Ulbricht Group

The tasks for the Ulbricht Group and the other communist cadres who were to return to Germany were defined at a meeting between Wilhelm Pieck and Georgi Dimitrov held in Moscow on April 25, 1945.

[2][3] The Ulbricht Group left from the Hotel Lux,[2] where they had been living in exile (some for years), and flew from Moscow to Minsk, then to Calau (near Międzyrzecz).

The rest left by truck for Bruchmühle, about 30 kilometers (19 mi) east of Berlin and the offices of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the first commander of the Soviet occupation zone.

In each, they were to seek out as many social democrats as possible, also a civil servant with a Ph.D. from each local administration who was willing to work with the Soviets and a cleric to lead a religious advisory council.

Paul Markgraf, one of the ten anti-fascist prisoners of war, was appointed the "Berlin Police President", also on Ulbricht's initiative.

Stalin urged them to found a nationwide working class party that would remain open for the proletariat, farmers and intellectuals.

It said the goal was to "continue to its conclusion the civil-democratic transformation begun with the revolutions of 1848" and, through land reform, to eliminate the "remnants of feudalism".

"[7] Some historians say that by spring 1945, the establishment of a communist-dominated government in the Soviet-occupied zone and the proclaimed democracy was merely a transitional stage[8][9] but at least one historian believes that Stalin earnestly pursued a western-style democracy for Germany, that it was the only way he could secure the responsibility from the others, which without him, would easily have been able to deny access to the resources of the Ruhr region, reparations he desperately needed as resources to rebuild the war-ravaged western regions of the Soviet Union.