1.
Leadership of East Germany
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The political leadership of East Germany was in the hands of several offices. Prior the proclamation of an East German state, the Soviets established in 1948 the German Economic Commission as a de facto government in their occupation zone. On 7 October 1949 an East German state, called the German Democratic Republic, was proclaimed, for most of its existence, the most important position in the GDR was that of the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party. The Communist party and its leader held ultimate power and authority over state, the formal head of state originally was the President of the German Democratic Republic. After the death of incumbent Wilhelm Pieck in 1960, the office was replaced by a head of state. The position of chairman was commonly held by the party leader, government was headed by the Council of Ministers and its chairman, sometimes colloquially called Prime Minister. The Council was composed exclusively of members of the SEDs Central Committee and Politburo, hence, the partys subsequent leaders were no more leaders of East Germany than the leaders of other parties. List of German monarchs President of Germany President of Germany List of German presidents Chancellor of Germany List of Chancellors of Germany World Statesmen – East Germany
2.
Walter Ulbricht
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Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht was a German Communist politician. Ulbricht played a role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany. As the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party 1950 to 1971, from President Wilhelm Piecks death in 1960, he was also the East German head of state until his own death in 1973. He followed Stalins guidelines very closely, and made sure everyone else in East Germany did so as well. Ulbricht was born in Leipzig, Saxony, to Pauline Ida and Ernst August Ulbricht and he spent eight years in primary school. After leaving school, he trained to be a joiner, both his parents worked actively for the Social Democratic Party, which Walter joined in 1912. Ulbricht served in World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia on the Eastern Front and he deserted in 1918, as he had opposed the war from the beginning. Imprisoned in Charleroi, in 1918 he was released as part of the collapse of Imperial Germany, in 1917 he became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party after it split off from the Social Democratic Party over support of Germanys participation in World War I. During the German Revolution, he became a member of the soviet of his army corps. Along with the bulk of the USPD, he joined the KPD in 1920 and he rose fast in the ranks of the KPD, becoming a member of the Central Committee in 1923. Ulbricht attended the International Lenin School of the Comintern in Moscow in 1924/1925, the electors subsequently voted him into the regional parliament of Saxony in 1926. He became a Member of the Reichstag for South Westphalia from 1928 to 1933 and served as KPD chairman in Berlin, in the years before the 1933 Nazi election to power, paramilitary wings of Marxist and extreme nationalist parties provoked massive riots connected with demonstrations. Besides the Berlin Police, the KPDs arch-enemies were street-fighters affiliated with the Nazi Party, the Monarchist German National Peoples Party, and radical nationalist parties. The Social Democratic Party of Germany, which dominated local and national politics from 1918-1931, for this reason, the Comintern ordered the KPD to cooperate with the Nazis against the SPD. At an event arranged by the Nazi Party in January 1931, Ulbricht was allowed by Joseph Goebbels, subsequently, Goebbels delivered his own speech. The attempt at a friendly discussion turned hostile, and a struggle between Nazis and Communists began, police officers divided them, both sides had tried to use this event for their election propaganda. The Nazi Party attained power in Germany in January 1933, and very quickly began a purge of Communist, following the arrest of the KPDs leader, Ernst Thälmann, Ulbricht campaigned to be Thälmanns replacement as head of the Party. Many competitors for the leadership were killed in the Soviet Union because of Ulbricht, Ulbricht lived in exile in Paris and Prague from 1933 to 1937
3.
State Council of East Germany
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The State Council, was the collective head of state that governed East Germany, from 1960 to 1990. However, from the start the East German government was controlled by the SED. When Wilhelm Pieck died on 7 September 1960, the head of state was reshaped along those lines, the constitution was amended on 12 September 1960 by the Law concerning the formation of the State Council, which created a collective body in place of the presidency. The same constitutional amendment also acknowledged the role of the recently formed National Defense Council in GDR defense policy, the State Council remained virtually unchanged in the 1968 constitution and amendments of 1974. The State Council was elected by the Peoples Chamber, the East German parliament and its term was originally four years, but was later changed to five years. The body consisted of a chairman, several deputy chairmen, further members, members were taken from the political parties and mass organizations affiliated to the SED-controlled National Front. Occasionally an otherwise prominent citizen was also included, outside of East Germany, the chairmans post was reckoned as being equivalent to that of president. The diplomatic role of head of state solely rested with the chairman, both the bodys legislative powers and the chairmans special diplomatic status were formally abolished in 1974. Though the Council formally exercised its functions collectively, it was dominated by its chairman, in contrast, the predecessor post of president was a relatively weak position. However, the body had some importance as an advisory and decision-making body under Walter Ulbricht, when Ulbricht lost power in the early 1970s, the body was reduced to a ceremonial role. The 1974 amendments reflected this development, when Honecker became chairman in 1976, the secretariat of the State Council was of some practical importance as its approximately 200 employees since 1961 dealt with citizens petitions. Authorities in government and economics were obliged to cooperate with the secretariat on this, to mark the end of the SEDs monopoly on power, LDPD leader Manfred Gerlach was elected chairman. However, the body ceased to be of importance and merely oversaw the transition to the parliamentary elections of March 1990. The new Peoples Chamber, the first that emerged from free elections, among its first measures was an amendment to the constitution abolishing the State Council. As provided in the constitution, the president of the Peoples Chamber, Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, served as interim head of state until reunification with West Germany on 3 October
4.
Socialist Unity Party of Germany
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The partys dominant figure from 1950 to 1971, and effective leader of East Germany, was Walter Ulbricht. In 1953, an uprising against the Party was met with violent suppression by the Ministry of State Security and the Soviet Army. In 1971, Ulbricht was succeeded by Erich Honecker who presided over a period in the development of the GDR until he was forced to step down during the 1989 revolution. The partys last leader, Egon Krenz, was unsuccessful in his attempt to retain the SEDs hold on political governance of the GDR and was imprisoned after German reunification, the SEDs long-suppressed reform wing took over the party in the fall of 1989. In hopes of changing its image, on 16 December it renamed itself the Party of Democratic Socialism, abandoning Marxism–Leninism and it received 16. 4% of the vote in the 1990 parliamentary elections. In 2007, the PDS merged with Labour and Social Justice into The Left, official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties. However, there is evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed. By all accounts, the Soviet occupation authorities applied pressure on the SPDs eastern branch to merge with the KPD. The newly merged party, with the help of the Soviet authorities, however, these elections were held under less-than-secret conditions, thus setting the tone for the next four decades. A truer picture of the SEDs support came with the elections in Berlin. In that contest, the SED received less than half the votes of the SPD, the bulk of the Berlin SPD remained aloof from the merger, even though Berlin was deep inside the Soviet zone. The Soviet Military Administration in Germany directly governed the areas of Germany following World War II. Also reported was a deal of difficulty in convincing the masses that the SED was a German political party. Soviet intelligence claimed to have a list of names of an SPD group within the SED that was covertly forging links with the SPD in the West, a problem for the Soviets that they identified with the early SED was its potential to develop into a nationalist party. At large party meetings, members applauded speakers who talked of nationalism much more than when they spoke of solving social problems, although it was nominally a merger of equals, from the beginning the SED was dominated by Communists. By the late 1940s, the SED began to purge most recalcitrant Social Democrats from its ranks, by the time of East Germanys formal establishment in 1949, the SED was a full-fledged Communist party—essentially the KPD under a new name. It began to develop along lines similar to other Communist parties in the Soviet bloc, over the years, the SED gained a reputation as one of the most hardline parties in the Soviet bloc. When Mikhail Gorbachev initiated reforms in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the party organisation was based on, and co-located with, the institutions of the German Democratic Republic
5.
