supported the Second Spanish Republic. Some were to find themselves persecuted by the Stalinists, a fate they shared with militants belonging to the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). Dissolution There seems to have been a tendency within the KPO which wanted it to break more clearly from any support of Stalinism and in 1939 a Group of International Marxists appeared after its founders left the ranks of the KPO. This group signed a declaration of independent socialist parties, many associated with the International Workers' Front which had left the ICO and KPO. From this point on, there is little mention of either the new group or the KPO itself, with the fall of France, the leadership of the KPO had been forced to flee again and the organisation was effectively dissolved. Of the leading figures in the KPO, Brandler and Thalheimer were to spend the war exiled in Cuba, where the latter was to perish. Brandler returned to West Germany in 1949 and played a leading role in the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik which stood in the tradition of the KPO, but he was never able to recover its former influence. Brandler died in 1967, but the group still exists and is based in Hamburg. Footnotes See also Heinrich Brandler Nikolai Bukharin Das Volksrecht (Offenbach am Main) Lovestoneites Right Opposition Young Communist League of Germany (Opposition) Banned political parties in Germany Political parties established in 1928 Defunct communist parties in Germany Political parties in the Weimar Republic Right Opposition 1928 establishments in Germany Banned communist parties International Revolutionary Marxist Centre