Fourth Reich?

When Steve Henderson moved to Munich, Germany, in 1999, one cultural difference jumped out at him right away. “You do not see German flags flying,” he said. Not from post offices or schools—not “anywhere.”

That was a stark contrast to Henderson’s hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, where thousands of sports fans stand to their feet for the national anthem before every Reds game. After 26 years of living in Germany, Henderson said that first impression still holds true. Except during World Cup season, Germans usually avoid flags, national anthems, and other displays of patriotism. And there’s a clear reason for that.

Since the downfall of Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich, Germany’s historic guilt has loomed large in its collective memory and public discourse—with political leaders and citizens alike shunning expressions of national pride and vowing never again to repeat the sins of the Nazi era. Since the country’s first election in 1949, not a single party considered far-right has secured seats in Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag.

But now, Germany’s right wing is on the rise again. In February, the controversial Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party finished second in federal elections with over 20% of the vote. The AfD has sharply divided the country, with many Germans decrying it as a neo-Nazi party and calling for its complete ouster from government. But others argue that’s an unfair characterization—one weaponizing the nation’s history to stifle conservative viewpoints that aren’t outside the norm in other countries.

In Washington, the Trump White House seems to view the AfD as a natural philosophical ally and has singled the party’s leaders out for special favors. The Trump administration’s eagerness to collaborate with Germany’s political pariah is a historic shift that threatens to drive a wedge between the long-time allies and upend political consensus in one of Europe’s leading democracies.

AfD party leaders, including Tino Chrupalla (right), cheer at election results in Berlin on June 9, 2024. Ralf Hirschberger / AFP via Getty Images

GROWING UP IN SOUTHEAST GERMANY in the 1950s and ’60s, Jutta Shaikh said, there was one historical era her schoolteachers didn’t teach. “Every time when it came to the Second World War, the school year had ended,” Shaikh said. “They avoided discussions about it.” Most of her teachers still had vivid memories of Hitler’s reign of terror, and Shaikh said they felt deep shame over their own silence. Even though many people protested they “didn’t know” about the gas chambers or the death camps, Shaikh said that isn’t true. “Everybody knew,” she said. “But everybody kept quiet.”

Shaikh felt responsible to find out what really happened—and to make sure it never happened again. She read books and watched films about the Nazis, and she gravitated toward younger teachers who were more open to discussing that era. Much like American youth of the 1960s, Shaikh’s generation took to the streets in Germany as part of a left-wing youth counterculture movement advancing a range of social causes, including calling for the political ouster of former Nazis.

They were the generation that vowed to make it unthinkable for any kind of fascism to take root in Germany again.

For decades, their efforts succeeded. Although several far-right parties emerged in the postwar era, only the German Right Party marshaled enough votes to enter the federal government—and even then, the party only held five seats for a single election cycle. Then, in 2013, a group of economists and professors founded the AfD. At the time, the party was primarily a fiscally conservative group critical of the European Union.

That changed in 2015, when conflicts in the Middle East sent a massive wave of asylum-seekers surging into Europe. Most came from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open her country’s doors to receive them and rallied German citizens with the motto Wir schaffen das: “We can do this.”

Migrants responded to that invitation. Over a million asylum-seekers entered the country between 2014 and 2016. And while many Germans celebrated their arrival, others worried about the added strain on their country’s welfare system and an uptick in crime. A string of high-profile knife attacks and sexual assaults carried out by migrants only deepened those fears.

After that, Georgetown University political science professor Eric Langenbacher said, the AfD “quickly evolved” into a party that is “very much against migration”—especially from “Muslim-majority countries.” Immigration opposition proved a winning ticket, and the AfD won 12% of the vote in 2017. But not before co-founder Bernd Lucke left his own party, denouncing what he termed its “Islamophobic and xenophobic shift.”

Because of their history, Langenbacher said, Germans tend to be “very sensitive” about “xenophobia,” “anti-Semitism,” and “Islamophobia.” The AfD’s rhetoric—especially how party leaders refer to migrants—flew directly in the face of social taboos. And the AfD started challenging the country’s historical narrative—what Langenbacher describes as a “Holocaust-centered German memory culture.”

