In the aftermath of the Second World War and the Nazi period, both the Allied occupying powers and the nascent German authorities in the political and cultural spheres sought Germans whose record during the war and the Nazi period could serve as a counterpoint to the notion of all Germans being evil. After the division of Germany in 1949, finding “good Germans” whose record helped legitimize each of the new German states became a core aspect of building a new nation in Germany and of the propaganda battle in this respect between the two German states. In eastern Germany, the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) began, even before the creation of the German Democratic Republic in 1949, to honor those Communists such as Ernst Thälmann who had died at the hands of the Nazis, as well as those “good Germans” of earlier generations, such as Rosa Luxemburg, who had opposed right-wing, “proto-Nazi,” forces from a socialist or communist standpoint. Leadership of the new state passed into the hands of people who for the most part had spent the Nazi years outside Germany, people such as Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck. Communist resistance was used to legitimize the state, and those officially recognized as “Fighters against Fascism” were accorded privileged treatment, which was instantly withdrawn if they engaged in political opposition to the new order.