Communist Party of Germany

Did You Know?

• The party operated under democratic centralism in the early 1920s, with different tendencies able to confront each other and vote on programmes and candidates.
• The leading body was the Congress, meeting at least once a year; between congresses, leadership resided in the Zentrale, equivalent to the Central Committee of the CPSU.
• In 1920, the Zentrale split into a Political Bureau (Politburo) and an Organization Bureau (Orgburo), mirroring its Russian counterpart.

Early history

Before World War I, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was Germany's largest party and the world's most successful socialist party, though by 1914 it had become reformist in practice despite its Marxist claims. When SPD Reichstag members voted for war in 1914, left-wing members led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg opposed it, leading to a split that produced the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the more radical Spartacist League. The KPD was founded at a congress in Berlin from 30 December 1918 to 1 January 1919, in the reception hall of the City Council. Rosa Luxemburg initially hesitated but joined. Besides the Spartacists, the International Communists of Germany (IKD), dissenting socialists mainly from Hamburg, Bremen, and northern Germany, also joined. The Revolutionary Shop Stewards, a network of dissident socialist trade unionists centered in Berlin, were invited but declined because they considered the founding congress too syndicalist-leaning. The first Central Committee included 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. Seven main reports were given at the congress, covering economic struggles, international conferences, organization, the party program, the crisis of the USPD, and the National Assembly.

Weimar Republic years

Throughout the 1920s, the Communist Party of Germany was torn by infighting between its more radical and moderate wings, a conflict that mirrored the rivalry between Joseph Stalin and Grigory Zinoviev back in Moscow. Because Germany was considered crucial to the global socialist cause, the collapse of the German revolution was a heavy blow. In 1921, the Comintern expelled Paul Levi for what it called indiscipline. More leadership shake-ups followed, and by 1928, figures like Heinrich Brandler, August Thalheimer, and Paul Frölich—supporters of either the Left or Right Opposition—were pushed out and founded a breakaway group, the Communist Party Opposition. Earlier, the KPD’s leadership had asked Moscow to send Leon Trotsky to oversee an uprising in 1923, but Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, who controlled the Politburo, turned this down and instead dispatched a team of lower-ranking Russian communists. During the Weimar years, the KPD was the biggest communist party in Europe and was considered the leading communist force outside the Soviet Union. It gave up on the idea of an immediate revolution and, starting in 1924, began running for Reichstag seats with modest success. A new leadership took over in 1923, and by 1924 the party’s left wing—led by Ruth Fischer, Arkadi Maslow, and Werner Scholem—was in charge, with Ernst Thälmann as an ally and vice-chairman. In August 1925, Stalin orchestrated the ouster of Fischer’s group and put Thälmann in the chairman’s seat.

Nazi era

On February 27, 1933, just after Adolf Hitler took over as chancellor, the Reichstag building went up in flames. Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was discovered nearby. The Nazis claimed communist agitators were behind it, but a German court later that year ruled van der Lubbe had acted by himself. Police rounded up dozens of communists within hours. Hitler didn’t ban the Communist Party of Germany right away. He worried about sparking a revolt and also figured the party could steal votes from the Social Democrats, splitting the left. Most judges, however, blamed the KPD for the fire and treated party membership as treason. In the March 1933 election, the KPD won 81 seats, but those deputies were quickly arrested. The party was effectively illegal from the day the Reichstag Fire Decree came down, and fully banned on March 6, the day after the election. Soon after, the Nazis rammed through the Enabling Act, letting the cabinet—really just Hitler—make laws without the Reichstag’s approval, handing him dictatorial power. To secure the required two-thirds quorum, Reichstag President Hermann Göring simply ignored the KPD seats. Historian Richard J. Evans argued this refusal to acknowledge the KPD deputies was illegal, making the act’s passage unlawful.

Post-war history

In East Germany, the Soviet Military Administration forced the eastern branch of the SPD to merge with the KPD, led by Wilhelm Pieck and Walter 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 recalcitrant SPD members were pushed out. By the formal formation of East Germany in 1949, the SED was a full-fledged Communist party, developing along lines similar to other Soviet-bloc parties, and was the ruling party until 1989. The SPD preserved 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 western Germany and received 5.7 percent of the vote in the first Bundestag election in 1949. However, the Cold War and widespread repression of the far-left caused a collapse in support; the party's reputation was also damaged by the Red Army's conduct during its occupation of eastern Germany, including looting, political repression, and mass rape. On orders from Joseph Stalin, KPD deputies to the Parlamentarischer Rat refused to sign West Germany's Basic Law. At the 1953 election, the KPD won only 2.2 percent of the vote and lost all seats. The party was banned in August 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, a decision upheld in 1957 by the European Commission of Human Rights.