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:''This article deals with the original KPD. For information on later groups using the same name, see Communist Party of Germany (disambiguation).''

The 'Communist Party of Germany' (German 'Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands' – 'KPD') was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period. Founded in the aftermath of the First World War by socialists opposed to the war, led by Rosa Luxemburg, the party was after her death gradually committed to Leninism, and in the 1930s was completely loyal to the Soviet Union and its leader Joseph Stalin. During the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15% of the vote and was represented in the Reichstag and in state parliaments. Banned by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, the KPD maintained an underground organisation but suffered heavy losses. The party was revived in postwar Germany and won seats in the first Bundestag elections in 1949, but its support collapsed after the establishment of a Communist state in Soviet occupation zone of Germany. In East Germany, the party merged with the Social Democratic Party to from the Socialist Unity Party which ruled East Germany until the nation's collapse in 1991. It was banned in West Germany in 1956 by the Constitutional Court and was in effect wound up in 1969, when a new, legal German Communist Party (DKP) was formed.

Contents

Early history

The Weimar Republic years

The Nazi era

Postwar history

See also

External links

References

Early history

Before the First World War the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the most successful socialist party in the world. Although still officially claiming to be a Marxist party, by 1914 it had become dedicated to peaceful reform. In 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favour of the war. Radical Left-wing members of the Party, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were violently opposed the war. The SPD soon suffered a split, with the Radical Leftists forming the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the extremist Spartacist League. In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany, and the nation tottered on the brink of anarchy. The Leftists, led by Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League, attempted to fill the vacuum and formed the KPD in December 1918.
Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to an armed Bolshevik Revolution in Germany. Under the direct supervision of Berlin's Soviet Legation, revolutionary disturbances continued throughout 1919 and 1920. But Germany's Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, were determined to prevent a Communist takeover. Threatened with the very real danger of this happening, Defense Minister Gustav Noske formed a series of Anti-Communist paramilitary groups out of demobilized World War I veterans. These were dubbed, "The Freikorps." In 1919, after a botched coup attempt called the Spartacist Uprising, Liebknecht and Luxemburg were hunted down by the Freikorps, and then beaten and shot to death. In the aftermath, the Party split into two factions, the KPD and the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD).
Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi became the KPD leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin, Paul Frolich, Hugo Eberlein, Franz Mehring, August Thalheimer, and Ernst Meyer. Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD workers. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time.
Through the 1920s the KPD was racked by internal conflict between more and less radical factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between Trotsky and Stalin in Moscow. Beginning with Lenin, the Soviet leadership considered Germany to be of vital importance in the struggle for "World Revolution," and the failure to create a ''Sowjet Deutschland'' was viewed a major setback. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the Comintern for "indiscipline." Further leadership changes took place in the early 1920s, and Party members accused of being Trotskyites were expelled. In the aftermath, Heinrich Brandler, August Thalheimer and Paul Frolich, set up a splinter Communist Party Opposition.

The Weimar Republic years

In 1923 a new KPD leadership was installed which had been handpicked for blind loyalty to Joseph Stalin, the new Soviet Premier. This leadership, headed by Ernst Thälmann, abandoned the goal of overtly violent revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success. Although the KPD advocated a "united front" during this period, it remained deeply hostile towards Germany's SPD leadership. In 1928 Stalin launched a new "leftist" policy, which the KPD loyally followed. This so-called Third Period policy held that capitalism was entering a deep crisis and the time for a revolution was approaching fast. The SPD was denounced as "social fascists" and any suggestion of co-operating with them was rejected.
One of the most notorious activities of the KPD during these years was their involvement in the "Bülow-Platz Murders." On August 9, 1931, a crew of teenaged members of the ''"Parteiselbstschutz''" ("Party Self Defense Unit") ambushed and murdered Berlin Police Captains Paul Anlauf and Fritz Lenck. Anlauf, who had been known to frequently interfere with unauthorized KPD demonstrations, was despised by Berlin's Communists and referred to as ''"Schweinbacke,"'' or "Pig Face."
The assassinations had been ordered by Walter Ulbricht and supervised by two two KPD members of the Reichstag. The two police officers were ambushed and gunned down outside the Babylon Cinema, located at the corner of Bülow-Platz and Kaiser Wilhelm Straβe. Between 1932 and 1934, the participants were arrested and brought to trial. Four of them would receive the death penalty, including Max Matern, who would later be transformed into the martyred hero of KPD propaganda. The main participants, however, had already fled to the Soviet Union. In 1991, former Stasi head Erich Mielke was brought to trial and later convicted of being one of the 1931 trigger men. The original trial records had been found inside his private safe after the collapse of East Germany.^[1]
During the years of the Weimar Republic the KPD was the largest Communist party in Europe, and was seen as the "leading party" of the Communist movement outside the Soviet Union. It maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote, and gaining 100 deputies in the November 1932 elections. In the presidential election of the same year, Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%.
However the "social fascism" policy scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the Nazis. In the end, the SPD's credibility was destroyed by a series of corruption scandals and soundly defeated by President Paul von Hindenburg, who was later persuaded to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Both Stalin and his KPD puppets disastrously underestimated Hitler and his followers, assuming that the Nazi Party was not an immediate threat and that a Nazi regime would quickly collapse.

The Nazi era

Soon after the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire and Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found inside the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in a German court in 1933, it was decided that he had acted alone. After the fire, habeas corpus was suspended. The Enabling Act, which legally gave Hitler dictatorial control of Germany, was passed by a Reichstag session held after the Communist deputies had been arrested and jailed.
The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. Thousands of Communists were imprisoned in concentration camps, including Thälmann. The most senior KPD leader to escape was Walter Ulbricht, who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout the Nazi period, conducting espionage and terrorism funded by Stalin, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party. In 1945 many of the KPD's strongest areas were deliberately placed in the Soviet Zone of Occupation.

Postwar history

In East Germany, the KPD (led by Walter Ulbricht) absorbed some elements of the eastern SPD and was renamed the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which became the ruling party in East Germany until 1990. After the KPD was banned in West Germany, the SED planted spies such as Günter Guillaume in the west. A small sister party of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin, operated in the west. After German reunification, reformist elements in the SED won control of the party and refounded it as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).
The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7% of the vote in the first Bundestag election in 1949. But the onset of the Cold War and imposition of a communist state in East Germany soon caused a collapse in the party's support. At the 1953 election the KPD only won 2.2 percent of the total votes and lost all of its seats. The party was banned on August 17, 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. After the party was declared illegal, many of its members continued to function clandestinely despite increased government serveillance. Part of its membership later refounded the party in 1968 as the German Communist Party (DKP), which still exists. Following German reunification, however, many DKP members joined the new PDS.

See also

★ Rotfrontkämpferbund

★ Luxemburgism

★ Erich Mielke

★ Walter Ulbricht

External links

★ Losing the Battle of the Streets, Reflections on the KPD, 1930-33

References

1. A detailed description of the "Bülow-Platz Murders" and their aftermath may be found in John Koehler's "The Stasi" pages 33-72.