There are three dimensions to this question: did German communists want a German communist state after 1945; did German communists desire the truncated half of Germany that would be the German Democratic Republic (GDR); and were German communists satisfied about the reality of the GDR. Each of these dimensions were interrelated in some way, but each have their own peculiarities.

Germany posed a particular problem for German communists in the immediate postwar period. On one hand, the fight against fascism had emboldened communist groups and individuals throughout Europe and the German communists were no exception. For the many emigres and underground activists of the KPD, the crimes of the Third Reich vindicated their Weimar-era opposition to Hitler and many KPD chiefs like Walter Ulbricht felt that this made them the natural political heirs of a new Germany. But there were tensions within the KPD that were not present in other European communist parties like those of Italy or France. The fact that Nazism was a domestically-grown movement made a number of KPD heads leery of trusting the postwar German masses. Nor did the KPD accrue the benefits of a nationalist fight against an invader like their non-German counterparts; underground KPD activity in the Third Reich walked a fine line between resistance and treason. Moreover, the experience of exile for most of the KPD's leadership meant that they were out of touch with rank and file activists or conditions on the ground. While non-German communism was a relatively young movement postwar with a large youth cohort radicalized by resistance, the immediate picture of the KPD is one of middle-age with much of the leadership the same as that of the late-Weimar period of the 1920s.

As good Marxists, the KPD leadership had expected that eventuall some form of mass movement would emerge within Germany that would push for a revolution. The problem in the immediate period was how to achieve this revolution, especially since the taint of Nazism made a number of KPD officials skeptical of the German people as a whole. Eric Weitz has identified two approaches to a German revolution in the immediate postwar period among German communists. The first approach, the gradualist approach, contended that through participation in the bourgeois electoral process, German communism could form an umbrella political movement among like-minded German parties of the left into a postwar Popular Front. This gradualist approach would allow for the German population to be slowly acculturated to the precepts of communism and allow for a quiet revolution inside the homeland of Marx and Engels. The other approach identified by Weitz was a more hardline stance focused on the classic Leninist strategy of capturing the state and then subordinating society to the Party, which would enable it to build socialism. Many within the KPD leadership favored this hardline approach. It not only dovetailed with their own suspicions about the sincerity of most Germans' commitment to radical change, but also the experience of the 1930s. Whether operating in the underground or having to navigate the vicissitudes of Stalin's purges in exile, the KPD began to emphasize rigid hierarchies and discipline as part of a KPD member's daily routine. Additionally, the hardline approach was of the two alternatives, the one more favored by the Soviet military government (SVAG). The Soviets may have pushed for elections in their zone and the (re)creation of bourgeois parties, but SVAG's finger was invariable on the KPD's scale in both elections and in forming the rudimentary components of the nascent German communist state.

But between roughly 1945 and 1948, the two positions enjoyed a degree of coexistence in the Soviet zone. The KPD's membership swelled in the eastern zone in this period, by 1946 in the eve of the KPD's amalgamation into with the SPD to form the SED, the KPD's membership levels were twice that it had enjoyed during Weimar. Germans' rationale for joining the KPD/SED were multifaceted ranging from materialistic - Germans got better ration cards for evidence of being in a Communist cell during the war -to idealistic reasons. By 1948, the SED was very much a mass party in the Soviet zone and its rank and file membership was more diverse than the Weimar period, even if its leadership still remained the same.

But the wider context of the emerging Cold War eventually led to the victory of the hardline approach to German communism. In contrast to growth in the Soviet zone, the KPD's membership in the Western zones stagnated and fell under dual pressure from the Western military governments' pronounced anticommunist tilt and the stronger opposition from West German conservatives and liberals. The emerging fact of German division encouraged SVAG to have the SED form its own government, and much of the SED's leadership saw developments within the West as evidence against trusting the bourgeois electoral process. The strident anticommunism of the Adenauer government as well as its backpedaling on denazification (which also happened in the eastern zone as well) inculcated a fortress mentality among the SED leadership that the eastern zone would be the bastion of German communism against this new form of counterrevolution. The GDR leadership remained publicly committed to the idea of a unified Germany under the aegis of the SED and its allies, but the reality was German partition was here for the duration, and the actual policies of the SED adjusted accordingly.

This meant that the hardline the nascent GDR took in the late 1940s and early 1950s often exceeded even the Soviets' desire for a communist Germany. Ulbricht's Aufbau des Sozialismus campaign adapted Stalinist methods of shock action and Stakhanovism to forcibly industrialize and collectivize the country. The extremism of the Aufbau campaign had a twofold origin. The success of Bonn's economic reforms of 1948 and FRG economic growth prompted a commiserate GDR response that it to could rebuild and provide Germans the good life. This inter-German competition would remain one of the defining hallmarks of the German Cold War as both Germanys saw success, however defined, as a zero-sum game. Secondly, the SED hardline also sent a message to the Soviet "friends" that reaffirmed that not only was the GDR more communist than other members of the Eastern bloc, but that it made it much harder for the Soviets to abandon the GDR. Although committed to supporting the SED, various members of the Soviet leadership toyed around with the idea in the 1950s and 1960s of a neutral, unified Germany. This stoked fears of abandonment among the SED leadership, many of whom had direct experience with being on the receiving end of Soviet geopolitics during the period of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It was no surprise that the GDR emerged as the strongest enforcer of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy within the Warsaw Pact and pushed back at any sign of deviance within the bloc, such as the Czechoslovakian reforms that led to Prague Spring or the Polish strikes in the 1970s.

But the strength of ideological convictions could not hide the growing shortcomings of the GDR as a bastion of German communism. The climax of the Aufbau campaign was not a socialist society, but the Berlin revolt of 1953 and a growing refugee crisis as many GDR citizens fled to the FRG. Adjustments in the planned economy led to some stabilization, and the Berlin Wall's erection in 1961 ended the hemorrhaging of skilled labor. But the these stabilization measures could not hide the fact that of the two Germanys, it was obvious that the FRG was the one that was more prosperous. Shrill critiques in the SED press of unrepentant Nazis in Bonn could not hide the growing material disparity between the two states. Despite this, the 1960s and early 1970s were arguably the best time for the GDR as standards of living finally exceeded that of the 1930s on all levels and a generational cohort came of age that had no direct memories of the war or fascism. Growth in the planned economy and the SED bureaucratic apparatus allowed for this postwar generation to have a degree of stability that their parents did not. Yet, this stability proved short-lived, especially as the SED increasingly had to turn to Western financing to maintain this precarious stability. By the late 1970s, underemployment and a further sputtering of the planned economy meant that the second GDR generation felt very insecure about their place and future within the German Democratic Republic.

I'm having trouble finding any openly communist Germans who survived in Germany after Hitler banned the party in 1933 and killed or sent to the concentration camps any known communists he could get his hands on. Even those who escaped to the Soviet Union were often killed or sent to the Gulag in Stalin's purges.