with his wife, Änne. Thälmann, now a member of the Reichstag and chief of the KPD, assists the coal miners in the Ruhr to organize a massive strike after their wages are cut. When the presidential elections take place, veteran SPD member Robert Dirhagen is reluctant to support Paul von Hindenburg, although this is the party line. Thälmann calls for class unity against the Nazis, but the SPD leaders do not want to collaborate with him. In the elections for parliament, the KPD gains many seats and the Nazis lose two million votes. However, the Ruhr industrialists and Mr. McFuller support Adolf Hitler. Dirhagen is enraged to hear that the SPD will not oppose Franz von Papen's decision to allow Hitler into the government and tears his party card. The Nazis seize power. The Nazis burn the Reichstag and accuse the communists, arresting many, including Thälmann and Dirhagen. Wilhelm Pieck and Jansen plan to rescue their leader with the aid of an Orpo jailer, but the SS guards - commanded by Quadde, now a SS Sturmbannführer - foil the plot. Fiete escapes abroad, joining the Thälmann Battalion in Spain, and later - after the Second World War begins - the Red Army's 143rd Guards Tank Division 'Ernst Thälmann'. Änne is arrested by the Gestapo. Hamburg is bombed, and she dies in her cell. In August 1944, a German corps is encircled by the Red Army. Hitler orders its commanders to fight to the end. The Soviets send in Jansen with a group of German communists to convince the soldiers to defy the SS and surrender. Eventually, the Ernst Thälmann Division soldiers break through the German lines, liberate the local concentration camp - in which Dirwagen was held - and accept the German surrender after the SS were overpowered by Jansen's men. The communist Jansen and the Social Democrat Dirhagen shake hands. In Berlin, Thälmann leaves his cell to be executed, while contemplating on Pavel Korchagin's words from How the Steel Was Tempered: "...All my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world - the fight for the liberation of mankind." Cast Günther Simon as Ernst Thälmann Hans-Peter Minetti as Fiete Jansen Erich Franz as Arthur Vierbreiter Erika Dunkelmann as Martha Vierbreiter Wolf Kaiser as Zinker Werner Peters as Gottlieb Quadde Nikolai Kryuchkov as Soviet colonel Michel Piccoli as Maurice Rouger Siegfried Weiss as industrialist