This April 13, 1946 cancellation of Gotha, Thuringia in the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany symbolically depicts the prearranged "merger" of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) which was to become official on April 21, 1946.
From wikipedia, "It is considered a forced merger. In the course of the merger, about 5000 Social Democrats who opposed it were detained and sent to camps and jails. The SED became the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) in 1949; by then it had become a full-fledged Communist Party - for all intents and purposes, the KPD under a new name."
Posted 08/14/2020 5:25 pm