Otto Grotewohl
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Otto Grotewohl was a German politician and the first prime minister of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 until his death in 1964. Grotewohl was born in the city of Braunschweig on 11 March 1894, following World War I started his political career as a leader of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and minister in the Free State of Brunswick. In 1922 Grotewohl with the majority of the USPD members joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany, dismissed after the Nazi Machtergreifung in 1933 he was imprisoned several times. Grotewohl, after hesitation, yielded to the pressure by the Soviet Military Administration. In April 1946, the KPD and the branch of the DOD merged as the Socialist Unity Party, with Pieck. With the establishment of the German Democratic Republic on 7 October 1949, Grotewohl became the GDRs first prime minister, with the creation of the Council of Ministers government of the GDR in 1950 Grotewohl, as Ministerpräsident, became its first chairman. The actual power holder however was Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the governing SED Central Committee from 1950 onward, unlike most of his SED colleagues, Grotewohl was known to favour a more humane way of ruling the country. In a major speech to an SED party conference on 28 March 1956 and he denounced illegal arrests, called for more respect for civil rights, and even asked the parliament to develop lively debate. He also made a veiled criticism of Justice Minister Hilde Benjamins notoriously heavy-handed handling of political trials and he retained his posts due to the Kremlins trust in him. In 1960 he was diagnosed with leukemia, from which he died on 21 September 1964, however, he had not been fully active since 1961, when he began receiving medical treatment in the Soviet Union. After his death, the Wilhelmstrasse in East Berlin was renamed Otto-Grotewohl-Straße in his honor, on 15 April 1986, the present-day Mohrenstraße U-Bahn station in eastern Berlin, then known as the Thälmannplatz station, was also renamed Otto-Grotewohl-Straße. The Third German School in Chapayesky Lane, Moscow, was named Otto Grotewohl School, in 1949 he married his secretary Johanna Schumann, née Danielzik. He was an avid artist, painter, and amateur filmmaker, review of Hoffmann, Dierk, _Otto Grotewohl, Eine politische Biographie_ H-German, H-Net Reviews. Online Loeding, Matthias, Der Handlungsspielraum des Zentralausschusses der SPD in Berlin im Jahre 1945, Der Zentralausschuss der SPD in Berlin im Jahre 1945. Loeding, Matthias, Otto Grotewohl kontra Kurt Schumacher, die Wennigsener Konferenz im Oktober 1945. Loeding, Matthias, Wie Phönix aus der Asche, Zur Rolle Otto Grotewohls bei der Gründung des Zentralausschusses der SPD in Berlin im Frühjahr/Sommer 1945
6.
Guben
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Guben is a town on the Lusatian Neisse river in the state of Brandenburg, Germany. Located in the Spree-Neiße district, Guben has a population of 20,049, along with Frankfurt and Görlitz, Guben is a divided city on the border between Germany and Poland, having been separated into Guben and Gubin in 1945 by the Oder–Neisse line. Guben is located in the district of Spree-Neiße in the southeast of the state of Brandenburg and it is in the historical region of Lower Lusatia. Gubens position on the banks of the Lusatian Neisse between two plateaus was advantageous in its economic development. These plateaus developed from ground moraines of the Wisconsin glaciation period, both the western and eastern ended up as terminal moraines. The surrounding land is covered with forests and lakes. The three inescutcheons depict the arms of the rulers, the Kings of Prussia, the Kings of Bohemia. The coat of arms of the Polish sister city Gubin features a Piast Eagle inescutcheon instead, Guben began to develop around 1200 as a trade and marketplace on the roads between Leipzig and Poznań and between Görlitz and Frankfurt. A settlement on the shore of the Lusatian Neisse was protected by swamps to the south and by the Lubst, a tributary of the Neisse, to the north. Henry III, Margrave of Meissen, granted this settlement Magdeburg rights on June 1,1235, on the western shore of the river, a cloister of Benedictine nuns began developing as an outlying suburb of the town on the eastern shore of the river. In a charter of 1312 Guben received its coat of arms displaying three towers, until 1815, Guben belonged uninterruptedly to the Margravate of Lower Lusatia. Between 1367 and 1635 the margravate belonged to the crown of Bohemia, the city was fortified in the 14th century with earthworks, trenches, and wooden planking, and then refortified from 1523–1544. In 1635 Elector John George I of Saxony received Lower Lusatia, Gubens textile industry began to develop in the 16th century, although it began to flourish in the 19th century, especially with leather gloves in 1849. Beginning in 1822, Gubens production of hats covered 65% of German demand, later industrialization led to the production of rugs and shoes. Lignite processing began in the half of the city in 1847. The tradition for weaving is prevalent in modern times as the textile company Trevira maintains a manufacturing plant in the city. Guben station was opened with the railway between Frankfurt and Breslau in 1846 and the Cottbus–Guben railway was opened in 1871, a direct line to Forst was finished in 1904, and a tram line ran in the city from February 24,1904 until June 8,1938. In 1815 the Margravate of Lower Lusatia was abolished and replaced with the district system, Guben became the capital of a district within the Province of Brandenburg
7.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
8.
East Berlin
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East Berlin existed between 1949 and 1990 and consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors became West Berlin, strongly associated with West Germany, from 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall. In East German official usage, it widespread in the 1970s to refer to the Western part of the city as Westberlin. In May 1945, the Soviet Union installed a city government for the city that was called Magistrate of Greater Berlin. After the war, the Allied Forces initially administrated the city together within the Allied Kommandatura, however, in 1948 the Soviet representative left the Kommandatura and the common administration broke apart during the following months. In the Soviet sector, a city government was established. When the German Democratic Republic was formed in 1949, it immediately claimed East Berlin as its capital - a claim that was recognized by all Communist countries, nevertheless, its representatives to the Peoples Chamber were not directly elected and did not have full voting rights until 1981. In June 1948, all railways and roads leading to West Berlin were blocked, however, more than one-thousand East Germans were escaping to West Berlin each day by 1960. In August 1961, the East German Government tried to stop that from happening by building the Berlin Wall and it was very dangerous for illegal migrants to cross because of the presence of armed guards that were trained to shoot people in such cases. East Germany was a socialist republic, but there was not complete economic equality, privileges such as prestigious apartments and good schooling were given to members of the ruling party and their family. Eventually, Christian churches were allowed to operate without restraint after years of harassment by authorities, in the 1970s wages of East Berliners rose and working hours fell. The United States Command Berlin, for example, published detailed instructions for U. S. military, in fact, the three Western commandants regularly protested against the presence of the East German National Peoples Army in East Berlin, particularly on the occasion of military parades. Nevertheless, the three Western Allies eventually established embassies in East Berlin in the 1970s, although they never recognized it as the capital of East Germany, treaties instead used terms such as seat of government. On 3 October 1990, West and East Germany and West and East Berlin were reunited, after reunification, the East German economy suffered significantly. Many East German factories were shut due to inability to comply with West German pollution and safety standards. Because of this, an amount of West German economic aid was poured into East Germany to revitalize it. This stimulus was part-funded through a 7. 5% tax on income, despite the large sums of economic aid poured into East Berlin, there still remain obvious differences between the former East and West Berlin. East Berlin has a visual style, this is partly due to the greater survival of prewar façades and streetscapes
9.
East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt
10.
Germans
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Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity
11.
Social Democratic Party of Germany
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The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany. The party, led by Chairman Martin Schulz since 2017, has one of the two major contemporary political parties in Germany, along with the Christian Democratic Union. The SPD has governed at the level in Germany as part of a grand coalition with the CDU. The SPD participates in 14 state governments, nine of them governed by SPD Minister-Presidents, the SPD is a member of the Party of European Socialists and of the Socialist International, and became a founding member of the Progressive Alliance on 22 May 2013. Established in 1863, the SPD is the oldest extant political party represented in the German Parliament and was one of the first Marxist-influenced parties in the world. The General German Workers Association, founded in 1863, and the Social Democratic Workers Party, founded in 1869, merged in 1875, under the name Socialist Workers Party of Germany. From 1878 to 1890, any grouping or meeting that aimed at spreading socialist principles was banned under the Anti-Socialist Laws, in 1890, when the ban was lifted and it could again present electoral lists, the party adopted its current name. In the years leading up to World War I, the party remained ideologically radical in official principle, by 1912, the party claimed the most votes of any German party. Despite the agreement of the Second International to oppose the First World War, after 1918 the SPD played an important role in the political system of the Weimar Republic, although it took part in coalition governments only in few years. Adolf Hitler prohibited the party in 1933 under the Enabling Act – party officials were imprisoned, killed or went into exile, in exile, the party used the name Sopade. In the Soviet Zone of Occupation, the Soviets forced the Social Democrats to form a party with the Communists. In the Western zones, the Communist Party was later banned by West Germanys Federal Constitutional Court, since 1949, in the Federal Republic of Germany, the SPD has been one of the two major parties, with the other being the Christian Democratic Union. From 1969 to 1982 and 1998 to 2005 the Chancellors of Germany were Social Democrats whereas the other years the Chancellors were Christian Democrats, the SPD was established as a Marxist party in 1875. After World War II, under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher, the SPD re-established itself as a socialist party, representing the interests of the working class and the trade unions. With the Godesberg Program of 1959, however, the party evolved from a socialist working-class party to a modern social-democratic party working within capitalism. The current party platform of the SPD espouses the goal of social democracy, according to the party platform, freedom, justice, and social solidarity, form the basis of social democracy. The coordinated social market economy should be strengthened, and its output should be distributed fairly, the party sees that economic system as necessary in order to ensure the affluence of the entire population. The SPD also tries to protect the poor with a welfare state
12.
