Communist Party Opposition
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The Communist Party Opposition (in German, Kommunistische Partei-Opposition or KPD-Opposition - KPD-O, KPDO or KPO) was a communist organisation functioning in Germany from 1928 to 1939 or 40. It stood in opposition to the mainstream Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD). It was affiliated to the International Communist Opposition (ICO).
The KPO represented the so called right opposition in the KPD in distinction to the Trotskyist or Trotskyist-sympathising left opposition and the Stalinist centre faction. It was led by Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer who had led the KPD between 1921 and 1923. They were expelled from the KPD after organising a meeting to combat what they saw as corruption in their party after its central leader Ernst Thälmann defended a protege Wittorf from charges of theft despite his guilt. Thälmann was deposed by the Central Committee only to be reinstated by Stalin through the agency of the Communist International. This move was seen as being connected to the struggle against the Bukharin-Rykov group in the Soviet Communist Party with whom Thalheimer and Brandler sympathised.
Creation
Following the expulsion in February 1925 the opposition began to publish a journal, Gegen den Strom. And at a congress held on December 30, 1928 they officially became the KPO. Most of their followers at this congress had formed part of a factional network with them since they were first demoted from the party leadership in 1923. The major exception was Paul Frohlich who had formed part of the conciliators faction that stood between the future KPO and the leadership. But like Brandler and Thalheimer he and his partner, Rosi Wolfstein, had been allies and pupils of Rosa Luxemburg.
The KPO counted approximately 1,000 members after its supporters had been expelled from the KPD, many of them local leaders of the party. In the years that followed they failed to recruit any further adherents from outside the party and gradually decreased in number. The KPO backed the KPD on most public issues but did stand their own candidates in some elections and ran other campaigns. Their members were also active in the unions in contrast to the KPD which launched a policy of forming dual or red unions in the so-called Third Period between 1929 and 1934. Due to the Third Period policy by which the KPD refused to form a United Front with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) against the rising threat of the Nazi party this became the fulcrum of most of the KPO's propaganda efforts.
Campaigning for a United Front as a small group did not give the KPO more influence with the general public, but the threat of the Nazis did lead to a leftward movement within the SPD. This leftist tendency in the SPD left that pary in 1931 and organised themselves as the Socialist Workers Party (SAP) which elements within the KPO felt they should join. After an internal struggle in which the majority of the KPO backed Brandler and Thalheimer a minority led by Frohlich and Jakob Walcher refused to accept the decisions of the fourth conference of the KPO held in January 1932. The leadership replied to this challenge by stating that by this breach of discipline the minority had excluded themselves from the organisation. The minority joined the SAP responded by joining the SAP.
Exile and decline
The KPO was only able to work legally for one more year before the Nazis came to power in January 1933. It was to go underground immediately in order to avoid persecution as far as possible. They were able to hold a conference in Denmark in April 1934 and maintain a national organisation. however in 1935 the Nazis stepped up the repression of all communist groups and trials of KPO members were reported in Weimar, Jena and elsewhere. The organisation ceased to operate at a national level and was now confined to exile circles and the Saar. In the Saar they were able to function legally for a little longer due to its status as a French protectorate. When a plebiscite was held on unity with Germany the KPO called on its supporters to vote for a Soviet Saar and to oppose unity with Nazi Germany. This was in contrast to the position of the KPD which supported the Saar remaining under the control of France.
In exile, with the leadership in Paris, the KPO continued to publish Gegen den Strom. Politically it continued the previous line of the KPO and was supportive of the Communist International and of the Stalinist regime in Russia, its criticisms being reserved for the KPD. This however began to change with the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and the deepening of the Geat Purges in Russia. A number of KPO militants in exile were to travel to Spain and did their proletarian duty in the revolutionary struggle. For their pains some were to find themselves persecuted by the Stalinists alongside militants belonging to the POUM (Workers Party of Marxist Unity).
There seems to have been a tendency within the KPO which wanted it to break more clearly from any support of Stalinism and in 1939 a Group of International Marxists appeared having left the ranks of the KPO. This group signed a declaration of independent socialist parties, many associated with the International Workers Front, which had succeeded the ICO and including the KPO. But from this point little more is heard from either the new roup or from the KPO itself. The reason was that with the fall of France the leadership of the KPO had been forced to flee again and the organisation was effectively dissolved.
Of the leading figures in the KPO, Brandler and Thalheimer were to spend the war exiled in Cuba, where the latter was to perish. Brandler returned to Germany in 1946 and joined the Stalinist Socialist Unity Party from which he was expelled in 1952 only to be readmitted four years later. The membership persecuted and leaderless was dispersed, although a small number of militants did reorganise themselves into an organisation based on the ideas of their former leaders. Today that small group is based in Hamburg.