Ernst Torgler
Ernst Torgler (April 25, 1893 – January 19, 1963) was a German politician. He started with the Social Democratic Party, moved to the Independent Social Democratic Party during World War I, and joined the Communist Party (KPD) in 1920. He worked in Berlin and was elected to the Reichstag in 1924.
Torgler became a top figure in the KPD’s Reichstag group, serving as deputy chairman in 1927 and chairman in 1929. From 1932 to 1933 he and Wilhelm Pieck published the KPD Reichstag newspaper The Red Voter.
His political career ended after the Reichstag fire in February 1933. He turned himself in to the police at the request of Hermann Göring. He was charged with arson and treason but was acquitted in December 1933 for lack of evidence and was kept in custody until 1935. Afterward the KPD leadership stripped him of his party positions.
According to some accounts, he later worked for the Nazi regime, including for the Gestapo and in propaganda roles. One version says he wrote a letter renouncing communism to Hitler. He held various jobs during the war; in 1944 an arrest warrant was issued for him after the failed plot against Hitler, but Goebbels reportedly helped him avoid imprisonment.
After World War II, Torgler was denazified and worked in the administration around Bückeburg with help from the US Army. He tried to rejoin the KPD but was rejected, and in 1949 he joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He lived in Bückeburg until his death in 1963 in Hanover.
His son Kurt Torgler (1919–1943) testified for his father at a 1933 countertrial in London. Kurt later went to the Soviet Union, was arrested by the NKVD in 1937, handed back to Germany in 1940, and died on the Eastern Front while serving as a translator for the Wehrmacht.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 02:27 (CET).