Communist Party of Germany
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The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956. In the 1920s it was called the Spartacists, since it was formed from the Spartacus League, during the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote and was represented in the Reichstag and in state parliaments. The party directed most of its attacks on the Social Democratic Party of Germany, banned in Nazi Germany one day after Adolf Hitler emerged triumphant in the German elections in 1933, the KPD maintained an underground organization but suffered heavy losses. In East Germany, the party was merged, by Soviet decree, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the SED was renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism and subsequently merged into Die Linke. The KPD was banned in West Germany in 1956 by the Constitutional Court, before the First World War the Social Democratic Party was the largest party in Germany and the worlds most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a Marxist party, by 1914 it had become in practice a reformist party, in 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favour of the war. In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany, germanys Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, was vehemently opposed to the KPDs idea of socialism. The Party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the Communist Workers Party of Germany, following the assassination of Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi became the KPD leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin, Paul Frölich, Hugo Eberlein, Franz Mehring, August Thalheimer, Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and trade union officials. These efforts were rewarded when a section of the USPD joined the KPD. Through the 1920s the KPD was racked by internal conflict between more and less radical factions, partly reflecting the struggles between Zinoviev and Stalin in Moscow. Germany was seen as being of importance to the struggle for socialism. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the Comintern for indiscipline, further leadership changes took place in the 1920s. In 1923 a new KPD leadership more favorable to the USSR was elected and this leadership, headed by Ernst Thälmann, abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success. During the years of the Weimar Republic the KPD was the largest communist party in Europe and it maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote, and gaining 100 deputies in the November 1932 elections. In the presidential election of the year, Thälmann took 13. 2% of the vote. Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy – e. g. the Social Democratic Party criticized the KPDs thesis of social fascism and this scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the Nazis. These allegations were repudiated by supporters of the KPD, the leadership of the SPD, it was said
13.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
14.
Communism
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Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism, and the political ideologies grouped around both. The primary element which will enable this transformation, according to analysis, is the social ownership of the means of production. Likewise, some communists defend both theory and practice, while others argue that historical practice diverged from communist principles to a greater or lesser degree, according to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, in the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Communist thought has also traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on ownership of property. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine, in the early 19th century, Various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the emphasis with a rational. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana, in its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels, in 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to power of Lenins Bolsheviks. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority, the event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development, Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule, the moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenins Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Great Purge of 1937–1938 was Stalins attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party and its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered and Communist parties played a role in many independence movements
15.
Gubin, Poland
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Gubin is a town in Krosno Odrzańskie County, Lubusz Voivodeship southwestern Poland. Located on the bank of the Lusatian Neisse River, it has a population of 15,000 inhabitants. It was of the Zielona Góra Voivodeship from 1975 to 1998, the Polish-German rail and road border crossings are connected with the German city of Guben, of which Gubin was the eastern part until the border changes of 1945. The coat of arms of cities are almost identical, which further emphasizes their shared history as one township. Prior to 1945, Gubin was part of Guben, Germany, in 1945 the Oder-Neisse line was chosen as the new German-Polish border at the Potsdam Conference. This meant that Guben would be split between the two countries, with the portion of the city, including the historic centre, becoming Polish Gubin. The central part of Gubin was seriously damaged at the end of World War II, with the town hall. While the town hall has since restored, the parish church is today a stabilised ruin. A large army garrison was based in Gubin from 1951-2002, including the 5th Infantry Division, the garrison was closed in 2002 following restructuring. Gubin also has a border crossing. Gubin has a mass of 20.68 km² of which 61% is used for agricultural purposes. The city takes up 1. 49% of the area of the Krosno Odrzańskie County, in Gubin, all of the schools to date are run by the local government. Official website Jewish Community in Gubin on Virtual Shtetl
16.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
17.
Antonie Pannekoek
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Antonie Pannekoek was a Dutch astronomer, Marxist theorist, and social revolutionary. He was one of the theorists of council communism. Pannekoek studied mathematics and physics in Leiden from 1891, even before he went to college he was interested in astronomy and studied the variability of Polaris. He published his first article, On the Necessity of Further Researches on the Milky Way, some years after he had finished his study he started work at the Leiden Observatory, where he wrote his thesis. After reading Edward Bellamys Equality, Pannekoek became a convinced socialist, soon Pannekoek became a well-known Marxist writer, writing for both Dutch and German magazines. His radical opinions soon got him in trouble with both the German government and the labor unions and he was on holiday in the Netherlands when the First World War broke out. Prevented from returning to Germany, he started work as a chemistry, though the Leidse Sterrewacht wanted him back, government opposition because of his Marxist sympathies made this fall through. Instead, the Amsterdam city council got him an appointment at the University of Amsterdam in 1925, first as a part-time professor, in his scientific work, Pannekoek started studying the distribution of stars through the Milky Way, as well as the structure of our galaxy. Later he became interested in the nature and evolution of stars, because of these studies, he is considered to be the founder of astrophysics as a separate discipline in the Netherlands. He became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1925, apart from his theoretical work, he also went on several foreign expeditions to observe solar eclipses and take spectra of stars. In 1926 he undertook an expedition to Java in order to chart the Southern Constellations and he was also interested in the history of astronomy and his book, A History of Astronomy, is considered a standard reference on the subject. The crater Pannekoek on the Moon and the asteroid 2378 Pannekoek are named after him, the Anton Pannekoek Astronomical Institute at the University of Amsterdam, of which he had been a director, still carries his name. As a recognized Marxist theorist, Pannekoek was one of the founders of council communism and he was active in the Communist Party of the Netherlands, the Communist Workers Party of the Netherlands and the Communist Workers Party of Germany. Pannekoek was best known for his writing on workers councils and he regarded these as a new form of organisation capable of overcoming the limitations of the old institutions of the labour movement, the trade unions and social democratic parties. He was a critic of anarchism, social democracy and Vladimir Lenin. During the early years of the Russian revolution, Pannekoek gave critical support to the Bolsheviks and his later analysis of the failure of the Russian revolution was that after Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power, they crippled the soviets. Instead of workers councils, the Bolsheviks had instituted the rule of their party, in a pamphlet Pannekoek strongly attacked and rebutted the arguments of Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer, whom Pannekoek dubbed Bourgeois Darwinists. And this arrangement does not weaken a group in which it is the rule, the animal groups in which mutual aid is best developed maintain themselves best in the struggle for existence. W
18.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
19.
Military prison
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A military prison is a prison operated by the military. The Australian Defence Force currently has a prison, the Defence Force Correctional Establishment at Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney. This prison houses military personnel sentenced to between 14 days to two years imprisonment, in addition, there are 15 detention centres located within military bases across Australia. The Canadian Forces have one military prison, the Canadian Forces Service Prison and Detention Barracks, Canadian Forces personnel who are convicted by military courts and receive a sentence of 14 days or more are incarcerated at CFSPDB. Men, although in the prison, are kept separate from women. The prison is maintained and controlled by the Canadian Forces Military Police, any service personnel serving a sentence of 14 days or less are held in local base Military Police Detachment cells at the various Canadian Forces Bases within Canada. In Italy only one military jail now exists, the Santa Maria Capua Vetere and those serving in the police corps are also held in military jail. In Switzerland there are no special military prisons, sentences are to be served in civilian prisons. Women, although in the prison, are kept separate from men. This prison is maintained and controlled by the British Armys Military Provost Staff, more serious offenders with longer sentences are transferred to HM Prison Service as part of their dishonourable discharge. There are three categories of prisoner, Those from the RN, RM, British Army and RAF who are to remain in the Services after sentence and will serve their detention in A Company. Those from the RN, RM, British Army and RAF who are to be discharged after their sentence and will serve their detention in D Company. U. S. military forces currently maintain several regional prisoner holding facilities in the U. S. see list of U. S. military prisons for names and locations. In the United States, differential treatment seems to be suggested, members of the U. S. armed forces are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Enlisted male military convicts who received sentences of less than five years are confined at various regional confinement facilities operated by the U. S, Military both in the continental United States and abroad. All female military personnel convicted of felonies serve their sentences at the Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar located at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego, California. In former times, criminals in the services, including those convicted of sodomy, were sent to the once-infamous Portsmouth Naval Prison. A brig is a United States military prison aboard a United States Navy or Coast Guard vessel, the term derives from the Navys historical use of twin-mast sailing ships—or brigs—as prison ships
20.
