By the time war ended in May 1945 there were many thousands of Germans in the Soviet Union . No one knew how many . Most were prisoners of war . Others were political refugees who had fled to Moscow in the 1930s to escape from Hitler , and then fallen foul of the purges . Many were in labour camps or in internal exile far from Moscow and would never return to Germany . Of the thousands who did make it back , most would first be detained in the Soviet Union for another two to ten years . However , thirty men , who had spent the war years in Moscow , experienced a very different homecoming . Fred Oelßner was one of them . On 30 April 1945 a Soviet aircraft flew the thirty men from Moscow to Minsk , and from there to an airfield at Kalau just outside Meseritz . From there they were taken in a truck to Bruchmühle where the Soviet military commander , Marshal Zhukov had set up his headquarters some twenty miles to the east of Berlin . The ten man Ulbricht Group started work on 2 May 1945 while the ten men led by Gustav Sobottka made their way to Mecklenburg in the northern party of what was now to become known as the Soviet occupation zone . Fred Oelßner was a member of the ten man Ackermann Group who now installed themselves in eastern Saxony . Much later it became clear that the thirty men who arrived from Moscow at the start of May 1945 had arrived with a remarkably detailed " nation building " plan . The first task was to prepare the groundwork for the re-establishment of communist organizations and unions in postwar Germany , with the focus on the area to be administered by the Soviet Union according to a military division of the western two thirds of Germany that had already been agreed between Germany 's leading wartime enemies . The Ackermann Group made a slower start than the other two groups , however , since much the southern portion of the future Soviet occupation zone , including Leipzig had been liberated , after fierce fighting , by US forces , leaving the Soviet forces to concentrate on Berlin and the north of Germany . It was only in July 1945 that the American forces withdrew to the pre-agreed frontier . Slightly further to the east Dresden capitulated to the Red army on 8 May 1945 , the day ( according to most Anglo-American sources ) of the official surrender . In Dresden Fred Oelßner became the editor of a Red army " Daily newspaper for the German population " . That appointment lasted only a few weeks , however . In June 1945 he was transferred to Berlin . His mandate now , from the Communist Party Central Committee was to create and head up the party 's important Agitprop department
already been agreed
Yalta Conference
Fred Oelßner