A series of troubling events in the Soviet occupation zone between 1945 and 1948 gave rise to suspicions that the Communist Party of Germany was in danger of becoming a tool of Soviet foreign policy, and while levels support for its successor in the Soviet zone are hard to determine objectively, in the American, British and French occupation zones, declining levels of support suggest widespread disenchantment with it. Disappointed, Bertha Thalheimer left the Communist Party (again) in 1948. She joined the new organisation which was in many respects a survivors' revived version of the old KPO. The group took its world political outlook largely from the writings of the format KPO policy man, Bertha's brother, August Thalheimer who was dying in Cuba during this time. Within the trades union movement of the zones which became, after May 1949, the German Federal Republic (West Germany), the group promoted a robustly anti-Stalinist version of socialism. From 1952 Bertha Thalheimer took responsibility for Arbeiterpolitik's newspaper.