Far-left political party active in Germany from 1918 to 1956
The
Communist Party of Germany
(
German
:
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands
,
pronounced
[k?mu?n?st???
pa??ta?
?d??t?lants]
ⓘ
,
KPD
[kaːpeː?deː]
ⓘ
) was a major
far-left
political party in the
Weimar Republic
during the
interwar period
, an underground
resistance movement
in
Nazi Germany
, and a minor party in
West Germany
during the postwar period until it was banned by the
Federal Constitutional Court
in 1956.
Founded in the aftermath of the
First World War
by
socialists
who had opposed the war, the party joined the
Spartacist uprising
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
and
Leo Jogiches
, the party temporarily steered a more moderate, parliamentarian course under the leadership of
Paul Levi
. During the
Weimar Republic
period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote and was represented in the national
Reichstag
and in state parliaments. Under the leadership of
Ernst Thalmann
from 1925 the party became thoroughly Stalinist and loyal to the leadership of the
Soviet Union
, and from 1928 it was largely controlled and funded by the
Comintern
in Moscow. Under Thalmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the
Social Democratic Party of Germany
, which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as "
social fascists
"; the KPD considered all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be "
fascists
".
[7]
The KPD was banned in the Weimar Republic one day after the
Nazi Party
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
literature. The KPD suffered heavy losses between 1933 and 1939, with 30,000 communists executed and 150,000 sent to
Nazi concentration camps
.
[8]
[9]
According to historian
Eric D. Weitz
, 60% of German exiles in the Soviet Union had been liquidated during the
Stalinist terror
and a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Weitz also noted that hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were communists, had been handed over to the
Gestapo
from Stalin's administration.
[10]
The party was revived in divided postwar West and
East Germany
and won seats in the first
Bundestag
(West German Parliament) elections in 1949, but its support collapsed following the establishment of the
German Democratic Republic
in the former
Soviet Occupation Zone
in the east. The KPD was banned as extremist in West Germany in 1956 by the
Federal Constitutional Court
. In 1969, some of its former members founded an even smaller fringe party, the
German Communist Party
(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
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.
[11]
After the
fall of the Berlin Wall
, 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
Die Linke
.
Early history
[
edit
]
Before the
First World War
the
Social Democratic Party
(SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the world's most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a
Marxist
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
and
Rosa Luxemburg
, strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split. From the split emerged the
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
(USPD) and the more radical
Spartacist League
; the latter formed the core of what would become the KPD. In November 1918,
revolution
broke out across Germany. The KPD held its founding congress in
Berlin
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.
[12]
Apart from the Spartacists, another dissident group of socialists called the
International Communists of Germany
(IKD), also dissenting members of the Social Democratic party but mainly located in
Hamburg
,
Bremen
and
Northern Germany
, joined the KPD.
[13]
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
-leaning.
There were seven main reports given at the founding congress:
These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartacist League, but members of the
International Communists of Germany
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
in Germany, Defense Minister
Gustav Noske
recruited former right-wing military officers and demobilized veterans and formed various
Freikorps
and
anti-communist
paramilitaries
to violently suppress all revolutionary activity. During the failed
Spartacist uprising
in
Berlin
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.
[14]
At its peak, the party had 350?400,000 members in 1920.
[15]
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
,
Paul Levi
became the KPD's leader. Other prominent members included
Otto Braun
,
Clara Zetkin
,
Paul Frolich
,
Hugo Eberlein
,
Franz Mehring
,
August Thalheimer
,
Wilhelm Pieck
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
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
[
edit
]
Through the 1920s, the KPD was racked by internal conflict between radical and moderate factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between
Joseph Stalin
and
Grigory Zinoviev
in
Moscow
.
[
citation needed
]
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
or
Right Opposition
to the
Stalinist
-controlled Comintern leadership were expelled; of these,
Heinrich Brandler
, August Thalheimer and
Paul Frolich
set up a splinter
Communist Party Opposition
in 1928.
The leadership of the German Communist party had requested that Moscow send
Leon Trotsky
to Germany to direct the
1923 insurrection
. However, this proposal was rejected by the Politburo which was controlled by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev who decided to send a commission of lower-ranking Russian Communist party members.
[16]
During the years of the
Weimar Republic
, the KPD was the largest communist party in Europe and seen as the "leading party" of the
communist movement
outside of the Soviet Union.
[17]
The party abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested
Reichstag
elections, with some success.
Fischer and Thalmann leaderships and the united front
[
edit
]
A new KPD leadership more favorable to the
Soviet Union
was elected in 1923.
