Abstract

Relations between the Communists and the Social Democrats were almost always acrimonious, and did not improve when the Communists became the East German SED. For forty years the SED attempted to persuade rank-and-file Social Democrats and their leaders to join forces with the Communists. The East German Communists’ efforts reached a climax of sorts in the 1960s when the SED thought the SPD’s Bad Godesberg Program would alienate most rank-and-file members and lead them to join with the Communists. The SED failed at this “unity from below,” and efforts to cooperate with the SPD leaders also made no headway until just before the GDR imploded.

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