Walter Ulbricht - Nazi and War Years

Nazi and War Years

The Nazi Party attained power in Germany in January 1933, and very quickly began a purge of Communist and Social Democrat leaders in Germany. Following the arrest of the KPD's leader, Ernst Thälmann, Ulbricht campaigned to be Thälmann's 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. The German Popular Front under the leadership of Heinrich Mann in Paris was dissolved after a campaign of behind-the-scenes jockeying by Ulbricht to place the organization under the control of the Comintern. Ulbricht tried to persuade the KPD founder Willi Münzenberg to go to the Soviet Union, allegedly so that Ulbricht could have "them take care of him". Münzenberg refused. He would have been in jeopardy of arrest and purge by the NKVD, a prospect in both Münzenberg's and Ulbricht's minds. Ulbricht spent some time in Spain during the Civil War, as a Comintern representative, ensuring the liquidation of Germans serving on the Republican side who were regarded as not sufficiently loyal to Stalin; some were sent to Moscow for trial, others were executed on the spot. Ulbricht lived in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1945, leaving from Hotel Lux to return to Germany on 30 April 1945.

During the German-Soviet alliance 1939-1941, Ulbricht promoted in the Comintern journal 'Die Welt' the official line of co-operation with Nazi Germany. Thus, he opined that "the German government declared itself ready for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, whereas the English-French war bloc desires a war against the socialist Soviet Union. The Soviet people and the working people of Germany have an interest in preventing the English war plan.“

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Ulbricht was active in a group of German communists under NKVD supervision (a group including, among others, the poet Erich Weinert and the writer Willi Bredel) which, among other things, translated propaganda material into German, prepared broadcasts directed at the invaders, and interrogated captured German officers. In February 1943, following the surrender of the German Sixth Army at the close of the Battle of Stalingrad, Ulbricht, Weinert and Wilhelm Pieck conducted a Communist political rally in the center of Stalingrad which many German prisoners were forced to attend. The NKVD head Lavrenty Beria described Ulbricht as "the greatest idiot that he had ever seen."