist who was tried, convicted, and executed by the Nazis for setting fire to the German Reichstag building on 27 February 1933. During his trial, the prosecution a ...
was found near the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in a German court in 1933, it was decided that van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done. The following day, Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree
The Reichstag Fire Decree (german: Reichstagsbrandverordnung) is the common name of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (german: Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat) issued by Germ ...
. It suspended the civil liberties enshrined in the Weimar Constitution, ostensibly to deal with Communist acts of violence.
Repression began within hours of the fire, when police arrested dozens of communists. Although Hitler could have formally banned the KPD, he did not do so right away. Not only was he reluctant to chance a violent uprising, but he believed the KPD could siphon off SPD votes and split the left. However, most judges held the KPD responsible for the fire, and took the line that KPD membership was in and of itself a treasonous act. At the March 1933 election, the KPD elected 81 deputies. However, it was an open secret that they would never be allowed to take up their seats; they were all arrested in short order. For all intents and purposes, the KPD was "outlawed" on the day the Reichstag Fire Decree was issued, and "completely banned" as of 6 March, the day after the election.
Shortly after the election, the Nazis pushed through the Enabling Act
An enabling act is a piece of legislation by which a legislative body grants an entity which depends on it (for authorization or legitimacy) the power to take certain actions. For example, enabling acts often establish government agencies to carr ...
, which allowed the cabinet–in practice, Hitler–to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag, effectively giving Hitler dictatorial powers. Since the bill was effectively a constitutional amendment, a quorum
A quorum is the minimum number of members of a deliberative assembly (a body that uses parliamentary procedure, such as a legislature) necessary to conduct the business of that group. According to ''Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised'', the ...
of two-thirds of the entire Reichstag had to be present in order to formally call up the bill. Leaving nothing to chance, Reichstag President Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...
did not count the KPD seats for purposes of obtaining the required quorum. This led historian Richard J. Evans
Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
to contend that the Enabling Act had been passed in a manner contrary to law. The Nazis did not need to count the KPD deputies for purposes of getting a supermajority of two-thirds of those deputies present and voting. However, Evans argued, not counting the KPD deputies for purposes of a quorum amounted to "refusing to recognize their existence", and was thus "an illegal act".[
The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. The most senior KPD leaders were ]Wilhelm Pieck
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck (; 3 January 1876 – 7 September 1960) was a German communist politician who served as the chairman of the Socialist Unity Party from 1946 to 1950 and as president of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to ...
and Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (; 30 June 18931 August 1973) was a German communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later (after spending the years of Nazi rule in ...
, who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout the Nazi period, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure.
KPD leaders purged by Stalin
A number of senior KPD leaders in exile were caught up in Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
's Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
of 1937–1938 and executed, among them Hugo Eberlein
Max Albert Hugo Eberlein (4 May 1887 – 16 October 1941) was a German Communist politician. He took part of the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany (Dec–Jan 1919), and then in the First Congress of the Comintern (2–6 March 19 ...
, Heinz Neumann
Heinz Neumann (6 July 1902 – 26 November 1937) was a German politician from the Communist Party (KPD) and a journalist. He was a member of the Communist International, editor in chief of the party newspaper ''Die Rote Fahne'' and a member of the ...
, Hermann Remmele
Hermann Remmele (15 November 1880 – 7 March 1939) was a German communist politician of the SPD, USPD and KPD. During exile in Moscow he carried the code name ''Herzen'' ( en, "Hearts").
Biography
Early years
Born in Ziegelhausen near H ...
, Fritz Schulte and Hermann Schubert
__NOTOC__
Hermann Cäsar Hannibal Schubert (22 May 1848 – 20 July 1911) was a German mathematician.
Schubert was one of the leading developers of enumerative geometry, which considers those parts of algebraic geometry that involve a finite n ...
, or sent to the gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
, like Margarete Buber-Neumann
Margarete Buber-Neumann (21 October 1901 – 6 November 1989) was a German writer. As a communist, she wrote the memoir ''Under Two Dictators'' about her imprisonment within a Soviet prison, and later a Nazi concentration camp during World War ...
. Still others, like Gustav von Wangenheim
Gustav von Wangenheim (born Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim; 18 February 1895 – 5 August 1975) was a German nobleman, actor, screenwriter and director.
Life
Wangenheim was born Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von W ...
and Erich Mielke
Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (; 28 December 1907 – 21 May 2000) was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security (''Ministerium für Staatsicherheit'' – MfS), better known as the Stasi, from 1957 u ...
