Communist Party of Germany

The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was a German political party founded in 1918. It opposed the Weimar Republic and later resisted Nazi rule before being banned in 1933.

Spartacist uprising: An armed revolt in Berlin in January 1919 led by revolutionary socialists, including members of the newly founded KPD. The uprising was the party’s first major confrontation with the new republic.
Ernst Thälmann: A German communist politician who led the KPD from 1925 until his arrest by the Nazis in 1933. His leadership marked the party’s centralized, increasingly Stalinist period.
Social Democratic Party of Germany: A German political party founded in the nineteenth century that became the Weimar Republic’s largest democratic socialist party. The KPD treated the SPD as a rival, sometimes denouncing it more fiercely than the far right.
Nazi Germany: The German dictatorship ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945. After taking power, the regime outlawed the KPD and imprisoned or killed many members.
Spartacus League: A Marxist revolutionary group founded during World War I that became the core of the Communist Party of Germany. Its members and leadership founded the KPD in December 1918.
Red Front Fighters' League: A KPD-affiliated paramilitary organization founded in 1924 to protect communist meetings and demonstrate working-class militancy. It carried party mobilization into street confrontations and was banned in 1929.
Weimar Republic: Germany’s parliamentary republic from 1918 to 1933, established after the fall of the German Empire. The KPD rejected the republic’s political order while participating in its elections.
German resistance to Nazism: The diverse efforts by individuals and groups in Germany to oppose Nazi rule between 1933 and 1945. KPD members organized clandestine opposition despite surveillance, arrests, and executions.
German Revolution of 1918–1919: A wave of upheaval that ended the German Empire and established a republic after World War I. The revolution created the political opening in which the KPD was founded.
United Front: A strategy for cooperation among working-class parties and organizations against fascism and reaction. Disputes over cooperation with the SPD shaped KPD strategy and anti-Nazi resistance.

Linked from 15 pages