Ernst Thälmann

Ernst Thälmann took control of the Communist Party of Germany in 1925, steering it into tight alignment with Stalin's Soviet Union. He worked to topple the Weimar Republic and replace it with a Marxist-Leninist state, commanding the paramilitary Roter Frontkämpferbund as instability deepened. Under his leadership the KPD branded the Social Democrats "social fascists" and treated them as enemies, making a united front against the rising Nazi Party impossible. The Gestapo arrested him in 1933. Stalin and Molotov initially pushed for his release, but after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact those efforts stopped; his rival Walter Ulbricht declined to intervene. On 18 August 1944, after eleven years alone in a cell, Thälmann was shot on Hitler's direct order at Buchenwald.