(later the head of the Stasi in East Germany), denounced their fellow exiles to the NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
. Willi Münzenberg
Wilhelm "Willi" Münzenberg (14 August 1889, Erfurt, Germany – June 1940, Saint-Marcellin, France) was a German Communist political activist and publisher. Münzenberg was the first head of the Young Communist International in 1919–20 and est ...
, the KPD's propaganda chief, was murdered in mysterious circumstances in France in 1940.
Post-war history
In East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany
The Soviet Military Administration in Germany (russian: Советская военная администрация в Германии, СВАГ; ''Sovyetskaya Voyennaya Administratsiya v Germanii'', SVAG; german: Sowjetische Militäradministrat ...
forced the eastern branch of the SPD to merge with the KPD (led by Pieck and Ulbricht) to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in April 1946.[Eric D. Weitz, ''Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997] Although nominally a union of equals, the SED quickly fell under communist domination, and most of the more recalcitrant members from the SPD side of the merger were pushed out in short order. By the time of the formal formation of the East German state in 1949, the SED was a full-fledged Communist party, and developed along lines similar to other Soviet-bloc communist parties. It was the ruling party in East Germany from its formation in 1949 until 1989. The SPD managed to preserve its independence in Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, forcing the SED to form a small branch in West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin
The Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins, SEW) was a communist party in West Berlin. The party was founded on 24 November 1962, when the West Berlin local organization of the Socialist Unity Pa ...
.
The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7 percent of the vote in the first Bundestag election in 1949. But the onset of the Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
and the subsequent widespread repression of the far-left
Far-left politics, also known as the radical left or the extreme left, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single definition. Some scholars consider ...
soon caused a collapse in the party's support. The reputation of the party had also been damaged by the conduct of the Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
during its occupation of eastern Germany, which included looting
Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or rioting. ...
, political repression, and mass rape
Mass sexual assault is the collective sexual assault of individuals in public by a group. Typically acting under the protective cover of large gatherings, victims have reported being groped, stripped, beaten, bitten, penetrated and raped.
Egy ...
. On orders from Joseph Stalin, the Communist deputies to the Parlamentarischer Rat
The ''Parlamentarischer Rat'' (German for "Parliamentary Council") was the West German constituent assembly in Bonn that drafted and adopted the constitution of West Germany, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, promulgated on 23 Ma ...
refused to sign the BRD Basic Law to avoid recognizing the political legitimacy of West Germany. At the 1953 election the KPD only won 2.2 percent of the total votes and lost all of its seats, never to return. The party was banned in August 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court (german: link=no, Bundesverfassungsgericht ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme constitutional court for the Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law () of Germany. Since its in ...
. The decision was upheld in 1957 by the European Commission of Human Rights
The European Commission of Human Rights was a special body of the Council of Europe.
From 1954 to the entry into force of Protocol 11 to the European Convention on Human Rights, individuals did not have direct access to the European Court of Hu ...
in '' Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany''.
After the party was declared illegal, many of its members continued to function clandestinely despite increased government surveillance. Part of its membership refounded the party in 1968 as the German Communist Party
The German Communist Party (german: Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, ) is a communist party in Germany. The DKP supports left positions and was an observer member of the European Left. At the end of February 2016 it left the European party.
His ...
(DKP).[Olav Teichert: ''Die Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins. Untersuchung der Steuerung der SEW durch die SED.'' kassel university press, 2011, , S. 93. ()][Eckhard Jesse: ''Deutsche Geschichte.'' Compact Verlag, 2008, , S. 264. ()][Bernhard Diestelkamp: ''Zwischen Kontinuität und Fremdbestimmung.'' Mohr Siebeck, 1996, , S. 308. ()] Following German reunification
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
many DKP members joined the new Party of Democratic Socialism, formed out of the remains of the SED. In 1968, another self-described successor to the KPD was formed, the Communist Party of Germany/Marxists–Leninists
The Communist Party of Germany/Marxists–Leninists (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands/Marxisten-Leninisten, KPD/ML) was a clandestine communist party active in West Germany and East Germany during the Cold War. It was founded in 1968 ...
(KPD/ML), which followed Maoist
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...
and later Hoxhaist ideas. It went through multiple splits and united with a Trotskyist group in 1986 to form the Unified Socialist Party (VSP), which failed to gain any influence and dissolved in the early 1990s. However, multiple tiny splinter groups originating from the KPD/ML still exist, several of which claim the name of KPD. Another party claiming the KPD name was formed in 1990 in East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...
by several hardline communists who had been expelled from the PDS, including Erich Honecker
Erich Ernst Paul Honecker (; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the posts ...
