Walter Trautzsch (16 March 1903 - 23 September 1971) was a German political activist who engaged as an anti-fascist resistance fighter during the Hitler years. Between 1936 and his arrest in 1939 he worked secretly as a courier for the Communist Party leader, Ernst Thälmann. (Although Thälmann was being held in solitary confinement, he was able to receive parcels and visits from his wife, and indeed had a larger than average cell to facilitate visits: they conversed, in part, by writing messages in chalk on a board in order to thwart listening devices.)