Communist Party of Germany

For the modern party, see German Communist Party. For other uses, see Communist Party of Germany (disambiguation).
"KPD" redirects here. For the form of diabetes, see Ketosis-prone diabetes. For the approach to kidney transplanation, see Kidney paired donation.

Communist Party of Germany
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands
LeaderCollective leadership
Founders
Founded1 January 1919; 105 years ago (1 January 1919)
Preceded bySpartacus League
Merged intoSocialist Unity Party[GDR]
Succeeded byGerman Communist Party[FRG]
HeadquartersKarl-Liebknecht-Haus, Berlin
NewspaperDie Rote Fahne
Youth wingYoung Communist League[1]
Political academyMarxist Workers' School
Paramilitary wing
Membership360,000 (Nov. 1932 est.)[3]
Ideology
Political positionFar-left[4]
International affiliationCommunist International
(1919–1943)[5]
Colours
  •   Red[6] (official)
AnthemDie Internationale
("The Internationale")
Party flag
^ GDR: East German branch
^ FRG: West German branch
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The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, pronounced [kɔmuˈnɪstɪʃə paʁˈtaɪ ˈdɔʏtʃlants] ⓘ; KPD [ˌkaːpeːˈdeː] ⓘ) 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 Thälmann 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 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 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. 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.

  1. ^ Köster, 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.
  2. ^
  3. ^ Catherine Epstein. The last revolutionaries: German communists and their century. Harvard University Press, 2003. p. 39.
  4. ^ Fulbrook, Mary (2014). A History of Germany 1918 – 2014: The Divided Nation (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118776148.
  5. ^ "Speeches at the First Congress of the Communist International March 1919". Marxists.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ Hoppe, Bert (2011). In Stalins Gefolgschaft: Moskau und die KPD 1928–1933. Oldenbourg Verlag. ISBN 9783486711738.
  8. ^ McDonough, Frank (6 September 2001). Opposition and Resistance in Nazi Germany (PDF). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521003582. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ Heydemann, Günther (2003). Die Innenpolitik der DDR. doi:10.1524/9783486701760. ISBN 978-3-486-70176-0.