Amsterdam
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Amsterdam is the capital and most populous municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its status as the capital is mandated by the Constitution of the Netherlands, although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam has a population of 851,373 within the city proper,1,351,587 in the urban area, the city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The metropolitan area comprises much of the part of the Randstad, one of the larger conurbations in Europe. Amsterdams name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the citys origin around a dam in the river Amstel, during that time, the city was the leading centre for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries the city expanded, and many new neighborhoods and suburbs were planned, the 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered a world city by the Globalization. The city is also the capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and seven of the worlds 500 largest companies, including Philips and ING, are based in the city. In 2012, Amsterdam was ranked the second best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th globally on quality of living for environment, the city was ranked 3rd in innovation by Australian innovation agency 2thinknow in their Innovation Cities Index 2009. The Amsterdam seaport to this day remains the second in the country, famous Amsterdam residents include the diarist Anne Frank, artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in the world, is located in the city center. After the floods of 1170 and 1173, locals near the river Amstel built a bridge over the river, the earliest recorded use of that name is in a document dated October 27,1275, which exempted inhabitants of the village from paying bridge tolls to Count Floris V. This allowed the inhabitants of the village of Aemstelredamme to travel freely through the County of Holland, paying no tolls at bridges, locks, the certificate describes the inhabitants as homines manentes apud Amestelledamme. By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam, Amsterdam is much younger than Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In October 2008, historical geographer Chris de Bont suggested that the land around Amsterdam was being reclaimed as early as the late 10th century. This does not necessarily mean there was already a settlement then, since reclamation of land may not have been for farming—it may have been for peat. Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306, from the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League
21.
Rosa Luxemburg
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Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist, anti-war activist, and revolutionary socialist of Polish-Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League, during the November Revolution she co-founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne, the central organ of the Spartacist movement. She considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 a blunder, Friedrich Eberts majority Social Democratic government crushed the revolt and the Spartakusbund by sending in the Freikorps. Freikorps troops captured and executed Luxemburg and Liebknecht, Luxemburgs body was thrown in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. Nonetheless, some have regarded Luxemburg and Liebknecht as martyrs of the socialist cause, Luxemburg was born to a Jewish family in Zamość on 5 March 1871, in Russian-controlled Congress Poland. She was the fifth and youngest child of timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg, Luxemburg later stated that her father imparted an interest in liberal ideas in her, while her mother was religious and well read with books kept at home. The family spoke German and Polish, and Luxemburg also learned Russian, the family moved to Warsaw in 1873. After being bedridden with a hip ailment at the age of five, starting in 1880, Luxemburg attended a gymnasium. From 1886, she belonged to the Polish, left-wing Proletariat Party, in 1887, she passed her Matura examinations. After fleeing to Switzerland to escape detention in 1889, she attended the University of Zurich, where she studied philosophy, history, politics, economics and she specialized in Staatswissenschaft, the Middle Ages, and economic and stock exchange crises. Her doctoral dissertation, The Industrial Development of Poland, was presented in the spring of 1897 at the University of Zurich. Her dissertation was published by Duncker and Humblot in Leipzig in 1898 and she was an oddity in Zurich as one of the very few women with a doctorate. She plunged immediately into the politics of international Marxism, following in the footsteps of Georgi Plekhanov, in 1893, with Leo Jogiches and Julian Marchlewski, Luxemburg founded the newspaper Sprawa Robotnicza, which opposed the nationalist policies of the Polish Socialist Party. Luxemburg believed that an independent Poland could arise and exist only through socialist revolutions in Germany, Austria and she maintained that the struggle should be against capitalism, not just for the Polish independence. Her position of denying a national right of self-determination under socialism provoked a philosophic disagreement with Vladimir Lenin and she and Leo Jogiches co-founded the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania party, after merging Congress Polands and Lithuanias social democratic organizations. Luxemburg wanted to move to Germany to be at the centre of the party struggle, in April 1897 she married the son of an old friend, Gustav Lubeck, in order to gain a German citizenship. They never lived together and they divorced five years later. She returned briefly to Paris, then moved permanently to Berlin to begin her fight for Eduard Bernsteins constitutional reform movement, Luxemburg hated the stifling conservatism of Berlin
22.
Karl Liebknecht
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Karl Liebknecht was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag, the uprising was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps. After their deaths, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg became martyrs for Socialists, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Liebknecht and Luxemburg continues to play an important role among the German far left. Liebknechts parents were cousins, his maternal great-grandmother was the sister of one of his paternal great-grandfathers. His father was a co-founder with August Bebel of the Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany, Karl Liebknecht became an exponent of Marxist ideas during his study of law and political economy in Leipzig and Humboldt University of Berlin. Liebknecht married Julia Paradies on 8 May 1900, the couple had two sons and a daughter before Julia died in 1911. As a lawyer, Liebknecht often defended other left wing socialists who were tried for offences such as smuggling socialist propaganda into Russia and he became a member of the SPD in 1900 and was president of the Socialist Youth International from 1907 to 1910. Liebknecht also wrote extensively against militarism, one of his papers, Militarismus und Antimilitarismus led to his being arrested in 1907 and imprisoned for 18 months in Glatz, Prussian Silesia. In the next year he was elected to the Prussian parliament, Liebknecht was an active member of the Second International and a founder of the Socialist Youth International. In 1912 Liebknecht was elected to the Reichstag as a Social-Democrat and he opposed Germanys participation in World War I, but in order not to infringe the partys unity he abstained from the vote on war loans on 4 August 1914. On 2 December 1914 he was the member of the Reichstag to vote against further loans. He continued to be a critic of the Social-Democratic leadership under Karl Kautsky. In October that year, he married his wife, art historian Sophie Ryss. Liebknecht was arrested and sent to the front during World War I despite his immunity as a member of parliament. Refusing to fight, he served burying the dead, and due to his deteriorating health was allowed to return to Germany in October 1915. On 31 December 1918/1 January 1919, Liebknecht was involved in the founding of the Communist Party of Germany, together with Luxemburg, Jogiches and Zetkin, Liebknecht was also instrumental in the January 1919 Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Initially he and Luxemburg opposed the revolt, but they joined it after it had begun, the uprising was brutally opposed by the new German government under Friedrich Ebert with the help of the remnants of the Imperial German Army and militias called the Freikorps. By 13 January, the uprising had been extinguished, Liebknecht and Luxemburg were captured by Freikorps troops on 15 January 1919 and brought to the Eden Hotel in Berlin, where they were tortured and interrogated for several hours
23.
Freikorps
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Freikorps were German volunteer units that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, the members of which effectively fought as mercenaries, regardless of their own nationality. In German-speaking countries the first so-called Freikorps free regiments were formed in the 18th century from native volunteers, enemy renegades and deserters and these sometimes exotically equipped units served as infantry and cavalry or, more rarely, as artillery. Sometimes in just company strength, sometimes in formations up to several thousand strong, the Prussian von Kleist Freikorps included infantry, jäger, dragoons, and hussars. The French Volontaires de Saxe combined uhlans and dragoons and these units roamed the countryside, killing with impunity. They engaged in confrontations with republican loyalists and engineered some of the more notorious assassinations of the Weimar period. An entire series of Freikorps awards also existed, the very first Freikorps were recruited by Frederick the Great during the Seven Years War. On 15 July 1759, Frederick ordered the creation of a squadron of hussars to be attached to the 1st Regiment of Hussars. He entrusted the creation and command of new unit to Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm von Kleist. This first squadron was raised in Dresden and consisted mainly of Hungarian deserters and this squadron was placed under the command of Lieutenant Johann Michael von Kovacs. At the end of 1759, the first 4 squadrons of dragoons of the Freikorps were organised and they initially consisted of Prussian volunteers from Berlin, Magdeburg, Mecklenburg and Leipzig but later recruited deserters. The Freikorps were regarded as unreliable by regular armies, so they were used as sentries. Even during the last Kabinettskrieg, the War of the Bavarian Succession, germans, Hungarians, Poles, Lithuanians and South Slavs, as well as Turks, Tatars and Cossacks, were believed by all warring parties to be inherently good fighters. The nationality of many soldiers can no longer be ascertained with certainty as the origin was often described imprecisely in the regimental lists. Slavs were often referred to as Hungarians or Croats, and Muslim recruits as Turks, for Prussia, the Pandurs, who were made up of Serbs and Croats, were a clear model for the organization of such free troops. They were often used to ward off Maria Theresas Pandurs, in the era of linear tactics, light troops had been seen necessary for outpost, reinforcement and reconnaissance duties. Because, with exceptions, they were seen as undisciplined and less battleworthy, they were used for less onerous guard. In the so-called petty wars, the Freikorps interdicted enemy supply lines with guerrilla warfare, in the case of capture, their members were at risk of being executed as irregular fighters. In Prussia the Freikorps, which Frederick the Great had despised as vermin, were disbanded and their soldiers were given no entitlement to pensions or invalidity payments
24.
