Background
Ernst Thaelmann was born in Hamburg on 16 April 1886, the son of an innkeeper. Of impeccable proletarian origins.
Ernst Thaelmann was born in Hamburg on 16 April 1886, the son of an innkeeper. Of impeccable proletarian origins.
Thaelmann was a transport worker in his early days.
From 1924 he had been a member of the executive committee of the Comintern and seven years later he joined its Presidium. Under its directions he adopted the ultra-left turn in 1928 which led the KPD to concentrate its fire on the ‘fascist Social Democrats’ and the reformist unions. Thus, Thaelmann declared in the Reichstag on 2 February 1930 that fascism was already in power in Germany, at a time when the government was headed by a Social Democrat. The massive Nazi gains in the September 1930 elections, however, were dismissed by the communist leadership as ‘the beginning of their end'.
In April 1931 Thaelmann confidently announced to the executive committee of the Comintern that the Nazi electoral success (of 1930) ‘was in a certain sense Hitler’s best day, and that afterwards will not come better days but worse’. In the same spirit, Thaelmann and the communist leaders failed to differentiate between the regimes of von Papen or General von Schleicher and National Socialism, failing to grasp that Hitler would totally eradicate all independent working-class organizations in Germany. Thaelmann's Stalinist strategy against National Socialism, while it embodied violent resistance on the streets, did not shrink from a flirtation with German nationalism.
In 1930 the communists adopted the Nazi slogan of a ‘people’s revolution’, calling for ‘the national and social liberation of the German nation' and a joint struggle of the masses against the Versailles Treaty, the Young Plan and the ‘government of finance capital’ allegedly headed by the Social Democrats. Thaelmann’s tactics of forging a united revolutionary front of the working class against Nazism was in reality primarily designed to subvert the SPD, the premise being that only the destruction of social democracy could bring victory to the communists. Concentrating his fire against the SPD rather than the Nazis, Thaelmann even wrote in December 1931: ‘By raising the spectre of Hitler’s fascism. Social Democracy is attempting to sidetrack the masses from vigorous action against the dictatorship of finance capital. . . . There are some people who fail to see the Social Democratic forest for the National Socialist trees.’
Thaelmann stood three times as a candidate for the Reich Presidency. In 1925 he had garnered only 1.9 million votes, but in the elections of 13 March 1932 the communist candidate received 4.9 million votes (13.2 per cent) as against 18.6 million (49.6 per cent) for the victorious Paul von Hindenburg and 11.3 million (30.1 per cent) for Adolf Hitler. In the run-off elections of 10 April 1932 Hindenburg won 53 per cent of the votes as against 36.8 per cent for Hitler and 10.2 per cent for Thaelmann. When the Nazis came to power at the end of January 1933 the facile optimism of the KPD leader soon proved to be illusory. He was arrested almost immediately after the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 and interned in Berlin’s Moabit remand prison as one of Hitler’s leading opponents.
Thaelmann spent more than a decade in captivity, until he was finally murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp on 28 August 1944.
He joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1903 and in the following year became a member of the trade union movement in Hamburg.
During World War I Thaelmann veered over towards the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and in 1920 advocated its adhesion to the Communist International (Comintern) at the Halle Congress. Having joined the newly formed Communist Party (KPD) in 1919, Thaelmann was elected to its Central Committee two years later. In October 1923 he supported the abortive communist rising in Hamburg against the opinion of the Party leadership. In 1924 he was elected as a communist deputy to the Reichstag - he served until 1933 - and as Deputy Chairman of the KPD, representing the leftist proletarian wing.
From 1925 he was Chairman of the Rotfrontkampferbund (Red Front Fighters’ Association), the communist para-military organization which in future years was to engage Nazi storm troopers in bloody street battles. In 1926 Thaelmann was responsible for eliminating the ultra-left faction of the KPD led by Ruth Fischer and in 1928 he consolidated his own leadership by driving out the reformist group around Heinrich Brandler.
Always loyal to directives from Moscow, Thaelmann was an unconditional supporter of the Leninist-Stalinist course in the Party which refused to tolerate any ideological deviations.