Communist Party of Germany

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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)
Dissolved
Preceded bySpartacus League
Merged intoSocialist Unity Party[a]
Succeeded byGerman Communist Party[b]
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]
Anthem
Die Internationale
(lit. 'The Internationale')
Party flag
  1. ^ a b (East German branch)
  2. ^ a b (West German branch)
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The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, pronounced [kɔmuˈnɪstɪʃə paʁˈtaɪ ˈdɔʏtʃlants] ⓘ, KPD [kaːpeːˈdeː] ⓘ) 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

Comintern in Moscow. Under Thälmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the Social Democratic Party of Germany, 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

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

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.

Early history

Reverse side of the Communist Party of Germany flag

Before the

syndicalist
-leaning.

There were seven main reports given at the founding congress:

These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartacist League, but members of the International Communists of Germany also took part in the discussions.

Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a revolution in Germany, and attempts to bring down the interim government and create a revolutionary situation continued during 1919 and 1920. Germany's SPD leadership, which had come to power after the fall of the monarchy, was vehemently opposed to a socialist revolution. With the new regime terrified of a

Communist Workers Party of Germany
(KAPD).

Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi became the KPD's leader. Other prominent members included Otto Braun, Clara Zetkin, Paul Frölich, Hugo Eberlein, Franz Mehring, August Thalheimer, Wilhelm Pieck and Ernst Meyer. Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and trade union officials. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time.

Weimar Republic years

abbr.
"Antifa") logo can be seen prominently displayed on the front of the building.

Through the 1920s, the KPD was racked by internal conflict between radical and moderate factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between

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.[16]

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.[17] 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

KPD in Essen, 1925

A new KPD leadership more favorable to the Soviet Union was elected in 1923.[citation needed] 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.[15][18]

A crowd of civilians are standing in the foreground watching armed soldiers in the middle-ground marching alongside the street. Buildings of downtown Dresden can be seen in the background.
Reichswehr soldiers marching toward the federal parliament in Dresden, Saxony, to depose the state government led by a KPD-SPD coalition.

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.[19][20][21][22] 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.[23][24] In 1926 the KPD worked with the SPD on a referendum to expropriate the German nobility, together mobilising 14.4 million voters.[15]

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.[25]

By 1927, the party had 130,000 members, of whom 40,000 had been members in 1920.[15] 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[18]), the party followed the Comintern line and received funding from the Comintern.[7][26] 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".[15] After winning control from his former leftist allies, he expelled the party's Right Opposition around Heinrich Brandler.[15]

The Third Period and "social fascism"

Aligning with the Comintern's

1930 Reichstag election, the SPD proposed a renewed united front with the KPD against fascism but this was rejected.[31]

In the early 1930s, the KPD cooperated with the Nazis in attacking the social democrats, and both sought to destroy the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic.[32] They also followed an increasingly nationalist course, trying to appeal to nationalist-leaning workers.[7][33]

In 1931, the party reported a membership of 200,000.[34]

The KPD leadership initially first criticised but then supported the 1931 Prussian Landtag referendum, an unsuccessful attempt launched by the far-right Stahlhelm to bring down the social democrat state government of Prussia by means of a plebiscite; the KPD referred to the SA as "working people's comrades" during this campaign.[35]

KPD election poster, 1932. The caption at the bottom reads: "An end to this system!"

