Communist Party of Germany#Organization

• Paul Levi (1919–1921)Fernbach, David (2011). "Introduction". In David Fernbach (ed.). In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
• Heinrich Brandler (1921–1925)Pierre Broué, The German Revolution, 1917-1923. (1971) John Archer, trans. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006; pp. 960-961.
• Ernst Thälmann (1925–1933)
• John Schehr (1933–1934){{cite book|last1=Reichhardt|first1=Hans-Joachim|chapter=Resistance in the Labour movement: The German Communist Party (KPD)|title=The German Resistance to Hitler|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bFwcCy2MfvEC&pg=PA167|year=1970|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=0-520-01662-9|pages=164–180}}
• Wilhelm Pieck (1934–1946){{refn|Ernst Thälmann, who the Gestapo had arrested on 3 March 1933, remained de jure party leader until his execution on 18 August 1944; Schehr and later Pieck were acting chairmen as deputy leaders.}}

Before the First World War 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.{{Cite book|title=Rosa Luxemburg|last=Nettl, J. P.|date=1969|publisher=Oxford U.P|page=472|isbn=0-19-281040-5|edition=Abridged|location=London|oclc=71702}} 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.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. 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.{{cite book |last=Pelz |first=William |author-link= |date=1988 |title=The Spartakusbund and the German working class movement, 1914–1919 |url=https://archive.org/details/spartakusbundger0000pelz/page/190/mode/1up |location=Lewiston, NY |publisher=Edwin Mellen Press |page=190 |isbn=}}

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
• "The National Assembly" – by Paul Levi

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 Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske recruited former right-wing military officers and demobilized veterans and formed various Freikorps and anti-communist paramilitaries to violently suppress all revolutionary activity. During the failed Spartacist uprising in Berlin of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated the uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and murdered.{{cite web | last=Winner | first=David | title=How the left enabled fascism | website=New Statesman | date=3 October 2018 | url=https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2018/10/how-left-enabled-fascism | access-date=4 January 2022}} At its peak, the party had 350–400,000 members in 1920. The party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the much smaller Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD).

Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi became the KPD's leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin, Paul Frölich, Hugo Eberlein, Franz Mehring, Julian Marchlewski, 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.

File:KPD Reichstag Members 1921 Trim.jpg, Clara Zetkin, Emil Eichhorn, Georg Berthelé. Standing from left to right: Max Heydemann, Walter Stoecker, Wilhelm Koenen, Wilhelm Bartz, Heinrich Malzahn, Paul Frölich.]]

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.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}} 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.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |page=272 |language=en}}

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.Ralf Hoffrogge / Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart, p. 2 The party abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-14686-0026, Essen, Reichspräsidentenwahl, KPD-Wahlwerbung.jpg, 1925]]

A new KPD leadership was elected in 1923.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} 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.{{cite web | last=Bois | first=Marcel | title=A Son of His Class | website=Jacobin | date=17 June 2012 | url=https://jacobinmag.com/2016/08/ernst-thalmann-east-germany-stalin-nazis | access-date=4 January 2022}}

File:Reichsexekution-Sachsen-1923-Reichswehrkompanie-auf-dem-Weg-zum-Landtagsgebaeu.jpg 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.{{cite book | last=Peterson | first=Larry | title=German Communism, Workers' Protest, and Labor Unions | chapter=The United Front | publisher=Springer Netherlands | publication-place=Dordrecht | year=1993 | isbn=978-94-010-4718-0 | doi=10.1007/978-94-011-1644-2_12 | pages=399–428}}{{cite journal | last=Gaido | first=Daniel | title=Paul Levi and the Origins of the United-Front Policy in the Communist International | journal=Historical Materialism | publisher=Brill | volume=25 | issue=1 | date=3 April 2017 | issn=1465-4466 | doi=10.1163/1569206x-12341515 | pages=131–174| hdl=11086/548552 | url=https://philarchive.org/rec/GAIPLA | hdl-access=free }}{{cite book | last=Fowkes | first=Ben | title=Communism in Germany under the Weimar republic | publisher=Macmillan | publication-place=London | year=1984 | isbn=978-0-333-27271-8 | oclc=10553402 }}{{cite journal | last=Bois | first=Marcel | title='March Separately, But Strike Together!' The Communist Party's United-Front Policy in the Weimar Republic | journal=Historical Materialism | publisher=Brill | date=30 April 2020 | volume=28 | issue=3 | issn=1465-4466 | doi=10.1163/1569206x-00001281 | pages=138–165| s2cid=219055035 }} 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.Michael Stolleis, A History of Public Law in Germany, 1914–1945 (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 99.{{Cite web |last=Sturm |first=Reinhard |title=Kampf um die Republik 1919–1923 |url=https://www.bpb.de/themen/nationalsozialismus-zweiter-weltkrieg/dossier-nationalsozialismus/39531/kampf-um-die-republik-1919-1923/ |access-date=2023-02-24 |website=bpb.de |date=23 December 2011 |language=de |trans-quote=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 29 October 1923.}} 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.{{cite book |last= Stephan|first= Pieroth|year= 1994 |title=Parteien und Presse in Rheinland-Pfalz 1945–1971: ein Beitrag zur Mediengeschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mainzer SPD-Zeitung 'Die Freiheit' |publisher= v. Hase & Koehler Verlag |page= 96 |isbn= 9783775813266 }}

