So what do you suppose happened to all of those communists and

Some ended in Spain or France
Some found death in Germany before nazis went cool
Some found death after nazis went cool
Some served their time by betraying their country while fighting along the russians
Maybe some of them ended up being assimilated by the nazis

>>1556409
Political opponents are the reason concentration camps were created in the first place.

>>1556409
Some, particularly some of those who'd spent time in the concentration camps joined the Nazi party. Not because of a genuine change of allegiance but because it was a way of making a demonstrable show to the Party that they had 'reformed' which would then enable to get a job and get on with their lives.
And some of the most devout supporters of the Nazi's never joined the Party.

For example a teacher from a small Hessian town by the name of Hilderbrandt and a NSDAP party member recounts that he had joined because he was an anti-Nazi, a former member of the Social Democratic party and the Nazi's had the records to prove this. For him, party membership meant getting a job, it also meant lessening the risk of persecution. He could claim to have relinquished his previous convictions.

>“After the war every non member of the Party was an 'anti-Nazi hero'. Some of these heroes weren't Nazis because of the sixty cents a month dues and for no other reason.”
”What does opposition mean? Employers opposed the Party because it raised wages, capitalists because it cut profits, loafers because it found jobs;..."

File: 51tZEyi4LAL._AC_UL320_SR222,320_.jpg (27KB, 222x320px) Image search: [Google]

27KB, 222x320px

>>1556409
some of them became nazi but spied for the reds

By March 1933 the police reported that 20,000 Communists were in prison. By the end of the summer the same year over 100,000 Socialist and Communists were in prison.
Many prominent members of the SDP left the country. The SDP leadership relocated to Prague. Otto Buchwitz escaped to Denmark in August 1933 by which time almost all members of the leadership remaining in Germany were either in prison or dead. One young socialist by the name of Willy Brandt went into exile in Scandinavia (whatever happened to him...?)

Ernst Thälmann ended his days in Buchenwald in 1944 after 11 years in detention, whist others such as Walter Ulbricht fled to the USSR residing in Hotel Lux where he remained for the duration alongside the likes of Bolesław Bierut. What became of that pair?
Margarete Buber-Neumann fled to the USSR where she remained until 1940 when she along with many other German communists were handed over to the Nazis following the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact. Over 1000 of the German communists who had fled to the USSR were condemned for various alleged crimes and spent long periods in Soviet labour camps. Heinz Numann, Hugo Eberlin and Hermann Remmele were all executed in Stalin's purges. Of the 44 members of the German Communist Party Politburo between 1920 and 1933 more were executed whilst in exile in the USSR in Stalin's purges than by the Nazi's in Germany.

>>1556409
Thrown to the camps, outright shot, or left the country

Much of the SS's early work was going after political opponents to consolidate Nazi control over that aspect of German society

This does bring up another question - has anywhere else outside Weimar Germany had this phenomenon of political street gangs beating each other up?

>>1556429
Only leaders wound up in the camps.

The majority of ranks of socialists and even communists largely blended into the general German society. While some might continue to personally oppose the Nazis, they definitely kept that to themselves.