International Red Aid
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Not to be confused with Workers International Relief, established by the Comintern in 1921 to channel international aid to Soviet Russia during the famine. International Red Aid was a social service organization established by the Communist International. The organization was founded in 1922 to function as an international political Red Cross, julian Marchlewski-Karski was named chairman of the Central Committee of MOPR, the governing body of the new organization. After 1924, the name of this body was changed to the Executive Committee. The first plenary session of the Central Committee of MOPR was held in June 1923 in Moscow, at this gathering it was determined that MOPR should establish sections in all countries, particularly those suffering from so-called White terror against the revolutionary movement. The first international conference of MOPR took place in July 1924, by January 1,1931, MOPRs scope had grown to 58 national organizations, with a total membership of 8,305,454, according to Stasova. At the latter date the organization maintained a total of 56 periodicals in 19 languages. Stasova emphasized the difference between MOPR and Workers International Relief, another branch of the Cominterns international apparatus. The difference is this, she noted in 1931, we are assisting the political prisoners, the 1st World Congress of MOPR was held in November 1932. At that gathering it was announced that as of January 1 of that year, MOPR had established 67 national sections outside of the USSR, MOPR was headed by Elena Stasova until 1938, after which time its international character was deemphasized. As of 1924 the organization had national affiliates in nineteen countries, by 1932 it claimed sixty-two affiliates with a total of 1,278,274 individual members. The International Red Aid made its first appearance in Spain as a charity organization during the revolt of October 1934 in Asturias. It provided aid to those imprisoned for their role in the rebellion, the organization, which included many artists and writers, was later re-formed and expanded in Barcelona in January 1936, with the aim of opposing fascism on multiple fronts. During the Spanish Civil War, the writer Joaquín Arderíus served as the president before exiling himself to France. For example, the SRI founded the Escuela Nacional para Niños Anormales in Madrid and it also founded a Childrens Park on the outskirts of Madrid, providing shelter to an additional 150 children. Other activities included, The building of networks between hospitals and the front. The transformation of buildings into makeshift hospitals, clinics, blood banks, orphanages. The Workers Party of Marxist Unification, a minor Marxist party in Spain at the time, the ranks of the Fifth Regiment, established by the Communist Party of Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, were also swelled by members of the SRI
25.
Rote Hilfe
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For the group founded in 1975, see Rote Hilfe e. V. The Rote Hilfe was the German affiliate of the International Red Aid, the Rote Hilfe was affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany and existed between 1924 and 1936. The Rote Hilfe was first organized as a result of the repression in April 1921 following bloody strikes. It was formed after a decision the Communist Party of Germany, in November 1921, a Berlin Committee was created as a central committee. This effort later became the International Red Aid, the Rote Hilfe Deutschlands was founded on 1 October 1924 as an organization affiliated with the KPD. Artist Heinrich Vogeler, was one of the members and was elected to the Central Committee. The first chairman was Wilhelm Pieck, later the first and only president of the German Democratic Republic and he was previously the leader of the Juristischen Zentralstelle of the Landtag of the Weimar Republic and the Reichstag faction of the KPD. After 1925, Clara Zetkin assumed leadership of the RHD, after the death of Julian Marchlewski that same year, she also led the MOPR. In the beginning, the organization was active with the campaign, Rote Hilfe for the victims of war and work, part of a campaign to support war victims. The Rote Hilfe proclaimed 18 March 1923 to be the International Day of Aid for Political Prisoners, in March 1930, the Rote Hilfe took part in the founding of a German section of the International Juridical Union, which dealt with penal, popular, constitutional and labor rights. In 1933, the Rote Hilfe was banned, following the issuing of the Reichstag Fire Decree, hans Litten, Felix Halle, Alfred Apfel and other lawyers were arrested the very night of the Reichstag fire. The organization tried to continue its work through 1934, directed by exiled leadership in Paris, by 1935-1936, the Rote Hilfe had been dissolved by the Gestapo. Some members continued to work underground to help threatened individuals go into exile through the Saar, Wilhelm Beuttel took over the leadership of the organization from exile in Paris in 1933-1934. The chapters of the Rote Hilfe consisted of factory and neighborhood cells and were led by district chairmen who worked under a central chairman, an auditing commission was adjunct to the Central Committee and monitored compliance with applicable law. Each chapter had a commission, which was supposed to also involve local politicians. The Rote Hilfe employed 60-80 people full-time, there were annual national congresses, at which lawyers such as Kurt Rosenfeld, Felix Halle and Hilde Benjamin gave lectures on criminal law and other legal issues. In 1933, the Rote Hilfe had 530,000 members, there were also 55,600 members who were also in the MOPR. From 1924 to March 1929, the Rote Hilfe supported 27,000 people and 16,000 people in prison at a cost of four million Reichsmarks, there was a drop in membership in 1929, the result of partisan fighting
26.
Communist International
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The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The Comintern had seven World Congresses between 1919 and 1935 and it also had thirteen Enlarged Plenums of its governing Executive Committee, which had much the same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. The Comintern was officially dissolved by Joseph Stalin in 1943, while the differences had been evident for decades, World War I proved the issue that finally divided the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers movement. The socialist movement had been historically antimilitarist and internationalist, and therefore opposed workers serving as fodder for the bourgeois governments at war. This especially since the Triple Alliance comprised two empires, while the Triple Entente gathered France and Britain into an alliance with Russia, karl Marxs The Communist Manifesto had stated that the working class has no country and exclaimed Proletarians of all countries, unite. Massive majorities voted in favor of resolutions for the Second International to call upon the working class to resist war if it were declared. Nevertheless, within hours of the declarations of war, almost all the socialist parties of the combatant states announced their support for the war, the only exceptions were the socialist parties of the Balkans. To Lenins surprise, even the Social Democratic Party of Germany voted in favor of war credits, Socialist parties in neutral countries mostly supported neutrality rather than total opposition to the war. The International divided into a left and a reformist right. Lenin condemned much of the center as social-pacifists for several reasons, Lenins term social-pacifist aimed in particular at Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Independent Labour Party in Britain, who opposed the war on grounds of pacifism, but did not actively resist it. Discredited by its passivity towards world events, the Second International dissolved in the middle of the war in 1916, the victory of the Russian Communist Party in the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 was felt throughout the world. An alternative path to power to parliamentary politics was demonstrated, with much of Europe on the verge of economic and political collapse in the aftermath of the carnage of the Great War, revolutionary sentiments were widespread. The Bolsheviks believed that required a new international to ferment revolution in Europe. The Comintern was founded at a Congress held in Moscow March 2–6,1919, there were 52 delegates present from 34 parties. They decided to form an Executive Committee with representatives of the most important sections, the Congress decided that the Executive Committee would elect a five-member bureau to run the daily affairs of the International. However, such a bureau was not formed and Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev was assisted by Angelica Balabanoff, acting as the secretary of the International, Victor L. Kibaltchitch and Vladmir Ossipovich Mazin. Lenin, Trotsky and Alexandra Kollontai presented material, the main topic of discussion was the difference between bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The central policy of the Comintern under Lenins leadership was that Communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international proletarian revolution, in this period, the Comintern was promoted as the General Staff of the World Revolution
27.
