Frank Trentmann is a professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, and author of Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022.
As Germany heads to the polls this Sunday, the country – which has long been known for its boring and stable politics – is adrift in a turbulent storm.
Last month, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative Christian Democrats, announced that, if elected, he would stop any migrants, including asylum seekers, from entering the country without valid papers.
The announcement came a day after an Afghan asylum seeker who was undergoing psychiatric treatment was arrested after a man and a young boy were stabbed to death in a central park in a Bavarian town in broad daylight. The suspect was supposed to have been removed in 2023 but, as on many other occasions, the authorities had failed to follow through. Only a month earlier, six people had died in Magdeburg, in the eastern part of the country, when a car steered by a Saudi Arabian refugee drove into the local Christmas market. There was another car-ramming attack on Feb. 13, in Munich, which killed two people and injured 37 others.
“Enough is enough,” Mr. Merz declared. With the help of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), he tried to steer an anti-migration bill through Parliament. His defence: The German people had a right to demand action over migration. It was a national emergency. Inaction only benefitted the populists. The Social Democrats and Greens – the outgoing ruling parties – were furious: In attempting to push through the bill, Mr. Merz had torn down the firewall cutting off the populists from mainstream politics. His proposals were also in breach of German and European law. In the end, Mr. Merz narrowly lost by 12 votes.
Counter to Mr. Merz’s hope, the political situation is now even messier than before. Instead of eating into the AfD, his electoral lead in the polls remains unchanged at 30 per cent. The support for the AfD remains stable at around 20 per cent. One cannot beat the populists on their own turf. The Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens are trailing at 16 per cent and 14 per cent respectively. Mr. Merz will probably still win. But he will have to choose between two equally unattractive options: a minority government or a coalition with the SPD or the Greens, who are both livid about his anti-migrant program and disregard for European Union law.
To make things worse, there are three small parties – the Left, the liberal Free Democratic Party and a leftist populist alliance – that are hovering around 5 per cent, which is the threshold to enter Parliament. If the Left party manages to cross it but the FDP fails, as the most recent polls suggest, forming a future government will get even more challenging. In this case, the distribution of seats would mean Mr. Merz would need to build a coalition with both the Social Democrats and the Greens to have a majority government. The only other option would be to rely on the populist AfD for support, which Mr. Merz has ruled out.
Germany has been run by coalitions between the big parties for the most part of the last 20 years. It is one reason for the backlog of reforms. It is also one thing that has driven many people into the arms of populists. The big old parties seem to control politics and nothing ever changes. If Germany ends up with another big coalition government, it will keep the populists out of power now – but for how much longer?
The electoral stand-off mirrors deep national divides. A mountain of major problems has built up. Once the powerhouse of Europe, Germany is heading for its third year in recession. Volkswagen, the pride of the country, is laying off workers. East and West remain worlds apart 35 years after reunification in 1990. In the former East Germany (which was officially called the German Democratic Republic or GDR), right and left populists together command every second vote. The country is just as divided over its role in Europe and the world – many people, particularly in the East, oppose Germany sending weapons to Ukraine. They want Russian gas and oil to flow again. And, on top of that, there is the return of Donald Trump. Mr. Trump presents a particular challenge for Germany, because it so heavily depends on the United States for its exports and security.
How did Germany end up in such a mess? The rise of populism is, of course, a global phenomenon. It has special German characteristics, though. Germany, let’s remember, was the big winner of globalization. Unlike other European countries, it was doing well in the 2010s. The populist AfD does not primarily attract the “left behind,” as is the case in the American rust belt or in deindustrialized parts of France and Britain. In western Germany, it has support among workers with good jobs in unionized industries. What they fear is that their jobs may be the next to go.
The AfD’s main base, though, is in the East, where many people feel like second-class citizens, overlooked by the richer, arrogant West or even actively discriminated against. The scars of the years after reunification run deep. The 1990s were years of record unemployment, insecurity, and, above all, humiliation. Today, there is widespread fear in the East that, after having managed to put their lives back in order, the war in Ukraine and migration will once again pull the rug from under their feet. The AfD says: We hear you! It tells Easterners they are the victims of unaccountable politicians in Berlin, a West-dominated media and multiculturalism. Its slogan is “The East is Rising.”
In the East, the anti-democratic backlash draws on an increasingly nostalgic view of life under socialism. Many citizens feel their own memories have been ignored or invalidated by the official reckoning with the GDR dictatorship. They cling to their private memories of family life, hard work and weekends in their dacha, and of remaining decent people under communist rule. It is the West, with its takeover after 1990, that gets all the blame for their current grievances and frustrations. How unloved and dysfunctional the GDR was in its own time is all but forgotten. By the regime’s own account, one third of its enterprises were on the verge of bankruptcy when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Germans have often been applauded for how they came to terms with the evils of the Nazis. This is only partly deserved. When Elon Musk told AfD supporters last month that it was time for Germans to get over their “focus on past guilt,” he was loudly cheered. Popular denial and amnesia is particularly widespread when it comes to the second German dictatorship. This continues to feed populism and the resentment between East and West.
If East Germans suffer from Ostalgie, West Germans have their own nostalgia: an idealized view of the old Federal Republic in which democracy was stable, the economy was always booming and hardworking people could live a good, orderly life. This Westalgie is no less a fiction. In the 1950s and in the 1980s, huge crowds clashed with the authorities over rearmament and nuclear power, not to mention the wave of terror unleashed by the Red Army Faction in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, unemployment reached almost 10 per cent. True, West Germany was rich, but it also was unequal.
Westalgie, too, stands in the way of serious reform. It glorifies thrift and stability at a time when Germany needs to take risks, invest, innovate and consume more. For two decades now, the country has suffered from chronic underinvestment – both private and public. The result has been low productivity – much lower than in the United States but also lower than in the rest of Europe. Thanks to the “debt brake” enshrined in its constitution since 2009, Germany has much sounder public finances than Canada, the United States, Italy or Japan. But it also has trains that do not run, schools with leaking roofs, and appalling Wifi.
The country is one of the fastest aging societies in Europe and suffers from chronic shortages in all sectors but at the same time it wants to limit migration. The pension system was designed ten years after the Second World War and is no longer fit for purpose. Yet it remains sacrosanct and the idea of investing in stocks and bonds fills many Germans with horror. Most people put their money into a savings account – only to see it eaten up by inflation.
Germany is struggling with trying to find its place in the new multipolar world. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a Zeitenwende – a new era – that required national strength. An additional €100-billion was pumped into the army. It has proven far too little to plug the enormous hole in national defence. In the 1980s, the West German Bundeswehr had over 4,000 battle tanks – the East Germany army had another 2,000. Today they count 300. After dragging its feet, Germany eventually sent 18 of its Leopard tanks to Ukraine – most of them were soon out of action because of a lack of repair parts. At present, the country does not have a single division that is fully combat ready.
The issue of migration has attracted so much attention that it has distracted from the fundamental geopolitical and economic challenges that Germany is facing today. Europe needs more German leadership, not less. Closing national borders will only divide Europe further. There is widespread consensus about the need for an enormous increase in investment in everything from trains to child care to defence and digitalization, but no party has a credible explanation for where all the money would come from. The mood in the country is dark but at the same time there is a denial about the extent of radical change needed – and the sacrifices that will be required. None of the parties have a truly bold program.
It would be premature to write off Germany. The country faced serious challenges before. In the 1950s, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer steered the Federal Republic to the West against huge opposition. More recently, Gerhard Schröder, in 2003, overhauled the labour market and the social welfare system. At the moment, however, courageous leaders are in short supply.