The KPD maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote. It gained 100 deputies in the November 1932 elections, getting 16% of the vote and coming third.[15] In the presidential election of the same year, its candidate Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%. In this period, while also opposed to the Nazis, the KPD regarded the Nazi Party as a less sophisticated and thus less dangerous fascist party than the SPD, and KPD leader Ernst Thälmann declared that "some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest [of social democrats]".[36] In February 1932, Thälmann argued that “Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis [will] arrive more quickly”. In November 1932, the KPD and the Nazis worked together in the Berlin transport workers’ strike.[14]

Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy. For example, the Social Democratic Party criticized the KPD's thesis of "social fascism", and both Leon Trotsky from the Comintern's Left Opposition and August Thalheimer of the Right Opposition continued to argue for a united front.[37] Critics believed that the KPD's sectarianism scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the National Socialists.[37]

Thälmann claimed that the right-wing leadership of the SPD rejected and actively worked against the KPD's efforts to form a united front against fascism.[38] The party itself, however, continued to publicly attack the SPD and the General German Trade Union Federation well into 1932 and never attempted to form a coalition. A brawl between Nazi and KPD lawmakers in the Landtag of Prussia led to the creation of Antifa – short Antifaschistische Aktion,[39] which the party itself described as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD".[25] Thälmann, however, reiterated that there was still a ‘principal fight’ to be led against the SPD and that there would be no ‘unity at all costs’.[40]

After

carried out a coup d'état in Prussia, the KPD issued a call for all workers to support a general strike under its own leadership, which only resulted in limited local action. The statement was addended with a short call on the GGTUF, the SPD and the General Federation of Free Employees to join in, but the KPD's belief that social democrats would have to be ‘coerced by the masses’ meant that their leaders were never approached directly. The KPD tried the same tactic again after Adolf Hitler was appointed as chancellor but was widely ignored by other organisations and individual workers this time as well.[41]

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 suspended the civil liberties enshrined in the Weimar Constitution, 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.[42]

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 supermajority 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".[42]

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 organisation 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, 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.[43]

Post-war history

In

merge with the KPD (led by Pieck and Ulbricht) to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in April 1946.[44] 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.[45] It was the ruling party in East Germany from its formation in 1949 until 1989. The SPD managed to preserve its independence in Berlin, forcing the SED to form a small branch in West Berlin, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.[46][47]

The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7 percent of the vote in the

Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.[44] 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 refounded the party in 1968 as the

Unified Socialist Party (VSP), which failed to gain any influence and dissolved in the early 1990s.[44] 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 hardline 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).

The Left, formed out of a merger between the PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative in 2007, claims to be the historical successor of the KPD (by way of the PDS).

Organization

In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of

Central Committee, which was elected at the Congress, of one group of people who had to live where the leadership was resident and formed the Zentrale and others nominated from the districts they represented (but also elected at the Congress) who represented the wider party.[55] Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.[56]

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".[57]

Election results

Federal elections

KPD federal election results (1920–1953)
Election Votes Seats Notes
No. % +/– No. +/–
1920 589.454 2.1 (No. 8)
4 / 459
 Boycotted the previous election
May 1924 3.693.280 12.6 (No. 4) Increase 10.5
62 / 472
 Increase 58 After the merger with the left-wing of the USPD
December 1924 2.709.086 8.9 (No. 5) Decrease 3.7
45 / 493
 Decrease 17
1928 3.264.793 10.6 (No. 4) Increase 1.7
54 / 491
 Increase 9
1930 4.590.160 13.1 (No. 3) Increase 2.5
77 / 577
 Increase 23 After the financial crisis
July 1932 5.282.636 14.3 (No. 3) Increase 1.2
89 / 608
 Increase 12
November 1932 5.980.239 16.9 (No. 3) Increase 2.6
100 / 584
 Increase 11  
March 1933 4.848.058 12.3 (No. 3) Decrease 4.6
81 / 647
 Decrease 19 During Hitler's term as Chancellor of Germany
1949 1.361.706 5.7 (No. 5) Decrease 6.6
15 / 402
 Decrease 66 First West German federal election
1953 607.860 2.2 (No. 8) Decrease 3.5
0 / 402
 Decrease 15  

Presidential elections

KPD federal election results (1925–1932)
Election Votes Candidate
No. %
1925 1,871,815 (1st round)
1,931,151 (2nd round) 		7.0 (No. 4)
6.4 (No. 3) 		Ernst Thälmann
1932 4,938,341 (1st round)
3,706,759 (2nd round) 		13.2 (No. 3)
10.2 (No. 3) 		Ernst Thälmann

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Communist Party of Germany.

