Ernst Thälmann, German soldier and politician (b. 1886)
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann (German pronunciation: [ɛʁnst ˈtɛːlman]; 16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was a German communist politician, and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933.
A committed Marxist-Leninist, Thälmann played a major role during the political instability of the Weimar Republic, especially in its final years, when the KPD explicitly sought to overthrow the liberal democracy of the republic. Under his leadership the KPD became intimately associated with the government of the Soviet Union and the policies of Joseph Stalin. The KPD under Thälmann's leadership regarded the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as its main adversary and the party adopted the position that the social democrats were "social fascists".Thälmann was also leader of the paramilitary Roter Frontkämpferbund (which was banned as extremist by the governing social democrats in 1929). In 1932 he established Antifaschistische Aktion. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years; for political reasons, Stalin did not seek his release when he entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, and Thälmann's party rival Walter Ulbricht ignored requests to plead on his behalf. Thälmann was shot on Adolf Hitler's personal orders in Buchenwald in 1944.