National Committee for a Free Germany
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The National Committee for a Free Germany was a German anti-Nazi organization that operated in the Soviet Union during World War II. The rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany in 1933 led to the outlawing of the Communist Party of Germany and persecutions of its members, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, German prisoners of war began to fall into Soviet hands. Several attempts to establish an organization from those POWs were made with little success since most of them still believed in the final victory of the Wehrmacht. Its leadership consisted of 38 members, including 28 Wehrmacht POWs and 10 exiled communists, two months after the founding of the NKFD, the League of German Officers was founded, its leader was General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach. The main task of the BDO was to deliver propaganda aimed at the German armed forces, the BDO later merged with the NKFD. Although the NKFD operated in the Soviet Union and consisted partly of communists, it used conservative symbols and ideology. The stated goal of the NKFD organisation was a return to the borders of 1937, the opening of negotiations for peace. It also called for the preservation of the power of the Wehrmacht, the NKFD believed that German civilians and soldiers had to place the interests of the German nation above those of their Nazi leaders. As the war progressed and it increasingly clear that an anti-Nazi putsch would not occur. NKFD and BDO activity focused on propaganda and had their own newspaper and they sent leaflets to German soldiers at the front and POWs in the Soviet camps. Red Army Major Lev Kopelev described the joint psychological warfare at Grudziądz in March 1945 by the Red Army, General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered to raise an anti-Hitler army from NKFD and BDO members to fight against the Nazis, but the Soviets did not accept this offer. Some NKFD members were attached to frontline Soviet units to interrogate German POWs, other NKFD members fought behind the German lines alongside Soviet partisan units. Towards the very end of the war so-called Seydlitz-Troops were sent to the German lines in uniform with orders to blend in with the defenders, some rejoined their former comrades and others followed their orders. As the Red Army entered Germany, some NKFD members were appointed as officials in the government of the Soviet occupation zone. Freies Deutschland was the newspaper of the NKFD, published from 1943 to 1945. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, NKFD members mostly returned to the Soviet occupation zone in Germany and had a key role in building the German Democratic Republic. Some BDO members had a key role in building the National Peoples Army, anton Ackermann Wilhelm Adam Johannes R
28.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
29.
Battle of Moscow
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The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942, the Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitlers attack on Moscow, capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the largest Soviet city. Moscow was one of the military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion plan, called for the capture of Moscow within four months, the German Army Group North moved towards Leningrad, Army Group South took control of Ukraine, and Army Group Center advanced towards Moscow. By July 1941, Army Group Center crossed the Dnieper River, in August 1941, German forces captured Smolensk, an important stronghold on the road to Moscow. At this stage, although Moscow was vulnerable, an offensive against the city would have exposed the German flanks. In part to address these risks, in part to attempt to secure Ukraines food and mineral resources, Hitler ordered the attack to turn north and south and eliminate Soviet forces at Leningrad and this delayed the German advance on Moscow. When that advance resumed on 2 October 1941, German forces had been weakened, for Hitler, the Soviet capital was secondary, and he believed the only way to bring the Soviet Union to its knees was to defeat it economically. He felt this could be accomplished by seizing the economic resources of Ukraine east of Kiev, when Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, supported a direct thrust to Moscow, he was told that only ossified brains could think of such an idea. Franz Halder, head of the Army General Staff, was convinced that a drive to seize Moscow would be victorious after the German Army inflicted enough damage on the Soviet forces. This view was shared by most within the German high command, but Hitler overruled his generals in favor of pocketing the Soviet forces around Kiev in the south, followed by the seizure of Ukraine. The move was successful, resulting in the loss of 660,000 Red Army personnel by 26 September, with the end of summer, Hitler redirected his attention to Moscow and assigned Army Group Center to this task. The forces committed to Operation Typhoon included three infantry armies supported by three Panzer Groups and by the Luftwaffes Luftflotte 2, up to two million German troops were committed to the operation, along with 1,000 tanks and 14,000 guns. German aerial strength, however, had severely reduced over the summers campaign. Luftflotte 2 had only 549 serviceable machines, including 158 medium and dive-bombers and 172 fighters, the attack relied on standard blitzkrieg tactics, using Panzer groups rushing deep into Soviet formations and executing double-pincer movements, pocketing Red Army divisions and destroying them. Facing the Wehrmacht were three Soviet fronts forming a line between the cities of Vyazma and Bryansk, which barred the way to Moscow. The armies comprising these fronts had also involved in heavy fighting. Still, it was a formidable concentration consisting of 1,250,000 men,1,000 tanks and 7,600 guns, the Soviet Air Force had suffered appalling losses of some 7,500 or 21,200 aircraft
30.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
31.
Soviet occupation zone
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The Soviet Occupation Zone was the area of central Germany occupied by the Soviet Union from 1945 on, at the end of World War II. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republic, which became referred to as East Germany, was established in the Soviet Occupation Zone. The SBZ was one of the four Allied occupation zones of Germany created at the end of World War II, according to the Potsdam Agreement, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany was assigned responsibility for the eastern portion of Germany. After several months of occupation these gains by the British and Americans were ceded to the Soviets, by July 1945, the SMAD allowed four political parties to develop, though they were all required to work together under an alliance known as the Democratic Bloc. In April 1946, the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Communist Party of Germany merged to form the Socialist Unity Party, the SMAD set up ten special camps for the detention of Germans, making use of some former Nazi concentration camps. In 1945, the Soviet occupation zone consisted primarily of the portions of Prussia. After Prussia was dissolved by the Allied powers in 1947, the area was divided between the German states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. On 7 October 1949, the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic, in 1952, the Länder were dissolved and realigned into 14 districts, plus the district of East Berlin. In 1952, with the Cold War political confrontation well underway, the Wests disinterest in this proposal helped to cement the Soviet Zones identity as the GDR for the next four decades
32.
Group of Soviet Forces in Germany
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The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, also known as the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany and the Western Group of Forces were the troops of the Soviet Army in East Germany. The Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany was formed after the end of the Second World War from units of the 1st, the group helped suppress the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany. After the end of occupation functions in 1954 the group was renamed the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, the group represented Soviet interests in East Germany during the Cold War. After changes in Soviet foreign policy during the late 1980s, the group shifted to a defensive role. Russian forces remained in Eastern Germany after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces, Germany was formed after the end of the Second World War from formations of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts, commanded by Georgy Zhukov. The 89th Rifle Division was not disbanded and instead transferred to the Caucasus, in January 1946, the 2nd Shock Army left the Soviet Zone. A month later, the 47th Army was disbanded, with its units withdrawn to the Soviet Union, in October the 5th Shock Army was disbanded. In 1947 the 3rd and 4th Guards Mechanized Divisions, former mechanized armies, in 1954 the 3rd Shock Army became the 3rd Red Banner Combined Arms Army. The 3rd Guards Mechanized Army became the 18th Guards Army on 29 April 1957, on the same day, the 4th Guards Mechanized Army became the 20th Guards Army. After the abolition of the functions in 1954, the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany became known as the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany on 24 March. The legal basis for the GSVGs stay in East Germany was the Treaty on Relations between the USSR and the GDR of 1955, withdrawals from East Germany in 1956 and 1957/58 comprised more than 70,000 Soviet army personnel, including 18th Army Staff. The GSFG had the task to ensure for the adherence to the regulations of the Potsdam Agreement, furthermore, they represented the political and military interests of the Soviet Union. It was specified that the Soviet armed forces were not to interfere into the affairs of the GDR. In the course of Perestroika the GSFG was realigned as a defensive force regarding strength, structure. This entailed a reduction of the tank forces in 1989. The GSFG was renamed the Western Group of Forces on 1 June 1989, the withdrawal of the GSFG was one of the largest peacetime troop transfers in military history. Despite the difficulties, which resulted from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the same period, between the years of 1992 and 1993, the Western Group of Forces in Germany, halted military exercises. The return of the troops and material took place particularly by the sea route by means of the ports in Rostock, the Russian Ground Forces left Germany on 25 June 1994 with a military parade of the 6th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade in Berlin
33.
Joseph Stalin
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
34.
Majakowskiring
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The Majakowskiring is an ellipse-shaped street in the Pankow district of Berlin, Germany, in the Niederschönhausen locality. It was famous as the residence of senior figures in the government of the German Democratic Republic. Until 4 May 1950, the section was called Kronprinzenstraße. It was then renamed after the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovski, for a short time it was called Majakowskistraße. Most of the houses were built in the 1920s and are mainly mansions which were inhabited by industrialists and artists, in exceptional cases the former owners were allowed to remain if they continued to pay rent, for example in the case of the house No.29. When the owners left East Berlin in 1950, these also were expropriated, until 1960, the members of the GDR government lived here, after the houses were converted to the taste of the new inhabitants by architects like Hans Scharoun. The Majakowskiring became a synonym for the GDR government, thus Konrad Adenauer spoke of the gentlemen in Pankoff, and Udo Lindenberg sang of the special train to Pankow. The government representatives living in the Majakowskiring quarter became shielded from the outside world, at first, it was decided to move to Hoppegarten, east of East Berlin, because there was a fast escape route from there over the motorway eastward. In the end, a complex was built in Waldsiedlung, Wandlitz, because of this sealing-off, people called the quarter Städtchen. When Lotte Ulbricht wanted to return to the Majakowskiring after the death of her husband Walter Ulbricht in 1973, however she was forbidden to return to the house they originally lived in. Instead, she was assigned house number 12, in which she lived up to her death in 2002, in 1975, house 28/30 was demolished, as part of the process of erasing every reminder of Walter Ulbricht from history. The house in which Otto Grotewohl lived is today a literature workshop, the house of Johannes R. Becher was sold and is private property
35.
