Word: dahlem
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...late 19205 when German Communism was still in its adolescence, sly. ruthless Walter Ulbricht and scrappy, fanatic Franz Dahlem were two of its brightest stars and, hence, bitter rivals. Both were sent to take part in the Spanish civil war as political commissars. Both were soon ordered home, and Ulbricht obeyed, ending up in Moscow. But Dahlem stayed on until he had to flee Spain in defeat. He was interned in France, and subsequently turned over to the invading Germans. He wound up in a Nazi concentration camp. All this time, safe in Moscow, Ulbricht solidified his own position...
After the war, when Moscow set up its East German satellite, Ulbricht's sedulous sycophancy was rewarded with the key party job in the new state, that of party general secretary. Dahlem got the less important job: chief party organizer. But though Dahlem was his subordinate, such eminence was still too close to his own for Ulbricht's comfort, and Ulbricht waited his chance to pounce...
Gollwitzer, then 38, was an ordained Lutheran pastor who had spent two years in & out of Gestapo jails as a leading Christian anti-Nazi. He was Pastor Martin Niemoller's assistant in Niemoller's church at Berlin-Dahlem, and he took over the services there after Niemoller was arrested in 1937. Before he was drafted into the army, he had cheerfully collaborated with German Communists in the anti-Nazi resistance, and he had a European intellectual's theoretical respect for the Marxist solution. "To be leftist," he said later, "seemed a matter of honor...
...Green Hills of Africa The only other animal known to man as a self-devourer is the Communist Party, which, from time to time, may be observed consuming its own entrails. Last week in East Germany, the hyena jaws were relishing a larger mouthful than usual: Franz Dahlem, No. 3 German Communist. Lorraine-born Comrade Dahlem, a Communist delegate to the German Reichstag from 1928 to 1932, was an International Brigade commissar in the Spanish Civil War. Interned by the French in 1939, he was turned over to the Gestapo three years later by the Vichy government and moved...
...member of the party's Politburo, Central Committee and Secretariat, Dahlem headed the East German military buildup, and was East Germany's liaison man to the Cominform. Only two German Communists were bigger: Party General Secretary Walter Ulbricht, who toppled him, and Security Boss Wilhelm Zaisser, who arrested him. His crimes: "Political blindness." He was also charged with having supported Czech Communist Leader Rudolf Slansky, executed as a traitor last year. Warned the official announcement: "The investigation is not over yet." The hyena was still hungry...