ABSTRACT
On June 10, 1945, the Soviet military administration permitted "antifascist democratic" parties to organize. On the following day, not surprisingly, the Communist Party of Germany was the first party to be founded. The KPD was headed by Wilhelm Pieck, who had been one of the founders of the Communist Party in 1919, an executive committee member of the Communist International, and, during the Nazi period, the chairman of the KPD in Soviet exile. The KPD chiefs, supported by the Soviet officials, had achieved their goal of forcing the Social Democratic Party of Germany to end its independent existence and fuse into the new party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. On July 5, 1945, the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany was organized. Its founders, former leaders of the German Democratic Party in the Weimar years, sought the backing of conservative citizens in their call for the creation of a free enterprise system based on individual initiatives.
