Erich Wollenberg (15 August 1892 – 6 November 1973; pseudonyms: Walter, Eugen Hardt, Martin Hart) was until 1933 a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and in later years an independent journalist and publicist.

[1] In this report Wollenberg was highly critical of his immediate superior, the poet Ernst Toller, accusing him of failing to press home the Red Army's advantage after early victories on the Dachau front.

He wrote: "Only when Toller and comrades recognized that the civil war would not be decided with paper resolutions and ardent appeals, but only with cannons and machine guns, tanks and gas weapons, and only when the 'enormity' of a bloody confrontation with the enemy got closer, only then did all of their offensive plans collapse, and the only thing left was the 'pacifist weapon of the petty bourgeois': capitulation.

"[2] After the fall of the Soviet Republic he was sentenced to two years Festungshaft [de] (fortress detention) which he served in Landsberg, Ansbach und Niederschönenfeld, being released in January 1922.

In August 1923 he was the KPD's military chief South-West (Württemberg, Baden, Hesse, temporarily Bavaria).

[4] His extradition to the Gestapo could be prevented, although it was not possible to obtain transit visas to flee to the USA, despite the support of Walter Fabian and his wife.

This situation faced by refugees in Morocco formed the basis for the film Casablanca, 1942, though it cannot be established whether Wollenberg directly provided any inspiration.

Although the police arrested Wollenberg in Casablanca in April 1941, he had not been extradited to Germany by the time of the landing by the Allies in November 1942.

From 1960 he was head of the foreign policy editorial department of the magazine Echo der Woche in Munich, leaving after serious conflicts.

He then worked as a freelance journalist and publicists, collaborating with other left-wing critics of Stalinism such as Franz Borkenau and Margarete Buber-Neumann and emigrants from Eastern Europe.