. The KPD (Bolshevik) split off from the East German KPD in 2005, bringing the total number of active KPDs to at least five (more or less).
The Left, formed out of a merger between the PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative
Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative (german: Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit – Die Wahlalternative, WASG) was a left-wing German political party founded in 2005 by activists disenchanted with the ruling Red-Green coaliti ...
in 2007, claims to be the historical successor of the KPD (by way of the PDS).
Organization
In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of democratic centralism, whereby the leading body of the party was the Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
, meeting at least once a year. Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Central Committee, which was elected at the Congress, of one group of people who had to live where the leadership was resident and formed the Zentrale and others nominated from the districts they represented (but also elected at the Congress) who represented the wider party. Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.
The KPD employed around about 200 full-timers during its early years of existence, and as Broue notes "They received the pay of an average skilled worker, and had no privileges, apart from being the first to be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced, and when shooting started, to be the first to fall".[Broue, P. (2006) ''The German Revolution: 1917–1923'', Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.863–864]
Election results
Federal elections
Presidential elections
See also
* Communist Party Opposition
The Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Opposition)), generally abbreviated as KPO or KPD(O), was a communist opposition organisation established at the end of 1928 and maintaining its existence un ...
* Communist Workers' Party of Germany
The Communist Workers' Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands; KAPD) was an anti-parliamentarian and left communist party that was active in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. It was founded in April ...
* Freies Volk
* German resistance German resistance can refer to:
* Freikorps, German nationalist paramilitary groups resisting German communist uprisings and the Weimar Republic government
* German resistance to Nazism
* Landsturm, German resistance groups fighting against France d ...
* German Revolution of 1918–1919
* Hotel Lux
The former Hotel Lux in Moscow
Hotel Lux (Люксъ) was a hotel in Moscow during the Soviet Union, housing many leading exiled and visiting Communists. During the Nazi era, exiles from all over Europe went there, particularly from Germany. A n ...
, Moscow hotel where many German party members lived in exile
* Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition
* Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht
Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag from ...
, Ernst Thälmann
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann (; 16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was a German communist politician, and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933.
A committed Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist, Thälmann played a major r ...
, Paul Levi
Paul Levi (11 March 1883 – 9 February 1930) was a German communist and social democratic political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. After being ...
, Erich Mielke
Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (; 28 December 1907 – 21 May 2000) was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security (''Ministerium für Staatsicherheit'' – MfS), better known as the Stasi, from 1957 u ...
, Richard Müller
* Roter Frontkämpferbund
The (, translated as "Alliance of Red Front-Fighters" or "Red Front Fighters' League"), usually called (RFB), was a far-left paramilitary organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the Weimar Republic. It was of ...
* Socialist Workers' Party of Germany
The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SAPD) was a centrist Marxist political party in Germany. It was formed as a left-wing party with around 20,000 members which split off from the SPD i ...
* Sozialistische Volkszeitung
* Spartacus League
* Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers The Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers (''Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter'') was a German trade union that was politically close to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). It was formed in the period after the German Revolution of 1918–1919 a ...
References
Further reading
* Rudof Coper, ''Failure of a Revolution: Germany in 1918–1919.'' Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1955.
* Catherine Epstein, ''The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003.
* Ruth Fischer, ''Stalin and German Communism.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1948.
* Ben Fowkes, ''Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic''; London: Palgrave Macmillan 1984.
* John Riddell (ed.), ''The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents: 1918–1919: Preparing the Founding Congress.'' New York: Pathfinder Press, 1986.
* John Green, ''Willi Münzenberg – Fighter against Fascism and Stalinism'', Routledge 2019
* Bill Pelz, The Spartakusbund and the German working class movement, 1914–1919, Lewiston .Y. E. Mellen Press, 1988.
* Aleksandr Vatlin, "The Testing Ground of World Revolution: Germany in the 1920s," in Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), ''International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43.'' Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
* Eric D. Weitz, ''Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997
* David Priestand, ''Red Flag: A History of Communism''," New York: Grove Press, 2009
* Ralf Hoffrogge, Norman LaPorte (eds.): ''Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933'', London: Lawrence & Wishart.
{{Authority control
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German Revolution of 1918–1919
Defunct communist parties in Germany
Political parties established in 1918
1918 establishments in Germany
Political parties disestablished in 1933
1933 disestablishments in Germany
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1945 establishments in Germany
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1946 disestablishments in Germany
Political parties disestablished in 1956
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Far-left politics in Germany