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 WittorfLaPorte, N. (Ed.), & Morgan, K. (2008). '[https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/173653807/LaPorte_Morgan_Kings_among_their_subjects_Ernst_Th_lmann_Harry_Pollitt_and_the_leadership_cult_as_stalinization_in_LaPorte_Morgan_and_Worley_eds_Bolshevism_Stalinism_and_the_Comintern_.pdf 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

), the party followed the Comintern line and received funding from the Comintern.{{cite web | last=Winner | first=David | title=How the left enabled fascism | website=New Statesman | date=3 October 2018 | url=https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2018/10/how-left-enabled-fascism | access-date=4 January 2022|quote=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.}} 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.

File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-P046279, Berlin, Liebknecht-Haus am Bülowplatz.jpg, the KPD's headquarters from 1926 to 1933. The Antifaschistische Aktion (abbr. "Antifa") logo can be seen prominently displayed on the front of the building.]]

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.{{Sfn|Bowlby|1986|p=138}} 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.{{Sfn|Rosenhaft|1983|p=32}}

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.{{sfn|Bowlby|1986|pp=149–150}} 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.

Tensions soured, the KPD in turn began aligning with the Comintern's ultra-left Third Period, under the slogan "Class against class", the KPD turned to viewing the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as its main adversary.{{cite book | last=Grenville | first=Anthony | title=German Writers and Politics 1918–39 | chapter=From Social Fascism to Popular Front: KPD Policy as Reflected in the Works of Friedrich Wolf, Anna Seghers and Willi Bredel, 1928–1938 | publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK | publication-place=London | year=1992 | isbn=978-1-349-11817-5 | doi=10.1007/978-1-349-11815-1_7 | pages=89–102}}{{cite journal | last=Lemmons | first=Russel | title="Germany's Eternal Son:" the Genesis of the Ernst Thälmann Myth, 1930–1950 | journal=German Studies Review | publisher=German Studies Association, The Johns Hopkins University Press | volume=32 | issue=2 | year=2009 | issn=0149-7952 | jstor=40574804 | pages=343–356 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/40574804 | access-date=4 January 2022|quote=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}} The term social fascism was introduced to the German Communist Party shortly after the Hamburg Uprising of 1923 and gradually became ever more influential in the party; by 1929 it was being propagated as a theory. The KPD regarded itself as "the only anti-fascist party" in Germany and held that all other parties in the Weimar Republic were "fascist". The Nazis achieved an electoral breakthrough in the 1930 Reichstag election.

By the early 1930s, the political situation in Weimar Germany was extremely unstable after the onset of the Great Depression. The Depression effectively destroyed the remaining legitimacy of the pro-democratic parties – such as the Social Democrats, the State Party, and the German People's Party – in favor of the anti-democratic parties.{{cite book|last=Evans|first=Richard|title=The Coming of the Third Reich|year=2004|publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0141009759}}{{cite book |last1=Fippel |first1=Günter|year= 2003 |title=Antifaschisten in "antifaschistischer" Gewalt: mittel- und ostdeutsche Schicksale in den Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur (1945 bis 1961)|publisher= A. Peter |page= 21 |isbn= 9783935881128 }} They also followed an increasingly nationalist course, trying to appeal to nationalist-leaning workers.{{cite web|title=Ernst Thälmann: Nationale und soziale Befreiung (1930)|url=https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/referenz/thaelmann/1930/08/natsozbef.htm|access-date=27 December 2021|website=www.marxists.org}}

In 1931, the party reported a membership of 200,000.{{cite book |last1=Scarrow |first1=Susan |title=Beyond Party Members: Changing Approaches to Partisan Mobilization |date=27 November 2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191748332 |page=59 |edition=1 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/9675 |access-date=15 June 2023}}

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 some within the SA as "working people's comrades" during this campaign.Rob Sewell, Germany: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution, Fortress Books (1988), {{ISBN|1-870958-04-7}}, [http://www.marxist.com/germany/chapter7.html 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'!"

File:Schluss mit diesem System - Wahlplakat der KPD, 1932.jpg

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. 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]".{{cite journal |last1=Coppi |first1=Hans |author-link1=Hans Coppi Jr. |year=1998 |title=Die nationalsozialistischen Bäume im sozialdemokratischen Wald: Die KPD im antifaschistischen Zweifrontenkrieg (Teil 2) |trans-title=The national socialist trees in the social democratic forest: The KPD in the anti-fascist two-front war (Part 2) |journal=Utopie Kreativ |volume=97–98|pages=7–17 }}

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.Marcel Bois, "[https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/nuremberg-trials-hitler-goebbels-himmler-german-communist-social-democrats/ Hitler wasn't inevitable]", Jacobin 25 November 2015 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.

