With the handshake between Wilhelm Pieck and Otto Grotewohl the split in the German labor movement seemed to be overcome. Talking about the voluntariness of the unification Pieck later said: "We formed a united party within the possibilities the Soviet occupying power left us. We could not do it like it happened in Hungary and Poland, where the progressive forces of social democracy parted with their reactionary elements. We therefore included a lot of forces in our party which had not really been convinced of the necessity of unification, which did not have a serious theoretical platform for this step."