Pankow
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Pankow is the most populous and the second-largest borough of Berlin. In Berlins 2001 administrative reform it was merged with the boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee. The borough, named after the Panke river, covers the northeast of the city region and it borders Mitte and Reinickendorf in the west, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in the south, and Lichtenberg in the east. Pankow is Berlins largest borough by population and the second largest by area, between 1945 and 1960, Schönhausen Palace and the nearby Majakowskiring street in the Niederschönhausen locality of Pankow was the home to many members of the East German government. Western writers therefore often referred to Pankow as a metonym for the East German regime—as reflected by Udo Lindenbergs song Sonderzug nach Pankow, the Rykestrasse Synagogue, Germanys largest synagogue, is located in the Prenzlauer Berg locality. The Weißensee Cemetery is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe, in northern Prenzlauer Berg, the Wohnstadt Carl Legien is part of the Berlin Modernist Housing Estates UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Weißer See is the boroughs largest natural body of water, s-Bahn service is available at the Berlin-Pankow, Pankow-Heinersdorf and Wollankstraße railway stations. Another connection to Berlins inner city is provided by the M1 line of the Berlin Straßenbahn. The Bundesstraße 96a federal highway from Berlin toward Oranienburg runs through the locality along Mühlenstraße, furthermore, Pankow can be reached via the Bundesautobahn 114 from the Berliner Ring at the Prenzlauer Promenade junction
36.
Bremen
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The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany, which belongs to the state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. As a commercial and industrial city with a port on the River Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen/Oldenburg Metropolitan Region. Bremen is the second most populous city in Northern Germany and eleventh in Germany, Bremen is a major cultural and economic hub in the northern regions of Germany. Bremen is home to dozens of galleries and museums, ranging from historical sculptures to major art museums. Bremen has a reputation as a working class city, along with this, Bremen is home to a large number of multinational companies and manufacturing centers. Companies headquartered in Bremen include the Hachez chocolate company and Vector Foiltec, four-time German football champions Werder Bremen are also based in the city. Bremen is some 60 km south from the Weser mouth on the North Sea, with Bremerhaven right on the mouth the two comprise the state of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. The marshes and moraines near Bremen have been settled since about 12,000 BC, burial places and settlements in Bremen-Mahndorf and Bremen-Osterholz date back to the 7th century AD. Since The Renaissance, some scientists have believed that the entry Fabiranum or Phabiranon in Ptolemys Fourth Map of Europe, written in 150 AD, but Ptolemy gives geographic coordinates, and by these dates Phabiranon is situated northeast of the mouth of river Visurgis. At that time the Chauci lived in the now called north-western Germany or Lower Saxony. By the end of the 3rd century, they had merged with the Saxons, during the Saxon Wars the Saxons, led by Widukind, fought against the West Germanic Franks, the founders of the Carolingian Empire, and lost the war. Charlemagne, the King of the Franks, made a new law, the Lex Saxonum which stated that Saxons were not allowed to worship Odin, in 787 Willehad of Bremen became the first Bishop of Bremen. The citys first stone walls were built in 1032, around this time trade with Norway, England and the northern Netherlands began to grow, thus increasing the importance of the city. The city was recognised as an entity with its own laws. Property was to be inherited without feudal claims for reversion to its original owner. This privilege laid the foundation for Bremens later status of imperial immediacy, since the city was the major taxpayer, its consent was generally sought. In this way the city wielded fiscal and political power within the Prince-Archbishopric, in 1260 Bremen joined the Hanseatic League. In 1350, the number of inhabitants reached 20,000, around this time the Hansekogge became a unique product of Bremen
37.
Interflug
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Interflug GmbH was the national airline of East Germany from 1963 to 1990. Based in East Berlin, it operated scheduled and chartered flights to European and intercontinental destinations out of its hub at Berlin Schönefeld Airport, following the German reunification, the company was liquidated. Until 1945, Deutsche Luft Hansa had served as German flag carrier, following the end of World War II and the subsequent allied occupation of Germany, all aircraft in the country were seized and the airline was liquidated. In 1954, a West German company acquired the Lufthansa trademark, in 1955, Deutsche Lufthansa was founded as rival East German flag carrier. It soon became obvious that the East German airline would lose a lawsuit over the use of the Lufthansa branding. As a consequence, Interflug was set up on 18 September 1958 as a back-up company, in 1963, the East German Lufthansa was liquidated, officially due to poor profitability. Its staff, aircraft fleet, and route network was transferred to Interflug, as a state-owned airline, Interflug with its approximate 8,000 employees was under control of the National Defense Council, which held the supreme command of the East German armed forces. The majority of the pilots of Interflug were reserve officers of the National Peoples Army, klaus Henkes, who became General Director of the airline in 1978, had previously served as General of the East German Air Force. On warning of suspension, Interflug crews were not allowed to associate with employees of airlines from non-socialist countries, over the 1960s, the airline saw a significant growth, concerning both its route network and fleet of Soviet-built aircraft. The Ilyushin Il-18 turboprop airliner became the backbone of Interflugs short haul flights during that period, the company had been intended the primary operator of the Baade 152, an early jet airliner constructed in East Germany. The development never went beyond the prototype phase, though, and was abandoned in 1961, in 1969, the Tupolev Tu-134 was introduced, the first jet airliner operated by Interflug. It was operated on the airlines European routes, the long range Il-62 became part of the fleet in 1971. In the same year, the number of annual Interflug passengers reached 1 million, following the 1970s energy crisis with its growing fuel prices, Interflug gradually dismantled its domestic route network. The last scheduled flight took place in April 1980, western-built airliners could not be delivered to countries of the Soviet bloc because of the CoCom embargo. Also Malév Hungarian Airlines bought Boeings in 1988, in the same year, Interflug placed an order for three Airbus A310 long haul aircraft, worth DM420 million. The first Airbus A310 was delivered to Interflug on 26 June 1989, the East German crews for the new aircraft type were trained in West Germany, where any maintenance work was carried out, too. The A310 allowed for flights to Cuba. In early March 1990, Lufthansa signed a letter of intent to acquire 26 percent in Interflug, plans for a take-over by British Airways did not materialize, either
38.
German Economic Commission
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The German Economic Commission was the top administrative body in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany prior to the creation of the German Democratic Republic. The DWK was housed in the former Reich Air Ministry building in East Berlin, heinrich Rau became chairman of the converted body and after a reorganisation, announced the new organisational structure on 9 March 1948. The DWK ceased to exist on 7 October 1949 with the proclamation of the German Democratic Republic, heinrich Rau Merger of the KPD and SPD into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany German Peoples Congress German Peoples Council Peoples Control Commission
39.
Treaty of Zgorzelec
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The Treaty of Zgorzelec between the Republic of Poland and East Germany was signed on 6 July 1950 in Polish Zgorzelec, since 1945 the eastern part of the divided city of Görlitz. The agreement was signed under Soviet pressure by Otto Grotewohl, prime minister of the government of the GDR. It recognized the Oder-Neisse line implemented by the 1945 Potsdam Agreement as the border between the two states, thereby the East German government also accepted the division of Küstrin, Frankfurt, Guben and Görlitz. The treaty was worded as a declaration and was not recognised as an international treaty by West Germany insisting on its exclusive mandate. So although the treaty was binding on the two states, it was not seen by many members of the international community as such. Reunited Germany accepted the Polish annexations with the German–Polish Border Treaty, the community centre in which the treaty was signed is one of Zgorzelecs main sights and is found in a park beside the road bridge border crossing. Built in typical style, it was originally opened as Upper Lusatian memorial hall. Görlitzer Vertrag at the German-Polish Association
40.
