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Ernst Thälmann (16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was the leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much of the Weimar Republic. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years, before being shot in Buchenwald on Adolf Hitler's orders in 1944. During the Spanish Civil War, several units of German republican volunteers (most notably the Thälmann Battalion of theInternational Brigades) were named in his honour.