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.{{cite web|title=Texte zum Klassenkampf/ Ernst Thälmann: Wie schaffen wir die rote Einheitsfront?|url=http://www.marxistische-bibliothek.de/fragenvonspd.html|access-date=27 December 2021|archive-date=15 July 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070715202206/http://www.marxistische-bibliothek.de/fragenvonspd.html|url-status=bot: unknown}} The party itself, however, continued to publicly clash with the SPD and the General German Trade Union Federation well into 1932.

A brawl between Nazi and KPD lawmakers in the Landtag of Prussia led to the creation of Antifa – short Antifaschistische Aktion,{{cite web|url=http://antifaeu.blogsport.de/images/80J_AA_web.pdf|title=80 Jahre Antifaschistische Aktion|last=Langer|first=Bernd|publisher=Verein zur Förderung Antifaschistischer Kultur|access-date=25 June 2019|archive-date=27 April 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220427052730/http://antifaeu.blogsport.de/images/80J_AA_web.pdf|url-status=dead}} which the party itself described as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD". 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'.{{cite journal |last1=Dorpalen |first1=Andreas |title=SPD und KPD in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik |journal=Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte |date=1983 |volume=1 |page=97 |url=https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1983_1_4_dorpalen.pdf |access-date=28 November 2023 |publisher=Institut für Zeitgeschichte |location=Munich |issn=0042-5702}}

After Franz von Papen's government 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 added 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.

File:Reichstagsbrand.jpg, 27 February 1933]]

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.{{cite book|last=Evans|first=Richard J.|author-link=Richard J. Evans|title=The Coming of the Third Reich|publisher=Penguin Press|location=New York City|date=2003|isbn=978-0141009759|title-link=The Third Reich Trilogy#The Coming of the Third Reich}}

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 organisation in Germany throughout the Nazi period, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure.

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.Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, 576-77.

File:Stamps of Germany (DDR) 1966, MiNr 1176.jpg stamp from 1966 commemorating Wilhelm Pieck and Otto Grotewohl's famous handshake during the 1946 Unification Congress of the SED.]]

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.Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997 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.David Priestand, Red Flag: A History of Communism, New York: Grove Press, 2009 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.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.Cf. Siegfried Heimann: Ostberliner Sozialdemokraten in den frühen fünfziger Jahren

File:Members of the German Communist Party 1947.jpg, Willi Agatz, Max Reimann, unknown, Leo Bauer, and Gustav Gundelach.]]

The KPD reorganised 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 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.Naimark, Norman M. (1995). The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Cambridge: Belknap Press. pp. 118–121. 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.{{Cite book|last=Taylor|first=Fred|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/76481596|title=The Berlin Wall : a world divided, 1961–1989|date=2006|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-06-078613-7|edition=1st U.S.|location=New York|oclc=76481596}} 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).Steffen Kailitz: Politischer Extremismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Eine Einführung. S. 68.Olav Teichert: Die Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins. Untersuchung der Steuerung der SEW durch die SED. kassel university press, 2011, {{ISBN|978-3-89958-995-5}}, S. 93. ({{Google books|XiQA7tjTyWwC || page=93}})Eckhard Jesse: Deutsche Geschichte. Compact Verlag, 2008, {{ISBN|978-3-8174-6606-1}}, S. 264. ({{Google books|XY0S29LwPvgC || page=264}})Bernhard Diestelkamp: Zwischen Kontinuität und Fremdbestimmung. Mohr Siebeck, 1996, {{ISBN|3-16-146603-9}}, S. 308. ({{Google books|WkN6OajVbpEC || page=308}}) 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).

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).

{{Further|List of members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Germany|List of members of the Zentrale of the Communist Party of Germany|List of members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany}}

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.Broue, P. (2006) The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.635 Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Central Committee, which was made up of people elected at the Congress in two different ways. One group of people was elected directly by the Congress and had to live where the leadership was resident; these members formed the Zentrale. The other group was also elected at the Congress, but was nominated from the districts they represented who represented 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).Broue, P. (2006) The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.635–636 Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.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

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".Broue, P. (2006) The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pg.863–864

{{Commons category|Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands|Communist Party of Germany}}

• Communist Party Opposition
• Communist Workers' Party of Germany
• Freies Volk
• German resistance
• German Revolution of 1918–1919
• Hotel Lux, Moscow hotel where many German party members lived in exile
• Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition
• Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Ernst Thälmann, Paul Levi, Erich Mielke, Richard Müller
• Roter Frontkämpferbund
• Socialist Workers' Party of Germany
• Sozialistische Volkszeitung
• Spartacus League
• Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers

{{Reflist|group=n}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite journal |last=Bowlby |first=Chris |date=March 1986 |title=Blutmai 1929: Police, Parties and Proletarians in a Berlin Confrontation |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639259 |journal=The Historical Journal |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=137–158 |doi=10.1017/s0018246x00018653 |jstor=2639259 |s2cid=159528044 }}
• {{cite book |last=Rosenhaft |first=Eve |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sv88AAAAIAAJ |title=Beating the Fascists?: The German Communists and Political Violence 1929–1933 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1983

|isbn=9780521236386 |pages=32}}

• 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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