International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

The Communist Party of Germany (Kommun-istische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) was founded in the midst of the Revolution of 1918–19, which came at the end of World War I and swept away the German monarchy. Its founding members came from radical currents of the German Social Democratic Party (Sozial-demokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) that had opposed the leadership's class collaboration and support of the war. After the revolutionary wave died down and the Weimar Republic was consolidated, the KPD organized workers and intellectuals who still sought revolutionary change. In its partly self-imposed isolation, the party's impact on actual politics was rather limited. This lack of leverage became even more apparent during the Great Depression and the subsequent rise of Nazism. Paying an extremely high death toll, the KPD had been the most active organization in the anti-Nazi resistance . After the downfall of the Nazi regime the party was transformed into the ruling party of East Germany's state socialism and was marginalized in capitalist West Germany. Some of the organizational roots of Germany's new Left Party, founded in 2007, are in the KPD and its East German successor, the Socialist Unity Party. Opposition to the SPD's integration into imperial Germany's World War I efforts led to splits within the party, and the 1917 breakaway of the Independent Social Democratic Party ... log in or subscribe to read full text