Fritz Diez as Adolf Hitler Fred Delmare as soldier Hannjo Hasse as army officer Horst Kube as concentration camp commandant Angela Brunner as Irma Thälmann Arthur Pieck as Wilhelm Pieck (part 1) Hans Wehrl as Wilhelm Pieck (part 2) Karl Brenk as Walter Ulbricht Gerd Wehr as Wilhelm Florin Karl Weber as Friedrich Ebert Martin Flörchinger as Karl Liebknecht (part 1)/Saarland delegate (part 2) Judith Harms as Rosa Luxemburg Kurt Wetzel as army officer (part 1)/Hermann Göring (part 2) Hans Stuhrmann as Joseph Goebbels Eberhard Kratz as Fritz Tarnow Erich Brauer as Carl Severing Peter Schorn as Vladimir Lenin Gerd Jäger as Joseph Stalin (scenes removed) Steffie Spira as Clara Zetkin Joe Münch-Harris as Gustav Noske Hans Flössel as Philipp Scheidemann Karl-Eugen Lenkerring as Gustav Stresemann Fred Kötteritzsch as Franz von Papen Will van Deeg as Heinrich Himmler Georges Stanescu as Georgi Dimitrov Theo Shall as judge (part 1)/Marcel Cachin (part 2) Hubert Temming as Jacques Duclos Karl Heinz Weiss as Maurice Thorez Carla Hoffmann as Rosa Thälmann Production Background Ernst Thälmann, the Communist Party of Germany's chief who was executed by the Nazi regime in 1944 after spending 11 years in prison, was revered as a national hero and a martyr in the nascent East Germany. Thälmann's character combined communist convictions with an uncompromising struggle against Fascism; in a broader sense, he served as part of what author Russell Lemmons referred to as East Germany's "foundation myth": the belief that the communists were the most authentic anti-fascists, and therefore, their successors in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany were the legitimate leaders of a new German state. Thälmann became the center of what many historians saw as a cult of personality. This veneration required all controversial aspects of his political career be repressed from mass consciousness. Journalist Erich Wollenberg wrote that in the Ernst Thälmann films, "the Thälmann cult reached its apotheosis." Inception The film was conceived in 1948, after the Soviet Occupation Zone's provisional authorities and the leadership of the SED commissioned it; according to director Kurt Maetzig, "it was handed down from above". Willi Bredel and Michael Tschesno-Hell, both political functionaries, were exempted from all their other duties to concentrate on writing the script. A 'Thälmann Committee' was convened to direct the production of the film; its members included representatives from the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Press and Agitation, the DEFA studio, and Thälmann's widow,