While reading AP246's fantastic Thousand-Week Reich timeline, one of the things I found most intriguing was the Red Tide DBWI, which depicted the allies winning the war in mid-1944, and I noted this would be before the OTL execution of KPD leader Ernst Thälmann. That made me begin to ponder what would've happened if Thälmann had somehow escaped from his imprisonment (maybe he fled to the USSR), survived the war and then gotten installed as GDR leader rather than Ulbricht. How might this affect history?
WI: Ernst Thälmann as GDR leader
- Thread starter Gladstone Gander
- Start date
He seemed a little more flexble that Ulbricht much less Meike. No uncle Honnocker either, Whew!
Would the ersatz, united front in which other parties exist but have no power, still be adopted? The Iron curtain used this format. Bulgaria actually allowed its pet opposition, the agrarian union, to control the head of state and the reward program of the muzzled labor unions.
It’s my understanding that the Bolsheviks from the late 1930s onwards worked against Thälmann and his lieutenants in favor of more pliable partners. They certainly didn’t take many steps to secure his release and Ulbricht was allowed to manage KPD affairs with a free hand in exile. I’m not sure that if he had lived he would be the one put into power after the end of the Soviet occupation zone.
What about erbert's son? Iotl He threw in his lot with the GDR and helped negotiate Brandt's opening to the east.
Well , He certainly wasn't very fond of the thought to collaborate with the SPD in the 1930s. But maybe the result of that refusal would have taught him a lesson?