Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein Organization

In the 1940s, the Communist Party of Germany, with support from the Soviet Union, tried to work underground to build an "operative leadership".

After the arrest of members of the Robert Uhrig Group in February 1942 and of the group around Wilhelm Guddorf and John Sieg in autumn 1942, Saefkow and Franz Jacob, who had fled Hamburg to Berlin after a wave of arrests, began building a new resistance network of illegal cells in the factories of Berlin.

In his publication, Am Beginn der letzten Phase des Krieges ("At the beginning of the last phase of the war"), Jacob wrote that to end the war and overthrow the fascist dictator, Communists should concentrate all their strength "on developing a broad, national front composed of all groups that stand opposed to fascism.

Together with Bästlein and Jacob, Saefkow formed the head of the organization, later also known as the "Operative Leadership of the Communist Party in Germany".

[3] There were strong links to other resistance groups in many of the bigger German cities, such as Magdeburg, Leipzig, Dresden and Hamburg.

The plan was to build a united front, with anti-fascist circles of the Social Democrats and the middle class, that would topple Adolf Hitler through sabotage and other acts.

The largest factory group of the organization was at Teves, a machine and tool manufacturer, with about 40 members (a very small percentage of their roughly 2,400 employees).

Jacob and Leber, who had been together at Sachsenhausen concentration camp and had formed a good trust with one another, then met again, separately.

Shortly before his death, he wrote to his wife Änne: "Through this letter I want to thank you, my comrade, for the greatness and beauty that you have given me in our life together... Not till today, writing these lines, thinking about you all, have my eyes moistened since the sentencing.

Jacob saw Ilse just once, when Katharina took a trip with her children and stopped in Berlin, secretly staying with her husband one night.

Dr. Ursel Hochmuth now a historian and author, has researched the German Resistance for decades and written several books on the subject.

[12] The German Democratic Republic (GDR) issued stamps in 1964, on the 20th anniversary of the deaths of Saefkow, Jacob and Bästlein.