At the end of the Weimar Republic, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was a largely undemocratic and bureaucratic party, whose political line was dictated from Moscow. However, this was not always the case. Rather, the KPD underwent a fundamental transformation during the 1920s. Not all communists accepted this process, known as "Stalinization," without protest. Various groups and factions emerged within the left wing of the party that opposed the democratization and fought for a return to the "old KPD." Later, the opposition also engaged against the increasingly powerful National Socialists. Unlike the KPD leadership, they recognized very early the danger that Hitler posed to the German labor movement. The KPD left had tens of thousands of supporters at times. Among them were.