Notes

References

  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. ISBN 9781118776148
    .
  5. ^ "Speeches at the First Congress of the Communist International March 1919". Marxists.
  6. OCLC 60393965
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  7. ^
    ISBN 9783486711738
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  8. ISBN 9780521003582
    . Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  9. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-691-22812-9
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  11. ISBN 978-3-486-70176-0
    .
  12. OCLC 71702
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  13. ^ Gerhard Engel, The International Communists of Germany, 191z-1919, in: Ralf Hoffrogge / Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 25–45.
  14. ^ a b Winner, David (3 October 2018). "How the left enabled fascism". New Statesman. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g Bois, Marcel (17 June 2012). "A Son of His Class". Jacobin. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
  16. ISBN 978-1-893638-97-6
    .
  17. ^ Ralf Hoffrogge / Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart, p. 2
  18. ^ a b LaPorte, N. (Ed.), & Morgan, K. (2008). 'Kings among their subjects'? Ernst Thälmann, Harry Pollitt and the leadership cult as Stalinization. In N. LaPorte, K. Morgan, & M. Worley (Eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917–53 (pp. 124–145). Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230227583_7
  19. ISBN 978-94-010-4718-0
    .
  20. ISSN 1465-4466
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  21. OCLC 10553402
    .
  22. S2CID 219055035
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  23. ^ Michael Stolleis, A History of Public Law in Germany, 1914–1945 (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 99.
  24. ^ Sturm, Reinhard (23 December 2011). "Kampf um die Republik 1919 - 1923". bpb.de (in German). Retrieved 24 February 2023. [Other than Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia have had legitimate governments. On the other hand, the "proletarian hundreds" opposed the Versailles treaty. Further, Ebert and Stresemann saw communists in state offices as intolerable. So the Reichspresident ordered the Reichsexekution on 29th October 1923.]
  25. ^
    ISBN 9783775813266
    .
  26. ^ Winner, David (3 October 2018). "How the left enabled fascism". New Statesman. Retrieved 4 January 2022. By the late 1920s, though, the KPD had largely purged itself of Spartacists and become a Stalinist party. Thälmann took his instructions from Stalin and his hatred of the SPD was essentially ideological.
  27. ISBN 978-1-349-11817-5
    .
  28. ^ Winner, David. "How the left enabled fascism: Ernst Thälmann, leader of Germany's radical left in the last years of the Weimar Republic, thought the centre left was a greater danger than the right". New Statesman.
  29. JSTOR 40574804
    . Retrieved 4 January 2022. By 1932, Thälmann's image had become a vital component of the KPD's antifascism narrative. According to this version of events only the communists stood against the forces of German fascism. The Socialists (SPD), who supported the right-wing Hindenburg in the 1932 elections, were ultimately "social fascists", and no better than the Nazis
  30. S2CID 146848013
    .
  31. ^ Winner, David (3 October 2018). "How the left enabled fascism". New Statesman. Retrieved 4 January 2022. as Russel Lemmons shows in his 2013 book about Thälmann, Hitler's Rival, when the Nazis made their electoral breakthrough in the Reichstag elections of 1930 (winning 18 per cent of the vote to become the second-largest party) Thälmann insisted that if Hitler came to power he was sure to fail and this would drive Nazi voters into the arms of the KPD... the KPD newspaper the Red Flag even hailed the KPD's defeat in that election (up by 2.5 per cent to 13.1 per cent) as a victory on the grounds that communist voters were ardent revolutionaries ("one communist vote has more weight than ten to 20 national socialist votes combined"). The 1930 election left the Social Democrats and KPD with almost 40 per cent of the seats in the Reichstag between them. In November 1931 the SPD suggested the two parties work together but Thälmann rejected the offer and the Red Flag called for an "intensification of the fight against Social Democracy".
  32. ISBN 9783935881128
    .
