Hitler's Rival: Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory - Hardcoverby Russel Lemmons (Author) Throughout the 1920s, German politician and activist Ernst Thlmann (1886 1944) was the leader of the largest Communist Party organization outside the Soviet Union. Thlmann was the most prominent left wing politician in the country's 1932 election and ran third in the presidential race after Hitler and von Hindenberg. After the Nazi Party's victory in that contest, he was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement for eleven