In 2018, then AfD co-chair Alexander Gauland created a firestorm when he told a crowd that Hitler and the Nazis were a speck of bird droppings in “more than 1,000 years of successful German history.” And regional AfD leader Björn Höcke caused a scandal when he argued Germany needed to stop dwelling on the Nazi era and make a “180-degree turn” in remembering its past. German courts have also twice convicted Höcke for using the Nazi storm troopers’ slogan “Everything for Germany.”

All that is deeply troubling to Shaikh, who believes AfD leaders “want to forget the history.” She said that opens the door to comparable atrocities in the future. Already, Shaikh believes AfD rhetoric paints asylum-seekers as Germany’s new scapegoat. For her, it’s a haunting echo: “Once upon a time, everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews.”

After retiring a few years ago, Shaikh joined the activist group Grannies Against the Far-Right. It has written thousands of letters calling for an “AfD-Verbot”—a judicial ban on the party. It’s a contingency the German Constitution outlines as a safeguard against anti-democratic threats.

Last year, Germany’s domestic intelligence service won a court battle to keep the AfD under surveillance as a suspected extremist group. And Shaikh believes ridding Germany of the AfD is her duty to the next generation: “I don’t want to be asked by my children or grandchildren, ‘Why didn’t you do anything when it was still time?’”

Germans in Frankfurt protest against the AfD (the sign reads, “Never again 1933”). Associated Press / Photo by Michael Probst

AFTER MORE THAN TWO DECADES pastoring an English-speaking church in Munich, Steve Henderson and his wife decided to retire to Görlitz, a small city in the German state of Saxony. The two cities are about six hours apart by car—but culturally, they’re two different worlds.

While Munich suffered severe bombing during World War II, GÖrlitz survived the war unscathed and boasts an impressive array of historic architecture. But after the war, Munich received Allied help to rebuild, while the Iron Curtain descended on Görlitz. Because of that, Henderson said, the city “missed out on the Western affluence” of the ’50s and ’60s. Historic buildings cracked and faded. Broken windows gaped from their crumbling walls.

Communism left its mark on the people of Görlitz, too. In Munich, it’s customary for people to hail strangers on the street with the regional greeting Grüß Gott. In Görlitz, Henderson said, people tend to be “more guarded” and rarely make eye contact with strangers.

The region is also an AfD stronghold. Last year, the AfD won its first state election in the neighboring state of Thuringia. In February’s federal election, the party finished with almost 40% support in both Saxony and Thuringia—nearly double the national results. Because of that, whenever Henderson told people where he was headed, he got one standard reaction: “You’re moving to Görlitz? That’s a hotbed of Nazis.”

But in three years living in Görlitz, Henderson said, he has “yet to meet a self-styled Nazi.” Instead, his neighbors seem to be voting for the AfD from a “general dissatisfaction with the status quo.”

Just like in the United States, German voters listed the ­economy and immigration among their top concerns this year. “People are unhappy that the current government hasn’t been able to really function well,” Henderson said. They feel the government hasn’t defended German traditions and has mandated its own brand of multiculturalism and globalization.

Henderson said both values can be good: “But if they become forced upon people, then there’s a resistance to that.”

It’s hard to get a read on a political party from a distance, but Henderson said the AfD doesn’t seem like a Nazi party to him. Whenever people make that argument, Henderson asks them for proof in an official document. So far, no one’s shown him anything convincing.

Henderson said most media coverage seems to pick “a few outliers” in the AfD and paint them as the norm. Even when it comes to Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke, he said news­papers often miss that some of his rhetoric seems purposely satirical. “You can always find one crazy person on the fringe,” Henderson said. “But if you define the movement … by that one loose cannon—that’s not fair to the group.”

It’s a point Cato Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow underscored. “I don’t think it’s fair to call [the AfD] a Nazi party,” Bandow said. “I just don’t see anything that vicious. But there’s a lot of ugliness there.”

Björn Höcke speaks at a 2024 AfD election rally in Thuringia. Hannes P Albert / Picture Alliance via Getty Images

FOR DECADES, the German political spectrum has skewed much further left than that of the United States. For example, Georgetown University’s Langenbacher said Germany’s traditionally conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is actually a closer match to U.S. Democrats than Republicans. Germany’s free-market liberal party, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), is centrist. The only right-wing party winning votes is the AfD.

