Walter Ulbricht - First World War and Weimar Years

First World War and Weimar Years

Ulbricht served in World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia on the Eastern Front, and in the Balkans. He deserted in 1917, as he had opposed the war from the beginning. Imprisoned in Charleroi, in 1918 he was released during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. In 1917 he became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) after it split off from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) over support of Germany's participation in World War I. During the German Revolution he became a member of the soldier's soviet of his army corps and later a member of the KPD in 1920, joining its 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 (Sächsischer Landtag) in 1926. He became a Member of the Reichstag for South Westphalia from 1928 to 1933 and served as KPD chairman in Berlin from 1929.

In the years before the 1933 Nazi election to power, paramilitary forces of the left and the right caused frequent disturbances. Violence connected with demonstrations was common, with supporters of each side fighting each other and the police. In 1931 the Communists in Berlin decided on a policy of killing two police officers for every communist demonstrator killed by police, and as a result Ulbricht urged fellow communists Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger to plan the assassination of two Berlin police officers, Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck. Erich Mielke (later to become Ulbricht's chief of national security) and Erich Ziemer carried out the killing. In 1932, the Comintern ordered the Communists to cooperate with the Nazis against the Social Democrats, so Ulbricht and Joseph Goebbels (the Nazi Gauleiter for Berlin) both urged their respective constituents to support the Berlin transport workers' strike in November 1932. At an event arranged by the Nazi Party in January 1931, Ulbricht was allowed to deliver a speech. Subsequently, Goebbels delivered his own speech. The attempt at discussion became the opposite of friendly, 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 strike ended after five days.