The Communist Party of Germany 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.
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck 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 1960.
Otto Emil Franz Grotewohl was a German politician who served as the first prime minister of the German Democratic Republic from its foundation in October 1949 until his death in September 1964.
The Soviet occupation zone in Germany was an area of Germany that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a communist area, established as a result of the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly referred to in English as East Germany, was established in the Soviet occupation zone.
Wilhelm Guddorf was a Belgian journalist, anti-Nazi and resistance fighter against the Third Reich. Guddorf was a leading member of a Berlin anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. Guddorf was the editor of the Communist Die Rote Fahne newspaper.
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 July 1932 German federal election and the November 1932 German federal election and was described by the KPD as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD."
Republikflucht was the colloquial term in the German Democratic Republic for illegal emigration to West Germany, West Berlin, and non-Warsaw Pact countries; the official term was Ungesetzlicher Grenzübertritt. Republikflucht applied to both the 3.5 million Germans who migrated legally from the Soviet occupation zone and East Germany before the Berlin Wall was built on 13 August 1961, and the thousands who migrated illegally across the Iron Curtain until 23 December 1989. It has been estimated that 30,000 people left the GDR per year between 1984 and 1988, and up to 300,000 per year before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
The National Committee for a Free Germany was an anti-fascist political and military organisation formed in the Soviet Union during World War II, composed mostly of German defectors from the ranks of German prisoners of war and also of members of the Communist Party of Germany who moved to the Soviet Union after the Nazi seizure of power. Although it initially conducted primarily propaganda and psychological warfare activities, later it formed small military units known as Combat Units and Partisan Units which were sent to the Wehrmacht rear areas where they combined propaganda with collecting intelligence, performing military reconnaissance, sabotage and combat against the Wehrmacht, and to East Prussia, where they attempted to launch a popular guerilla movement. Towards the end of the war its volunteers were sent at the front where they participated in combat with the Nazis. The creation of the organisation formed the Movement for a Free Germany, the anti-Nazi German movement in countries beyond Germany, including the occupied Greece (AKFD) and France (KFDW).
The Ulbricht Group was a group of exiled members of the Communist Party of Germany and the National Committee for a Free Germany, led by Walter Ulbricht, who flew from the Soviet Union back to Germany on April 30, 1945. Composed of functionaries from the KPD and ten anti-fascist prisoners of war, their job was to seek out anti-fascist individuals and prepare the groundwork for the re-establishment of communist organizations and unions in postwar Berlin. There were two additional regional groups, the Ackermann Group in Saxony and the Sobottka Group in Mecklenburg. Many of the group's members later became high-level officials in the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Emil Alfred Fritz Lange was a German communist politician and resistance fighter during the Nazi era. Later Lange was Minister for Popular Education in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
The Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BdA) is a German political confederation founded in 1947 and based in Berlin. The VVN-BdA, formerly the VVN, emerged from victims' associations in Germany founded by political opponents to Nazism after the Second World War and the end of the Nazi rule in Germany.
The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the east German branches of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) on 21 April 1946. Although nominally a merger of equals, the merged party quickly fell under Communist domination and developed along lines similar to other Communist Parties in what became the Eastern Bloc. The SED would be the only party of the German Democratic Republic until the end of the republic in December 1989. In the course of the merger, about 5,000 Social Democrats who opposed it were detained and sent to labour camps and jails.
Das Volk was a daily newspaper published from Berlin, Germany. It was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The first issue of Das Volk was published on 7 July 1945. Das Volk was the second "working-class newspaper" to emerge in Berlin after the Second World War — the first having been the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) organ Deutsche Volkszeitung. During its first twenty days of publishing, Das Volk was printed in Berliner format. Das Volk heeded the KPD's calls for building an anti-fascist democratic Germany, a parliamentary democratic republic, and unity of the working class. The newspaper was controlled by the left-wing tendency inside the SPD, and supported merger of the party with the KPD.
Deutsche Volkszeitung was a newspaper published daily from Berlin, Germany between 1945–1946. It was the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
Walter Buchheim was an East German politician and Trade unionist.
Friedrich Wehmer was a regional politician in Germany during the Weimar period and a national politician in the German Democratic Republic after the war.
Emmi Dölling was a Czechoslovak/German political activist (KPD/SED) and journalist.
Antifa is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple far-left, autonomous, militant groups and individuals who describe themselves as anti-fascist. According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the use of the epithet fascist against opponents and the view of capitalism as a form of fascism are central to the movement. The antifa movement has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came. It was set up by the then-Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the late history of the Weimar Republic. After the forced dissolution in the wake of Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground. In the postwar era, Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different movements, groups and individuals in Germany as well as other countries which widely adopted variants of its aesthetics and some of its tactics. Known as the wider antifa movement, the contemporary antifa groups have no direct organisational connection to Antifaschistische Aktion.
State elections were held in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany on 20 October 1946 to elect the state legislatures of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. They were the only elections held in the future territory of East Germany before the establishment of the German Democratic Republic in 1949, and the only free and fair elections in that part of Germany between 1932 and the Peaceful Revolution.
Theodor Neubauer was a German communist politician, educator, essayist, historian and anti-Nazi resistance fighter.
