With the military defeat in Stalingrad in February 1943, a rethinking began even among supporters of German fascism and the Wehrmacht. In countless political debates in the prisoner-of-war camps in the Soviet Union, the Soviet leadership and the emigration leadership of the KPD jointly came up with the idea of making German soldiers and officers who wanted to make a break with Hitler and fascist politics an offer for a new anti-fascist beginning. In the summer of 1943, the time had come.
In Krasnogorsk near Moscow, on July 13, 1943, the movement National Committee “Free Germany” (NKFD) was founded. Among the 38 founding members of the committee were important representatives of the German émigrés in Moscow, including KPD officials Anton Ackermann, Wilhelm Florin, Walter Ulbricht and the first president of the GDR Wilhelm Pieck, as well as well-known writers such as Johannes R. Becher, Willi Bredel, Erich Weiner and Friedrich Wolf. The majority, however, were German prisoners of war from the ranks of enlisted men and officers, such as Captain Ernst Hadermann, First Lieutenant Eberhard Charisius and Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel (Lieutenant) and Bernt von Kügelgen (Lieutenant). The Protestant pastor Matthäus Klein (sergeant) and the Catholic theology student Jakob Eschborn (lance-corporal) were also represented as Christian opponents of the Nazi regime.
Erich Weinert was elected president of the NKFD.
In September 1943, the Bund Deutscher Offiziere (BDO), led by General of Artilleries Walther von Seydlitz, was formed in the prisoner-of-war camps, and shortly thereafter also joined the NKFD.
Pokračovat ve čtení