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Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann was a German politician and Marxist-Leninist who served as the Chairman of the Communist Party of Germany from 1925 until his imprisonment in 1933. He rebuilt the Communist Party following the failures of the Spartacist uprising and German October. In February 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, and the Nazi government began arresting dozens of Communists. Thälmann was forced into hiding until his eventual arrest in Berlin on 3 March 1933 by the Gestapo. He was executed at the Buchenwald concentration camp on Hitler's personal orders in 1944.