[
citation needed
]
The party's left around
Ruth Fischer
,
Arkadi Maslow
and
Werner Scholem
took leadership of the KPD in 1924;
Ernst Thalmann
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 Thalmann as party chairman.
[15]
[18]
From 1923 to 1928, the KPD broadly followed the
united front
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.
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
For example, in October 1923 the KPD formed a coalition government with the SPD in the states of
Saxony
and
Thuringia
. However, the
Reichswehr
legally overthrew these governments by force, through a constitutional process called
Reichsexekution
.
[23]
[24]
In 1926 the KPD worked with the SPD on a referendum to expropriate the German nobility, together mobilising 14.4 million voters.
[15]
The party's first paramilitary wing was the
Roter Frontkampferbund
(Alliance of Red Front Fighters), which was founded in 1924 but banned by the governing Social Democrats in 1929.
[25]
By 1927, the party had 130,000 members, of whom 40,000 had been members in 1920.
[15]
From 1928 onwards (after Stalin reinstated Thalmann as KPD leader against the majority of the KPD central committee in the wake of an embezzlement scandal involving Thalmann's ally
John Wittorf
[18]
), the party followed the Comintern line and received funding from the Comintern.
[7]
[26]
Under Thalmann's leadership, the party was closely aligned with the Soviet leadership headed by
Joseph Stalin
; Thalmann has been described as "the driving force behind Stalinization in the mid to late 1920s" and "Stalin’s right hand in Germany".
[15]
After winning control from his former leftist allies, he expelled the party's
Right Opposition
around
Heinrich Brandler
.
[15]
The Third Period and "social fascism"
[
edit
]
Aligning with the Comintern's
ultra-left
Third Period
, under the slogan "Class against class", the KPD abruptly turned to viewing the
Social Democratic Party of Germany
(SPD) as its main adversary.
[27]
[7]
In this period, the KPD referred to the SPD as "social fascists".
[28]
[29]
The term social fascism was introduced to the German Communist Party shortly after the
Hamburg Uprising
of 1923 and gradually became ever more influential in the party; by 1929 it was being propagated as a theory.
[30]
The KPD regarded itself as "the only anti-fascist party" in Germany and held that all other parties in the Weimar Republic were "fascist".
[7]
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.
[31]
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
.
[32]
They also followed an increasingly nationalist course, trying to appeal to nationalist-leaning workers.
[7]
[33]
In 1931, the party reported a membership of 200,000.
[34]
The KPD leadership initially first criticised but then supported the
1931 Prussian Landtag referendum
, 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.
[35]
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.
[15]
In the
presidential election of the same year
, its candidate Thalmann 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 Thalmann declared that "some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest [of social democrats]".
[36]
In February 1932, Thalmann argued that “Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis [will] arrive more quickly”. In November 1932, the KPD and the Nazis worked together in the Berlin transport workers’ strike.
[14]
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
from the
Comintern
's
Left Opposition
and
August Thalheimer
of the
Right Opposition
continued to argue for a united front.
[37]
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
.
[37]
Thalmann claimed that the right-wing leadership of the SPD rejected and actively worked against the KPD's efforts to form a united front against fascism.
[38]
The party itself, however, continued to publicly attack the SPD and the General German Trade Union Federation well into 1932 and never attempted to form a coalition. A brawl between Nazi and KPD lawmakers in the
Landtag of Prussia
led to the creation of Antifa ? short
Antifaschistische Aktion
,
[39]
which the party itself described as a "red united
front
under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD".
[25]
Thalmann, however, reiterated that there was still a ‘principal fight’ to be led against the SPD and that there would be no ‘unity at all costs’.
[40]
After
Franz von Papen
's government
carried out a coup d'etat
in
Prussia
, the KPD issued a call for all workers to support a general strike under its own leadership, which only resulted in limited local action. The statement was addended with a short call on the
GGTUF
, the SPD and the
General Federation of Free Employees
to join in, but the KPD's belief that social democrats would have to be ‘coerced by the masses’ meant that their leaders were never approached directly. The KPD tried the same tactic again after
Adolf Hitler
was appointed as chancellor but was widely ignored by other organisations and individual workers this time as well.
[41]
Nazi era
[
edit
]
On 27 February, soon after the appointment of
Adolf Hitler
as chancellor, the
Reichstag was set on fire
and Dutch
council communist
Marinus van der Lubbe
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
. 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.
[42]
Shortly after the election, the Nazis pushed through the
Enabling Act
, 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
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 Goring
did not count the KPD seats for purposes of obtaining the required quorum. This led historian
Richard J. Evans
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".