  33. ^ "Ernst Thälmann: Nationale und soziale Befreiung (1930)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 27 December 2021.
  34. ISBN 9780191748332
    . Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  35. ISBN 1-870958-04-7, Chapter 7
    . "In August 1931, to capitalise on their growing popularity, the Nazi Party launched a referendum to overthrow the Social Democratic government of Prussia. At first the KPD correctly attacked it. Then, three weeks before the vote, under orders from Stalin's Comintern, they joined forces with the fascists to bring down the main enemy, the Social Democrats. They changed the name of the plebiscite to a 'Red Referendum' and referred to the fascists and the members of the SA as 'working people's comrades'!"
  36. ^ Coppi, Hans (1998). "Die nationalsozialistischen Bäume im sozialdemokratischen Wald: Die KPD im antifaschistischen Zweifrontenkrieg (Teil 2)" [The national socialist trees in the social democratic forest: The KPD in the anti-fascist two-front war (Part 2)]. Utopie Kreativ. 97–98: 7–17.
  37. ^ a b Marcel Bois, "Hitler wasn't inevitable", Jacobin 25 November 2015
  38. ^ "Texte zum Klassenkampf/ Ernst Thälmann: Wie schaffen wir die rote Einheitsfront?". Archived from the original on 15 July 2007. Retrieved 27 December 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  39. ^ Langer, Bernd. "80 Jahre Antifaschistische Aktion" (PDF). Verein zur Förderung Antifaschistischer Kultur. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2022. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
  40. ISSN 0042-5702
    . Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  41. ISSN 0042-5702
    . Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  42. ^
    ISBN 978-0141009759
    .
  43. ^ Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, 576-77.
  44. ^ a b c Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997
  45. ^ David Priestand, Red Flag: A History of Communism," New York: Grove Press, 2009
  46. ^ Beschluss vom 31. Mai 1946 der Alliierten Stadtkommandantur: In allen vier Sektoren der ehemaligen Reichshauptstadt werden die Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands und die neugegründete Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands zugelassen.
  47. ^ Cf. Siegfried Heimann: Ostberliner Sozialdemokraten in den frühen fünfziger Jahren
  48. ^ Naimark, Norman M. (1995). The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Cambridge: Belknap Press. p. 118-121.
  49. OCLC 76481596
    .
  50. ^ Steffen Kailitz: Politischer Extremismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Eine Einführung. S. 68.
  51. ISBN 978-3-89958-995-5, S. 93. ([1], p. 93, at Google Books
    )
  52. ISBN 978-3-8174-6606-1, S. 264. ([2], p. 264, at Google Books
    )
  53. ISBN 3-16-146603-9, S. 308. ([3], p. 308, at Google Books
    )
  54. ^ Broue, P. (2006) The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.635
  55. ^ Broue, P. (2006) The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.635–636
  56. ^ Broue, P. (2006) The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.864 — Broue cites the cases of Freisland and Ernst Meyer as being recalled when their electors were not satisfied with their actions
  57. ^ Broue, P. (2006) The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.863–864

Further reading

  • Rudof Coper, Failure of a Revolution: Germany in 1918–1919. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1955.
  • Catherine Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003.
  • Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1948.
  • Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic; London: Palgrave Macmillan 1984.
  • John Riddell (ed.), The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents: 1918–1919: Preparing the Founding Congress. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1986.
  • John Green, Willi Münzenberg – Fighter against Fascism and Stalinism, Routledge 2019
  • Bill Pelz, The Spartakusbund and the German working class movement, 1914–1919, Lewiston, New York: E. Mellen Press, 1988.
  • Aleksandr Vatlin, "The Testing Ground of World Revolution: Germany in the 1920s," in Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
  • Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997
  • David Priestand, Red Flag: A History of Communism," New York: Grove Press, 2009
  • Ralf Hoffrogge, Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart.
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