dispatches—rarely reached Hitler himself. Because of objections
from Joseph Goebbels and others, these reports were replaced in mid-
1943 by SD-Berichte zu Inlandsfragen (SD Reports on Domestic
Matters) and distributed to a considerably smaller circle. They ceased
to appear on a regular basis after July 1944.MERCKER COMMISSION. See WESSEL, GERHARD.
MERKER, PAUL (1894–1969). A leading Comintern figure later
tried in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for alleged ties to
Western intelligence, Paul Merker was born in Oberlössnitz (Saxony)
on 1 February 1894, the son of working-class parents. A waiter and
hotel employee in his youth, he served as a soldier during World
War I. In 1918, he joined the Independent Socialists and two years
later the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), emerging as
a militant in the trade-union section. Although Merker was elected
to the Prussian parliament and also sent to Moscow as the German
representative of the Profintern, conflict developed with the party
over trade-union tactics. In April 1930, owing to “leftist deviation”
on his part, his responsibilities in the KPD secretariat and politburo
were terminated.
Merker (code name max fischer) spent 1931–1933 as a Comin-
tern agent in the United States and, in 1935, was reelected to the KPD
central committee. While working for the party apparatus in Paris, he
was arrested by the French in 1940 and placed in an internment camp
in Vernet. His escape in 1942 brought him to Mexico, where, acting
as president of the Free Germany Committee for Latin America,
Merker directed communist activity among German emigrants. In
addition to his regular contributions to Freies Deutschland, the bi-
weekly journal of German communists in Mexico City, he wrote a
950-page study of Nazi Germany. Despite his non-Jewish origins,
this analysis focused on the issue of anti-Semitism and marked a
sharp departure from current communist orthodoxy.
Returning to Germany in July 1946, Merker became a mem-
ber of the central committee of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei
Deutschlands (SED) and politburo and was given responsibility for
agricultural matters. Suspicion, however, began to mount that he had
established wartime ties with American intelligence. In August 1950,
MERKER, PAUL • 295