[42]
The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. The most senior KPD leaders were
Wilhelm Pieck
and
Walter Ulbricht
, 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
[
edit
]
A number of senior KPD leaders in exile were caught up in
Joseph Stalin
's
Great Purge
of 1937?1938 and executed, among them
Hugo Eberlein
,
Heinz Neumann
,
Hermann Remmele
,
Fritz Schulte
and
Hermann Schubert
, or sent to the
gulag
, like
Margarete Buber-Neumann
. Still others, like
Gustav von Wangenheim
and
Erich Mielke
(later the head of the
Stasi
in East Germany), denounced their fellow exiles to the
NKVD
.
[43]
Post-war history
[
edit
]
In
East Germany
, the
Soviet Military Administration in Germany
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.
[44]
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.
[45]
It was the ruling party in East Germany from its formation in 1949 until 1989. The SPD managed to preserve its independence in
Berlin
, forcing the SED to form a small branch in
West Berlin
, the
Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin
.
[46]
[47]
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
and the subsequent widespread repression of the
far-left
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
during its
occupation of eastern Germany
, which included
looting
, political repression, and
mass rape
.
[48]
On orders from Joseph Stalin, the Communist deputies to the
Parlamentarischer Rat
refused to sign the
BRD Basic Law
to avoid recognizing the political legitimacy of West Germany.
[49]
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
.
[44]
The decision was upheld in 1957 by the
European Commission of Human Rights
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
(DKP).
[50]
[51]
[52]
[53]
Following
German reunification
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
(KPD/ML), which followed
Maoist
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.
[44]
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
by several hardline communists who had been expelled from the PDS, including
Erich Honecker
. 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
in 2007, claims to be the historical successor of the KPD (by way of the PDS).
Organization
[
edit
]
In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of
democratic centralism
, whereby the leading body of the party was the
Congress
, meeting at least once a year.
[54]
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.
[55]
Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.
[56]
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".
[57]
Election results
[
edit
]
Federal elections
[
edit
]
KPD federal election results (1920?1953)
Election
|
Votes
|
Seats
|
Notes
|
No.
|
%
|
+/?
|
No.
|
+/?
|
1920
|
589.454
|
2.1 (No. 8)
|
|
|
|
Boycotted the previous election
|
May 1924
|
3.693.280
|
12.6 (No. 4)
|
10.5
|
|
58
|
After the merger with the left-wing of the
USPD
|
December 1924
|
2.709.086
|
8.9 (No. 5)
|
3.7
|
|
17
|
|
1928
|
3.264.793
|
10.6 (No. 4)
|
1.7
|
|
9
|
|
1930
|
4.590.160
|
13.1 (No. 3)
|
2.5
|
|
23
|
After the financial crisis
|
July 1932
|
5.282.636
|
14.3 (No. 3)
|
1.2
|
|
12
|
|
November 1932
|
5.980.239
|
16.9 (No. 3)
|
2.6
|
|
11
|
|
March 1933
|
4.848.058
|
12.3 (No. 3)
|
4.6
|
|
19
|
During Hitler's term as Chancellor of Germany
|
1949
|
1.361.706
|
5.7 (No. 5)
|
6.6
|
|
66
|
First West German federal election
|
1953
|
607.860
|
2.2 (No. 8)
|
3.5
|
|
15
|
|
Presidential elections
[
edit
]
KPD federal election results (1925?1932)
Election
|
Votes
|
Candidate
|
No.
|
%
|
1925
|
1,871,815 (1st round)
1,931,151 (2nd round)
|
7.0 (No. 4)
6.4 (No. 3)
|
Ernst Thalmann
|
1932
|
4,938,341 (1st round)
3,706,759 (2nd round)
|
13.2 (No. 3)
10.2 (No. 3)
|
Ernst Thalmann
|
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Koster, Barabara (2005).
"Die Junge Garde des Proletariats" Untersuchungen zum Kommunistischen Jungendverband Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik
[
"The Young Guard of the Proletariat" Investigations into the Communist Youth Association of Germany in the Weimar Republic.
]
(PDF)
(PhD) (in German)
. Retrieved
20 March
2010
.
- ^
- Kurt G. P. Schuster:
Der rote Frontkampferbund 1924?1929
. Droste, Dusseldorf 1975,
ISBN
3-7700-5083-5
.
- Eve Rosenhaft,
Beating the Fascists?: The German Communists and Political Violence 1929-1933
, Cambridge University Press, 25 Aug 1983, pp. 3?4.
- Voigt, Carsten (2009).
