A lost opportunity for German communism: The Stalinization of the GDR and the frustration of the working class, 1945--1953

This thesis traces the interaction between the state and the working class in East Germany from the onset of the Soviet occupation in May 1945 to the uprising of 17 June 1953. It proposes that following the fall of Nazism, the German communist movement enjoyed both an unprecedented moral legitimacy and a sharp increase in popular support, which amounted to a general acceptance amongst the population that the Communists had a right to participate in the reconstruction of Germany at the end of the Second World War. This new-found legitimacy and increased popular support derived from the Communists' antifascist credentials, which were established by their unparalleled resistance to Hitler's National Socialist regime.;However, between the summer of 1945 and June 1953, this legitimacy and support was eroded by the gradual estrangement of the German working class from the regime that claimed to be its representative. The suppression of independent socialist or labour organizations, the Stalinization of the ruling Socialist Unity Party, and the decision to 'accelerate the construction of socialism' in 1952 -- all taking place in the shadow of the Soviet presence -- alienated the political leadership from the working class in general and rank-and-file communists in particular. Disillusionment towards the development of the German Democratic Republic as a Stalinist dictatorship culminated in a worker-led popular uprising on 17 June 1953, which set the boundaries of the relationship between state and society in East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.