To understand how the far-Right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) became Germany’s second-largest party, consider the events of the past five days. In an interview with the state broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, Friedrich Merz, the leader of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic …
The end of Germany’s open borders
Wir schaffen das! Who could forget Angela Merkel’s one-liner on August 31, 2015 — best translated as “Yes, we can!” — after she opened her country’s borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants making their way from Syria, Afghanistan and …
Will King Charles save East Germany?
The Germans might not be setting their capital on fire, but when King Charles touches down in Berlin this morning, he will do so knowing that he is visiting a country no less divided than its western neighbour. While France …
Japanese pacifism is dead
Japan is on manoeuvres. The country for so long tethered — or protected, according to your point of view — by the “pacifist” constitution imposed upon it by the occupying Americans after the Second World War may be about to …
Germany is in denial about Ukraine
It’s been nearly a year since the Chancellor of Germany stood before the Bundestag and gravely proclaimed a Zeitenwende, a tectonic shift in the nation’s defence policy. There would be a special fund of €100 billion to beef up the …
Germany’s cynical response to Munich
Palestinians deserve a better leader than Mahmoud Abbas. Last month, the president of the Palestinian Authority visited Germany, a country on whose donations his quasi-government depends. At a press conference two weeks ago with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a German journalist …
Who is Germany preparing to fight?
The Berlin elite is quick to lambast other countries for any perceived lack of predictability. Being berechenbar or “reckonable” ranks high among the Teutonic virtues. So Germany’s own recent policy gyrations have been wondrous to behold.
The attack on Ukraine …
Why Putin’s invasion failed
Nothing was more predictable about this most predictable of wars than the certain failure of Putin’s Coup de Main invasion to seize Kyiv and conquer Ukraine in one fell swoop. And yet its success was confidently predicted by Russia’s FSB …
How war radicalised Germany
“Death is a master from Germany.” The line is from Paul Celan’s Deathfugue, a poem which tried to express the abject horror of the Nazis’ genocidal war in Eastern Europe. Celan, a Jew, was a son of Chernivtsi, then a …