Kampfbunde der Arbeiterbewegung: das Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold und der Rote Frontkampferbund in Sachsen 1924-1933
(in German). Bohlau Verlag Koln Weimar.
ISBN
9783412204495
.
- Museum, Stiftung Deutsches Historisches.
"Gerade auf LeMO gesehen: LeMO Kapitel: Weimarer Republik"
.
Deutsches Historisches Museum
(in German)
. Retrieved
21 June
2019
.
- "Roter Frontkampferbund, 1924-1929"
.
Historisches Lexikon Bayerns
. Retrieved
21 June
2019
.
- Brown, Timothy Scott (2009).
Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance
. Berghahn Books.
ISBN
9781845459086
.
- ^
Catherine Epstein.
The last revolutionaries: German communists and their century
. Harvard University Press, 2003. p. 39.
- ^
Fulbrook, Mary
(2014).
A History of Germany 1918 ? 2014: The Divided Nation
(4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
ISBN
9781118776148
.
- ^
"Speeches at the First Congress of the Communist International March 1919"
.
Marxists
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- ^
Adams, Sean; Morioka, Noreen; Stone, Terry Lee (2006).
Color Design Workbook: A Real World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design
. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers. pp.
86
.
ISBN
159253192X
.
OCLC
60393965
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Hoppe, Bert (2011).
In Stalins Gefolgschaft: Moskau und die KPD 1928?1933
. Oldenbourg Verlag.
ISBN
9783486711738
.
- ^
McDonough, Frank (6 September 2001).
Opposition and Resistance in Nazi Germany
(PDF)
. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
9780521003582
. Retrieved
4 March
2022
.
- ^
Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021).
Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years
. Mehring Books. p. 380.
ISBN
978-1-893638-97-6
.
- ^
Weitz, Eric D. (13 April 2021).
Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State
. Princeton University Press. p. 280.
ISBN
978-0-691-22812-9
.
- ^
Heydemann, Gunther (2003).
Die Innenpolitik der DDR
.
doi
:
10.1524/9783486701760
.
ISBN
978-3-486-70176-0
.
- ^
Nettl, J. P. (1969).
Rosa Luxemburg
(Abridged ed.). London: Oxford U.P. p. 472.
ISBN
0-19-281040-5
.
OCLC
71702
.
- ^
Gerhard Engel, The International Communists of Germany, 191z-1919, in: Ralf Hoffrogge / Norman LaPorte (eds.):
Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918?1933
, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 25?45.
- ^
a
b
Winner, David (3 October 2018).
"How the left enabled fascism"
.
New Statesman
. Retrieved
4 January
2022
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Bois, Marcel (17 June 2012).
"A Son of His Class"
.
Jacobin
. Retrieved
4 January
2022
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. [Other than Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia have had legitimate governments. On the other hand, the "proletarian hundreds" opposed the Versailles treaty. Further, Ebert and Stresemann saw communists in state offices as intolerable. So the Reichspresident ordered the Reichsexekution on 29th October 1923.]
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By the late 1920s, though, the KPD had largely purged itself of Spartacists and become a Stalinist party. Thalmann took his instructions from Stalin and his hatred of the SPD was essentially ideological.
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By 1932, Thalmann's image had become a vital component of the KPD's antifascism narrative. According to this version of events only the communists stood against the forces of German fascism. The Socialists (SPD), who supported the right-wing Hindenburg in the 1932 elections, were ultimately "social fascists", and no better than the Nazis
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as Russel Lemmons shows in his 2013 book about Thalmann, Hitler's Rival, when the Nazis made their electoral breakthrough in the Reichstag elections of 1930 (winning 18 per cent of the vote to become the second-largest party) Thalmann insisted that if Hitler came to power he was sure to fail and this would drive Nazi voters into the arms of the KPD... the KPD newspaper the Red Flag even hailed the KPD's defeat in that election (up by 2.5 per cent to 13.1 per cent) as a victory on the grounds that communist voters were ardent revolutionaries ("one communist vote has more weight than ten to 20 national socialist votes combined"). The 1930 election left the Social Democrats and KPD with almost 40 per cent of the seats in the Reichstag between them. In November 1931 the SPD suggested the two parties work together but Thalmann rejected the offer and the Red Flag called for an "intensification of the fight against Social Democracy".
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Broue, P. (2006)
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Further reading
[
edit
]
- 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 Munzenberg ? Fighter against Fascism and Stalinism
, Routledge 2019
- Bill Pelz, The Spartakusbund and the German working class movement, 1914?1919, Lewiston, New York: 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, New Jersey: 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.
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