 Therefore, deputy mayors and chief constables as well as heads of personnel departments and departments of education had to be Communists.Other administrative jobs could go to people of a different political persuasion in order to gain support from as many groups as possible.In the following years Leonhard continued to work for the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which became the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in April 1946 after the Social Democratic Party in the Soviet zone had been forced to merge with it.