President of Germany
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The President of Germany, officially the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of state of Germany. Germany has a system of government in which the Chancellor is the nations leading political figure. However, the President has a role which, while not an executive post, is more than ceremonial, Presidents have extensive discretion regarding the way they exercise their official duties. The President gives direction to general political and societal debates and has some important reserve powers in case of political instability. Furthermore, all laws must be signed by the President before they can come into effect. The President, by his or her actions and public appearances, represents the state itself, its existence, its legitimacy, the Presidents office involves an integrative role and the control function of upholding the law and the constitution. In order to exercise power, he/she traditionally acts above party politics. The 12th and current officeholder is Frank-Walter Steinmeier who was elected on 12 February 2017, the convention consists of all Bundestag members as well as an equal number of electors elected by the state legislatures in proportion to their respective population. However it is not required that state electors themselves be members of a legislature, the body is convened and chaired by the President of the German Bundestag. From 1979 to 2009, all these conventions were held on 23 May, in the first two rounds of the election, the Federal Convention attempts to elect a president by an absolute majority of votes cast. If, after two votes, no candidate has received this level of support, in the third. The result of the election is determined by party politics. Usually, the candidate of the majority party or coalition in the Bundestag is considered to be the likely winner, however, if the opposition has turned in a strong showing in state elections, it can potentially have enough support to defeat the governments candidate. For this reason, presidential elections can indicate the result of a general election. According to a long-standing adage in German politics, if you can create a president, you can form a government. The office of president is open to all Germans who are entitled to vote in Bundestag elections and have reached the age of 40, but no one may serve more than two consecutive five-year terms. As yet, only four Presidents have been elected for a second term, the president must not be a member of the federal government or of a legislature at either the federal or state level. On taking office the President must take the oath, stipulated by Article 56 of the Basic Law, in a joint session of the Bundestag
41.
Willi Stoph
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Willi Stoph was an East German politician. He served as Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic from 1964 to 1973 and he also served as chairman of the State Council from 1973 to 1976. Stoph was born in Berlin in 1914, his father died the year in World War I. In 1928, Stoph joined the Communist Youth League of Germany and he also served in the Wehrmacht from 1935 to 1937, and again during World War II from 1940 to 1945. He was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class and rose to the rank of Unteroffizier, following the establishment of the GDR in 1949, Stoph became a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and member of the Volkskammer in 1950. He was named to the Politbüro in 1953 and he served as Interior Minister from 9 May 1952 to 1 July 1955, and as East Germanys first Defense Minister from 18 January 1956 to 14 July 1960. As defense minister, he was awarded the rank of Armeegeneral, after serving as first deputy prime minister from 1960 to 1964, he was named Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or prime minister, in 1964. He was initially thought to be the apparent to longtime East German leader Walter Ulbricht. After Ulbrichts death in 1973, Stoph became Chairman of the Council of State--a post equivalent in rank to president of the GDR, after Volkskammer elections in 1976, the state and party leadership structure was re-arranged, and Stoph once again became Chairman of the Council of Ministers. As Prime Minister, Stoph began a series of negotiations with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1970 and it marked the first ever meeting between the leaders of East and West Germany. Stoph was known as a man who could be trusted to carry out the directives of the SEDs Politburo, indeed, for the most part, Stoph was a loyal supporter of Honecker. However, he joined the plot to him in October 1989. At the Politburo meeting at which Honecker was voted out, Stoph made the motion to depose Honecker, a month later, on 7 November, Stoph and his entire 44-member cabinet resigned in response to public pressure. On 8 November, the Central Committee of the SED nominated Hans Modrow as Stophs replacement, Stoph was subsequently arrested for corruption in December 1989. In a desperate attempt to rebuild its image, the Party of Democratic Socialism, successor to the SED and he was later spared detention due to health reasons. In 1994, a court in Berlin decided that he should not get back his seized savings of 200,000 DM, Stoph died in Berlin at the age of 84 on 13 April 1999 as the last surviving leader of East Germany before Egon Krenz
42.
Erich Honecker
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From 1976 onward he was also the countrys official head of state as chairman of the State Council following Willi Stophs relinquishment of the post. Honeckers political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned during the Nazi era. Following World War II, he was freed and soon relaunched his political activities, founding the organisation the Free German Youth in 1946. Honeckers eighteen years at the helm of the soon-to-collapse German Democratic Republic came to an end. However, the proceedings were abandoned due to illness and he was freed from custody to travel to join his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994 from liver cancer. Honecker was born in Neunkirchen, in what is now Saarland, as the son of Wilhelm Honecker, a miner and political activist. The couple had six children together, Katharina, Wilhelm, Frieda, Erich, Gertrud, after World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France. After his tenth birthday in 1922, Erich Honecker became a member of the Spartacus Leagues childrens group in Wiebelskirchen, aged 14 he entered the KJVD, the Young Communist League of Germany, for whom he later served the organisations leader of Saarland from 1931. Honecker did not find an apprenticeship immediately after leaving school, there, sharing a room with Anton Ackermann, he studied under the cover name Fritz Malter. In 1930, aged 18, Honecker entered the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany and his political mentor was Otto Niebergall, who later represented the KPD in the Reichstag. After returning from Moscow in 1931 following his studies at the International Lenin School, Honecker was arrested in Essen, Germany but soon released. Following this he fled to the Netherlands and from there oversaw KJVDs activities in Pfalz, Hesse and he returned to the Saar in 1934 and worked alongside Johannes Hoffmann on the campaign against the region’s re-incorporation into Germany. A referendum on the future in January 1935 however saw 90. 73% vote in favour of reunifying with Germany. Like 4,000 to 8,000 others, Honecker then fled the region, on 28 August 1935 he illegally travelled to Berlin under the alias Marten Tjaden, with a printing press in his luggage. From there he worked together with the KPD official Herbert Wehner – later to become an SPD member - in opposition/resistance to the Nazi state. On 4 December 1935 Honecker was detained by the Gestapo and until 1937 remanded in Berlin’s Moabit detention centre, on 3 July 1937 he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for the preparation of high treason alongside the severe falsification of documents. Honecker spent the majority of his incarceration in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison, in early 1945 he was moved to the Barnimstraße Women’s Prison in Berlin due to good behaviour and, as a trained roofer, in order to be put to work repairing the bomb-damaged building. During an Allied bombing raid on 6 March 1945 he managed to escape and hid himself at the apartment of Lotte Grund, after several days she persuaded him to hand himself back in and the escape was then covered up by the guard
43.
Egon Krenz
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Egon Rudi Ernst Krenz is a former East German politician who was the last communist leader of East Germany during the final months of 1989. He succeeded Erich Honecker as the General Secretary of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany, throughout his career, Krenz held a number of prominent positions in the SED. He was Honeckers deputy from 1984 onward, until he succeeded him in 1989 amid protests against the regime, Krenz was unsuccessful in his attempt to retain the communist regimes grip on power, and was forced to resign some weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. After German reunification in 1990 he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for manslaughter and he retired to the small town of Dierhagen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern upon his release from prison in late 2003. Krenz was born in Kolberg in what was part of Germany and his family resettled in Damgarten in 1944. After serving in the Volksarmee, Krenz joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1955, throughout his career, Krenz held a number of posts in the SED and the communist government. He was leader of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation from 1971 to 1974 and he was also a member of the Peoples Chamber from 1971 to 1990, and a member of its presidium from 1971 to 1981. Between 1974 and 1983, he was leader of the communist youth movement, from 1981 to 1984 he was a member of the Council of State. In 1983 he joined the Politburo and became a secretary of the committee with responsibility for security. He rose to prominence when he became Honeckers deputy on the Council of State in 1984. Around the same time, he replaced Paul Verner as the unofficial number-two man in the SED leadership, although he was the youngest member of the Politburo, speculation abounded that Honecker had tapped him as his heir apparent. Krenz had been approached several months earlier about ousting Honecker, but was reluctant to move against a man he called my foster father and political teacher. He was initially willing to wait until the seriously ill Honecker died, despite many protests, the Peoples Chamber elected Krenz to both of Honeckers major state posts—Chairman of the Council of State and Chairman of the National Defence Council. For only the time in the Peoples Chambers forty-year history. In his first address as leader, Krenz promised democratic reforms, for instance, they still remembered that after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he had gone to China to thank Deng Xiaoping on behalf of the regime. For this and other reasons, Krenz was almost as detested as Honecker had been, indeed, almost as soon as he took power, thousands of East Germans took to the streets to demand his resignation. Also on the day he took office, Krenz received a top secret report from planning chief Gerhard Schürer that showed the depths of East Germanys economic crisis. It showed that East Germany did not have money to make payments on the massive foreign loans that propped up the economy
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