There is also the tragicomedy of the German communists following instructions from Moscow about how to engage in rebellion against the social democrats of the day, which was a big part of setting the backdrop of political chaos that enabled Hitler to seize power, while Stalin occasionally ratted them out to Hitler’s secret police. And then, when it all went tits-up and the ones left alive fled Germany for the USSR where they could finally live with their communist allies, Stalin had them all killed.
The more things change amirite
Stalin had them all killed.
Not, all but many, 242 were killed during purges and 4000 were deported back to Germany, where they ended up in concentration camps. Others, among them the elite of the later SED, e.g. Pieck, Ulbricht and Mielke, stayed in the USSR.
From the English WP:
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.
It wasn’t a small proportion that died 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.[28]
The German version, which I read in machine translation, is fuckin’ fascinating. Here’s our boy Ernst Thälmann saying he couldn’t really see how anything could be more fascist than the social democrats, but said that at least the Hitler era government was going to be a lot more dangerous. Just not any more fascist, because how could such a thing be?
The Hitler-Hugenberg-Papen cabinet is the open fascist dictatorship. As far as the composition of the government is concerned, there can hardly be any further escalation in the direction of open fascism in Germany. However, there are still a whole series of possibilities for escalation in the methods of this government of open fascist dictatorship. Any doubt that this government would shrink from any Balkan methods of extreme terror would be very dangerous.
Here’s the German communists thrilled about the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany, because hooray! Peace!
The non-aggression pact exposes the Nazi regime’s propaganda about the alleged ‘encirclement’ of Germany. […] The German people welcome the non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany because they want peace […] because unlike Hitler’s alliance with Mussolini and the Japanese militarists, it is not an instrument of war and imperialist violation of other peoples, but a pact to preserve peace between Germany and the Soviet Union.
The war of the great imperialist powers in Europe has become a fact. Again millions of people are being driven to the battlefields, chased to their deaths. All illusions about permanent peace systems, disarmament and understanding in the world of capitalism have been shattered. […] The true cause lies in the imperialists’ struggle for supremacy in Europe and for the redistribution of the earth. For 20 years, imperialists have been striving to satisfy their predatory desires at the expense of the Soviet Union.
… which is why we joined up with the people doing it all! Which is a good thing!
Fuckin’ morons. It’s easy to pick holes in hindsight of course.
Also, it says “at least” 242 (Mindestens 242 KPD-Spitzenfunktionäre) 242 of the top functionaries were killed, and similar for “over” (über) 4000 regular members. I shouldn’t have said “had them all killed,” I guess, my impression was that it was so universal as makes no difference but maybe I’m wrong about that. He killed a whole fuck of a lot of them.
The tragicomedy continues in the next section, too, where the KPD was allowed to operate in West Germany but consistently failed to win any nontrivial number of people to their side (wonder why), and then tried to hold power by declaring that anyone in a union had to agree to loyalty to their party first, and the union second. The members of pretty much every single union told them to go get fucked. Then, ejected from both governmental and labor power structures, they devolved into bitter infighting over whether they should “tolerate” the existence of the German government or not, as if it was up to them. They expelled anyone who was in favor of toleration. Then, in 1956, with their support among the people at 2.2%, they tried to curry a little favor with the government by dropping their goal of “revolutionary overthrow of the Adenauer regime” which would otherwise clearly have been just around the corner. The government, unfooled, banned their party.
Just a fuckin’ rollercoaster. Honestly, it is exactly as if Hexbear grew up and got into politics. Surprisingly identical.
He killed a whole fuck of a lot of them.
Definitely. If I get the German and English Wikipedia articles right, it was the remaining inner circle of the KPD (Pieck, Ulbricht, Mielke) denouncing the others to the NKVD.
Gonna go ahead and say that
4000 were deported back to Germany, where they ended up in concentration camps
Counts as a “had them killed,” so
Others, among them the elite of the later SED, e.g. Pieck, Ulbricht and Mielke, stayed in the USSR.
Are the only ones who are the
Not, all
Still correct, but damn son.
4000 were deported back to Germany, where they ended up in concentration camps
Counts as a “had them killed,”
Yes, likely to a large share. Stalin sent those members of the KPD to (almost) certain death, who weren’t completely in line with the Stalinist ideology. If they belonged to the party elite, there were rightoff killed by the NKVD directly.
I feel like you’re ascribing a kind of logic to Stalin’s purges that didn’t exist. It definitely wasn’t as straightforward or honest as determining what your ideology was, and then killing you if it wasn’t the right one. You know the joke about “10 years hard labor for nothing? That can’t be right…”?
