In August 1931 Liebknecht, finding himself unemployed with a heavily pregnant wife, relocated to the Soviet Union. The backwash from the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 had been reflected in a cut back in new building in Germany, and it was possible to anticipate more and better opportunities for architects in Moscow than in Berlin. He returned for visits to Berlin in 1932 and to Hamburg in 1933. However, the dramatic change of government in January 1933 meant that the creation of a hostile environment for Jews became a defining underpinning of government strategy in Germany. Kurt Liebknecht was the son of a Jewish mother which meant that in the eyes of the authorities he was a "half-Jew". It would also have counted against him that he came from one of Germany's most famous socialist dynasties. Between 1933 and 1948 Kurt Liebknecht stayed out of Nazi Germany. His continuing professional success did not go unnoticed in Berlin, and after war between Europe's principal dictatorships erupted in 1941, Kurt Liebknecht's name appeared on the Gestapo of government opponents to be sought out and rounded up following a successful German invasion of the Soviet Union.