Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (30 June 1893 – 1 August 1973) was a German Communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later (after spending the years of Nazi rule in exile in France and the Soviet Union) in the early development and establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR or, in informal, colloquial circumstances, East Germany). As the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971, he was the chief decision maker in East Germany. From President Wilhelm Pieck's death in 1960 on, he was also the East German head of state until his own death in 1973. Ulbricht had worked very closely with Joseph Stalin in the early years of the GDR to ensure that the regime was as close as it could be to the Soviet Union, joining the Warsaw Pact upon its foundation in 1955.

Early years
Ulbricht was born in Leipzig, Saxony, to Pauline Ida (née Rothe) and Ernst August Ulbricht, a tailor. He spent eight years in primary school (Volksschule). After leaving school, he trained to be a joiner. Both his parents worked actively for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which Walter joined in 1912.

First World War and the German Revolution
Ulbricht served in World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia on the Eastern Front, and in the Balkans. 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 (USPD) after it split off from the Social Democratic Party 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.

The Weimar years
Along with the bulk of the USPD, he joined the KPD in 1920. 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 (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 and Brandenburg from 1929.

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 KPD's arch-enemies were street-fighters affiliated with the Nazi Party, the Monarchist German National People's Party, and "radical nationalist parties." The Social Democratic Party of Germany, which dominated local and national politics from 1918–1931 and which the KPD accused of "Social fascism," was their most detested foe.

At an event arranged by the Nazi Party in January 1931, Ulbricht was allowed by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party's Gauleiter of Berlin and Brandenburg, to give a speech. 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.

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.

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 Soviet leader Joseph 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.

At the time of the signing of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Ulbricht and the rest of the German Communist Party supported the treaty.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 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".

Role in communist takeover of East Germany
In April 1945, Ulbricht led a group of party functionaries ("Ulbricht Group") into Germany to begin reconstruction of the German Communist party along orthodox Stalinist lines. According to Grieder, "Espousing the motto 'it must look democratic but we must control everything', he set about establishing an SED dictatorship." Within the Soviet occupied zone of Germany, the Social Democrats were pressured into merging with the Communists, on Communist terms, to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands or SED), and Ulbricht played a key role in this.

Dismissal and death
By the late 1960s, Ulbricht was finding himself increasingly isolated both at home and abroad. The construction of the Berlin Wall became a public relations disaster for him, not only in the West, but even with the Eastern Bloc. This became increasingly critical as the GDR faced increasing economic problems due to his failed reforms, and other countries refused to offer any kind of assistance. His refusal to seek rapprochement with West Germany on Soviet terms, and his rejection of détente, infuriated Brezhnev who, by that time, found Ulbricht's demands for greater independence from Moscow increasingly intolerable (especially in the aftermath of the Prague Spring). One of his few victories during this time was the replacement of the GDR's original superficially liberal democratic constitution with a completely Communist document in 1968. The document formally declared East Germany to be a socialist state under the leadership of the SED, thus codifying the actual state of affairs since 1949.

On 3 May 1971 Ulbricht was forced to resign from virtually all of his public functions "due to reasons of poor health" and was replaced, with the consent of the Soviets, by Erich Honecker. Ulbricht was allowed to remain as Chairman of the State Council, the effective head of state, and held on to this post for the rest of his life. Additionally, the honorary position of Chairman of the SED was created especially for him. Ulbricht died at a government guesthouse in Groß Dölln near Templin, north of East Berlin, on 1 August 1973, during the World Festival of Youth and Students, having suffered a stroke two weeks earlier. He was honoured with a state funeral and buried among other communists in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde.