K-Groups (Germany)

K-Groups (German: Kommunistische Gruppen, lit. 'Communist Groups') is a term referring to various small, Maoist organizations and political parties that sprang up in West Germany at the end of the 1960s, following the collapse of the Socialist German Students' Union (SDS), and general collapse of the West German student movement. K-Groups played a particularly important role within the New Left in West Germany during the first half of the 1970s. The term "K-Group" was used primarily by competing left-wing groups and in the media. It served as a collective term for the numerous, often fiercely divided groups and alluded to their shared self-image as communist cadre organizations.

Various organizations referred to as K-Groups included the Communist Party of Germany/Marxists–Leninists (KPD/ML), the Communist Party of Germany (Organizational Structure) (KPD-AO), the Communist League (KB), the Communist League of West Germany (KBW), the Communist Workers Union of Germany (KABD), and the Bavarian-based Workers League for the Reconstruction of the KPD (AB).

In 1971 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated that Germany had around twenty active Maoist groups, with 800 - 15,000 members between them. Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, K-Groups began to fade in membership and salience. Numerous activists subsequently joined the newly formed peace and environmental movement and the resulting Green Party (now Alliance 90/The Greens). Maoist activists from workplace interventions and factory groups, who had initially hoped for immediate revolution, now became long-term active members of workers' council and trade unions. Only the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) has established itself permanently.

Other contemporary German far-left parties, such as the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (SEW) and German Communist Party (DKP), were not considered K-Groups, as they were oriented towards Eastern European "real socialism." Today however, the term is sometimes used somewhat vaguely in German media as a collective term for all small socialist or communist parties/organizations beyond the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Die Linke.