The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, pronounced [kɔmuˈnɪstɪʃə paʁˈtaɪ ˈdɔʏtʃlants] , KPD [ˌkaːpeːˈdeː] ) was the 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 Allied-occupied Germany and West Germany during the post-war period until it merged with the SPD in the Soviet occupation zone in 1946 and was banned by the West German Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.
The construction of the KPD began in the aftermath of the First World War by Rosa Luxemburg's and Karl Liebknecht's faction of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) who had opposed the war and the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD)'s support of it.
The KPD joined the Spartacist uprising of January 1919, which sought to establish a council 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, loyal-oppositionist course under the leadership of Paul Levi. He was defeated by the Marxist Leninist wing of the party and three months later he was expelled from both the KPD and Comintern because of his public criticism of the role of the party leadership in the March Action of 1921. 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 Thälmann from 1925 the party became thoroughly Marxist-Leninist and more loyal to the politics of the Soviet Union, and from 1928 it was largely influenced and funded by the Comintern. Under Thälmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as "social fascists"; the KPD adopted what is known as the 'social fascism' thesis under Stalin's direction. This position held that social democracy, particularly the SPD, was objectively a variant of fascism – 'social fascism' – because it supposedly upheld capitalism while providing a façade of workers' representation, considering all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be "fascists".
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. Many German Communists went to the Soviet Union. However, 60% of German exiles in the Soviet Union were liquidated during the Stalinist terror and a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were Communists, had been handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration.
The party was revived in divided postwar West and East Germany and won seats in the first Bundestag (West German Parliament) elections in 1949. 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. 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.
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Early history
Before World War I 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. 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. 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.
The Party's first Central Committee consisted of Hermann Duncker, Käte Duncker, Hugo Eberlein, Paul Frölich, Leo Jogiches, Paul Lange, Paul Levi, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Ernst Meyer, Wilhelm Pieck, and August Thalheimer.
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
"Our Program" – by Rosa Luxemburg
"The Crisis of the USPD" – by Karl Liebknecht
Weimar Republic years
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. 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 Frölich 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.
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. 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 was elected in 1923. The party's left around Ruth Fischer, Arkadi Maslow and Werner Scholem took leadership of the KPD in 1924; Ernst Thälmann 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 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 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. In 1926 the KPD worked with the 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 (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), 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; 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 around Heinrich Brandler.
The Third Period and "social fascism"
After the 1928 Reichstag election, the KPD with 54 seats remained one of the largest and most politically potent Communist parties in Europe. Led now by Thälmann, who supported a close alignment with the Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern). At the time, the Comintern held the position that social democracy was social fascism and that it frustrated rather than helped the proletariat. As a result, the KPD under Thälmann had a hostile, confrontational attitude toward the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as defenders of the capitalist status quo. Their perception was reinforced by the explicit anti-Communist views of numerous SPD politicians in the German and Prussian governments, including Chancellor Hermann Müller, Interior Minister Carl Severing, Prussian Minister President Otto Braun, Prussian Interior Minister Albert Grzesinski and Berlin Police chief Karl Zörgiebel.
In the lead-up to the 1929 celebration of International Workers' Day, SPD Minister Grzesinski threatened to ban the KPD and its organizations if they acted in defiance of a ban on public gatherings in Berlin ordered by the city's police chief Karl Zörgiebel of the SPD. The attempted banning galvanized the KPD, who responded by exhorting workers to defy the ban and organize peacefully, but to be prepared to strike on 2 May "if Zörgiebel dares to spill workers' blood". The KPD proceeded with May Day marches in Berlin.
The Berlin Police responded with an immediate, harsh, and disproportionate crackdown. Often without regard to whether the persons involved were demonstrators or bystanders, they forcibly and violently dispersed the crowds that formed. As the day progressed, street battles developed between the protestors and the police, who used firearms and armoured cars. The violence lasted until the afternoon of 3 May, mostly in the working-class neighbourhoods of Wedding and Neukölln.
An estimated 33 civilians, none of whom were involved with the KPD, were killed, 200 injured, and over a thousand people taken into police custody, many of whom were also not involved in the initial KPD rallies. Only 66 of those arrested were charged and 44 convicted.
The events of Blutmai deepened the split between the SPD and KPD, the two major left-wing parties of the Weimar Republic, making a united stand against the growing strength of far-right parties more difficult.
Nazi era
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 used the provisions of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to suspend key civil liberties, 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, 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 Göring 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 super-majority 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 and Walter Ulbricht, who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organization 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's Great Purge of 1937–1938 and executed, among them Hugo Eberlein, Heinz Neumann, Hermann Remmele, Hans Kippenberger, 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.
Post-war history
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. 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 East Berlin, forcing the SED to form a small branch in West Berlin, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
The KPD reorganized 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. On orders from Joseph Stalin, the Communist deputies to the Parlamentarischer Rat refused to sign West Germany's 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 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 re-founded the party in 1968 as the German Communist Party (DKP). 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. 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 hard line 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).
Organization
In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of democratic centralism, whereby different tendencies could confront each other and vote on different programmes and candidates that the entire party would then follow. The leading body of the party was the Congress, meeting at least once a year. Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Zentrale (literally "Headquarters"), equivalent to the Central Committee of the CPSU, elected directly by the Congress whose members had to live where the leadership was resident. However, the supreme body was the Zentralausschuss (literally "Central Commission"), equivalent to the Central Control Commission of the CPSU, also elected at the Congress but mostly nominated from local districts representing the wider party. In 1920, the Zentrale (mirroring its Russian counterpart) split itself into two bodies: a Political Bureau (Politburo) and an Organization Bureau (Orgburo). Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.
In 1925, the party was reorganized under Comintern supervision. The Zentrale was replaced by a Central Committee, and the Zentralausschuss was abolished. Over time, the Central Committee grew in number and met less frequently, leaving the day-to-day decision-making to the Politburo and the Orgburo; the latter was abolished in 1926 and its responsibilities taken over by the Secretariat, equivalent to the Secretariat of the CPSU and comprising just three or four members. This became the supreme body of the party. Congresses also met less frequently (the last was in 1929), and election of local leaders was shifted from local party congresses to local party committees.
The KPD was divided into a number of regional Bezirke (districts). At the head of each was a Polleiter (political leader) and Orgleiter (organizational leader), mirroring the national leadership. Charged with "direct[ing], supervis[ing] and link[ing] up the work of all departments and organs," the Polleiters wielded a substantial amount of power, even moreso after Ernst Thälmann consolidated his position as party leader in 1929. As of 28 February 1933, when the Reichstag Fire Decree was issued and the party was effectively banned, there were 24 active Bezirke.
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".
Party leadership
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1919)
Leo Jogiches (1919)
Paul Levi (1919–1921)
Paul Levi and Ernst Däumig (1921)
Heinrich Brandler and Walter Stoecker (1921–1922)
Ernst Meyer (1922)
Heinrich Brandler (1922–1924)
Hermann Remmele (1924)
Arkadi Maslow and Ruth Fischer (1924–1925)
Ernst Thälmann (1925–1933)
John Schehr (1933–1934)
Wilhelm Pieck (1934–1946)
Max Reimann (1946–1956)