No single party has ever won an absolute majority in the German parliament. Instead, winning parties form coalitions to secure the needed legislative consensus. But all major political parties have vowed never to work with the AfD—calling the move a “firewall” against extremism. As a result, this year’s victorious CDU and its regional sister party, the CSU, only had centrist or left-wing coalition partners to choose from. Langenbacher said that’s fueled growing frustration among Germany’s conservatives. As one senior conservative politician told Langenbacher, “Germans keep voting center-right, and they keep getting governed center-left.”

It’s a situation that’s left many German conservatives feeling politically homeless, according to 29-year-old Maximilian Lorenz, a tax consultant and devout Roman Catholic studying law and economics in Salzburg, Austria.

Lorenz said the AfD is a highly complex, big-tent party. Its base includes blue-collar workers, former communists, disappointed conservatives, and libertarian academics, in addition to some “right-wing extremists.” Many are worried about losing jobs to environmental regulations. Others want stricter immigration laws, lower taxes, and less government red tape. All are united by the common feeling that “Germany is not doing well.”

Lorenz sees many of the same problems. But he doesn’t support the AfD’s solutions. He said the party is chaotic and doesn’t have a “healthy philosophical root.”

The AfD’s Manifesto for Germany emphasizes a need to defend Western Christian culture and references the Judeo-Christian foundation of the country’s legal system. But Lorenz doesn’t see the party framing its positions from a Biblical world­view. Instead, he views most AfD stances as primarily reactive—an “aggressive and loud protest” against cultural and political norms.

For example, while the AfD argues for a “safeguarding of life” starting with the embryo, Lorenz said party politicians seem to oppose abortion more for demographic reasons than sanctity-of-life ones. “They say, ‘We need more Germans,’” Lorenz said. “So, Germany for the Germans, and therefore we need more German kids.”

Still, Lorenz’s opposition to the AfD hasn’t stopped people from calling him a Nazi, too. Lorenz said some university classmates labeled him a fascist because of his pro-life views and support for traditional marriage. He said that’s all too common in German university settings—where students learn more about what the Nazis did than about the worldview motivating their brutality. As a result, Lorenz said they often conflate conservative values like free market economics or protection of the family with fascism.

Lorenz said people on the political left often use labels like Nazi to shut down political opponents and “secure political power for themselves.” “The Nazis were the most horrible people on earth,” Lorenz said. “So if you call someone a Nazi, he isn’t inside the political competition.”

POINT BY POINT, Georgetown University’s Langenbacher said, the AfD’s platform is “almost identical” to the Republican Party’s stance under President Donald Trump. Both parties are opposed to gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. They want to slash taxes and reduce government red tape. Both parties are skeptical of climate change and want to get back to natural gas and nuclear power.

In January, AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla attended Trump’s inauguration. Then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz wasn’t invited.

And in February, Vice President J.D. Vance created a political firestorm when he scolded German politicians at the Munich Security Conference for excluding representatives of the AfD and an upstart left-wing party from attending. “There’s no room for firewalls,” Vance told his audience.

Langenbacher said that speech didn’t go over well in Germany. He believes continuing on the same trajectory threatens to create a rift between the two allies. Already, “a wedge is visible,” Langenbacher said.

Hermann Gröhe is a Protestant Christian who previously served in the German Bundestag for three decades as a member of the center-right CDU, including five years as Angela Merkel’s health minister. Gröhe said he and other German politicians were “really shocked” at Vance’s speech. “Among friends, it’s possible to say difficult things, no doubt about that,” Gröhe said. But he said Vance painted a “bad caricature” of German free speech rights.

Gröhe said freedom of speech in Germany is “a very high-ranked fundamental right.” People can say “nearly everything they want,” there are just a few certain things they can’t express, such as Holocaust denial.

“Nearly everything else, which is xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic is quite possible because of the freedom of speech,” Gröhe said. Because of that, Gröhe said it’s “not the truth that these right extremists are somewhat like a persecuted minority.” The AfD has a right to participate in parliament. The other parties are just equally free not to partner with it.

But Cato Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow said excluding the AfD from coalition government may only make the party more extreme. After weeks of negotiations, Bundestag members settled on another “grand coalition”—a partnership of the center-right CDU and center-left SPD. And that could continue pushing voters to the AfD. “If people don’t perceive the centrist parties providing answers,” Bandow said, citizens will look elsewhere.

And that’s why Langenbacher said Germany’s next election could be “epochal.”

“If the next government can’t start to address the multiple serious structural problems that Germany has right now,” Langenbacher said, “I think the AfD will be even stronger four years from now.”