On the morning after the night before, all of Germany’s overseas ambassadors were in Berlin to talk about their country’s place in the world. The annual gathering could not have come at a more portentous time.
The Germany I have known for the past 40 years is at its greatest moment of crisis.
Everything it represents is being challenged by many of its own citizens, aided and abetted by malign foreign forces.
Sunday’s elections in the state of Saxony Anhalt have changed everything.
The idea that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) could have won 44 per cent of the vote is alarming enough. The fact that it did so in a region where its politics have been declared extremist by the domestic intelligence service makes clear the extent of tmhe threat to liberal democracy.
Alongside the AfD’s ascendancy is confirmation of the collapse of the mainstream. The Christian Democrats (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz saw their support collapse to a derisory 17 per cent. The Social Democrats, who are in an unhappy coalition with the CDU nationally, ended up in single figures, as did the Greens.
Much of the AfD’s stunning victory was down to the campaign fought by its lead candidate, and the likely next premier of Saxony Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund. The 35-year-old former perfume salesman with a now-famous quiff fought a nearly flawless campaign, mixing familiar messaging around migrants, woke, and economic injustice for the “left behinds” while riding a motorbike that was popular in the former Soviet-occupied German Democratic Republic. Each of his appearances was choregraphed for video on social media to his hundreds of thousands of followers. Traditional late 1920s values in a modern setting?
Despite its huge success, the AfD fell tantalisingly short of the support needed to form an outright majority, something that is almost never achieved under Germany’s proportional voting system, which is based around parties forming coalitions.
The 35-tear-old former perfume salesman Ulrich Siegmund fought a nearly flawless campaign for the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt (Photo: Odd Andersen / AFP via Getty Images)It might yet achieve its target, if politicians from the Reason and Justice party (BSW), one of two radical left parties that made into the parliament, are enticed to join them, as will despondent CDU mavericks. If it makes it over the line, what follows will come as no surprise. All the policies were proudly flagged in the AfD’s lengthy manifesto – a requirement that arts organisations promote “German” culture, and that schools emphasise “patriotic history over Nazi history in schools.
Although it has no jurisdiction over refugee policy, it has promised remigration, even sending back some naturalised Germans. It has also vowed to ban the flying of the rainbow flag. It’s not without reason that many people with a migrant background and the queer community fear what’s coming next, the unleashing of dark forces on the streets.
Saxony-Anhalt might be a small state (population only 2.2 million, of whom a record 76 per cent of voters turned out), it might be based in the former Communist east, with all that that entails. But that would be to miss the point. Whether or not the AfD ends up securing its first regional government, the result has changed national and international politics.
It seems almost impossible to conceive of Merz surviving the autumn; two more regional elections in a fortnight’s time are expected to see a further drubbing for the CDU. His personal ratings are at a historic low for a chancellor, and all eyes are on the next general election in 2029 – that’s if the coalition staggers on that long.
Merz’s much-vaunted “autumn of reforms” (that was supposed to be autumn 2025) of public services ended up a damp squib. But the one area where he deserves praise, where he has shown unwavering courage, is in overhauling military doctrine. The reluctant hegemon, as Germany used to be known, the paralysed pacifist, is now leading the way among the major European states in filling in the gap of the departing United States and in supporting Ukraine.
Germany is on track to hit the Nato target of 3.5 per cent of GDP in defence spending as early as 2029, far earlier than equivalent countries like the UK.
He will now come under increasing pressure to abandon his hawkish approach.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, who have been open in supporting so-called “patriotic parties” across Europe, will be delighted by the turn of events. The results will have exceeded their wildest dreams.
The AfD is openly pro-Kremlin and has called for an end to aid for Ukraine. The Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev praised a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD”.
The biggest target of all will be the presidential elections in France next April and May; a victory for Marine Le Pen is looking increasingly likely. Watch out for Poland, for Spain, for Sweden, and back to Germany again. The work has barely begun. The sirens are sounding not just in the chancellery in Berlin, but across Europe – and most of all in Kyiv.
John Kampfner’s latest book, Braver New World, is published by Atlantic
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