Germany, long a synonym for economic brawn and muscle, is beginning to recall words like lumbago or sciatica instead.
Though still leading in Europe, and fourth in the world, it faces an economic mess, a political mess, and a mood of general stress. Schools lack repairs and teachers; clinics and hospitals lack staff; its key industry, making good cars, lacks customers. All sliding downhill.
What’s moving up? Apartment rents, grocery prices, the fear of fascists. And oh yes, most speedily, the bank accounts of folks like Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, top man in that happy but exclusive club of armament makers.
“We are one of the fastest-growing defense enterprises in the world and on the road to becoming a global champion,” he boasted recently, and with good reason: Since 2020, his company’s share price jumped more than 2,000%, thanks largely to the Ukraine war. So, despite Germany’s economic malaise, some are prospering.
For the rest of the population, the economy, with a growth prospect at a low of 0.00%, is best symbolized by the Rhine water level—maybe soon navigable only for flatboats and scows. But Rheinmetall, the river’s namesake (Rhein in German), is selling tanks, artillery, shells, anti-aircraft guns, and military trucks like hot cakes, while it expands, not just in Germany but in Italy, the USA, and even in Ukraine.
The trend toward unlimited military spending has turned out to be a major cause of Germany’s troubles. It helped provoke the country’s sudden recent elections, long before the normal turnover, and may even have played a role in the shock two weeks ago for Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Party. Smugly certain of a victory vote as new chancellor in the Bundestag, he was struck—or dumb-founded—by a defeat.
His election relied on his own “Union” (a sisterhood of two Christian Democratic parties, often counted as one) and its new junior partner, the Social Democrats, adding up to a slim but seemingly sure-fire majority. But then 16 delegates voted against their own man, a first in Bundestag history. The result? Turmoil. Since voting was secret, we don’t know whether such disobedience was caused by personal grudges, political differences, or both.
After hasty rallies and no doubt angry arm-twisting, a second vote was held. This time, everyone behaved, and Merz won out. But it was a huge embarrassment for him—and a source of great schadenfreude for all those with no love for this millionaire right-winger, once top man for BlackRock in Germany, a man full of hauteur if not hatred. But now, he’s the new boss.
German politics may seem complicated, especially to Americans used to a tightly baked-in two-party system. True enough, the ballot sheet in the February election (as always with paper and pencil) was a laundry list of 29 parties. But most of them are what you might call hobby parties, getting less than 1 or 2%. Only five (counting the Christian Union as one) received the 5% needed to get seats in the Bundestag. And three of those, though not identical, are similar triplets.
The Christian Union of Merz, in a weak first place (at 28.6%), needed a partner for a majority in the Bundestag. It chose the Social Democrats, long-time rivals and with their puniest result in history (16.4%), thus pushing the once haughty Greens out of warm Cabinet armchairs and onto cold Opposition seats.
The new team now faces the slump.
The slump…toward war
The onset of the Ukraine war in 2022 meant finally bowing to U.S. pressure to cut inexpensive Russian fuel imports, piped in overland or underwater (until stopped by that not-so-mysterious Baltic explosion, so knowingly predicted by President Joe Biden.) Liquefied gas from the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Mexico (now called “Gulf of America” but just as expensive) costs far more and requires expensive new port facilities.
The loss of Russian trade—German industry sold it cars, machine tools, and vegetables in exchange for the cheap gas—also hit hard. No one knows how tough Trump’s tariffs will end up, but even if reduced, they don’t look good for German export industries, always a key to the country’s prosperity. Its lethargy, or hubris, in the world’s changing car market has also hit hard, especially faced with sharp competition from China. Ford and Volkswagen are shuttering departments and maybe entire production facilities, and both face strikes, until now unheard-of among their hitherto well-paid and content workforce.
The new government’s planned solution, by no means new or exclusively German, has several components.
A.) Keep taxes low for the wealthy and their monopolies, even lower than now, allegedly to spur investment, especially within Germany.
B.) Cut working people’s rights, incomes, and benefits, as usual, hitting the poorest most heavily.
C.) Deflect protest by blaming immigrants for causing lengthening waiting times for doctors or dentists, stuffing school classrooms with kids who can’t speak German, for lazily avoiding work but getting spoiled with public services at Germans’ expense, being rowdy—or being violent killers or rapists—all dwelt upon lyingly by the media, and not only the “gutter press” or social media. (Does all this somehow ring familiar?)
More and more, they agree on the answer to most problems:
D.) A drive toward war.
But how can the public be won for this, especially in reluctant, still disadvantaged eastern Germany? Firstly, with emotional appeals to continue the war in Ukraine until victory and barely concealed anxiety that Trump, Putin, and finally Zelensky may reach some agreement after all and achieve peace.
In what seems a coordinated campaign, the idea of a big future war is being increasingly accepted by most media outlets and most politicians. With total disdain for both geography and common sense, they insist that if and when Putin can devour Ukraine, he will expand westward, heading straight toward Berlin’s sacred Brandenburg Gate.
That supposed threat, already bursting out of the subjunctive mood, requires ever more, ever more modern weapons; building up the army, navy, and air force; maintaining, with or without Trump, the middle-range nuclear missile bases in Germany capable of reaching and wrecking Moscow in minutes. It means strengthening highways, bridges, ports, and airports to carry heavy weapons; registering all Germans if possible, especially those of military age, and reviving the draft.
All this is proceeding under the warning: “The Russians are coming!” For people with an ear or nose for history, the sound and smell of 1912-14 and of the 1930s is reaching penetrating levels.
I found a symbol of this with a company I once worked for briefly. In beautiful, picturesque Görlitz at the Polish border, the town’s main enterprise, founded in 1849, was a top-ranked manufacturer of double-decker coaches, sleeping cars, and other specialized railroad cars. Nationalized in the days of the socialist German Democratic Republic, with around 6,000 employees, it had a library, a big outpatient clinic, and a “house of culture.” Privatized after German “unification” in 1990, it was bought, sold, bought, cut and cut and cut again, with all those amenities long since shut down and the town emptying.
Now, at last, it and Görlitz have new hope: Making Leopard tanks, Puma tanks, and Boxer tanks, giving jobs to some 400 or 500 workers. Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in one of his last days in office, was made happy by the prospect. “It is very good news that industrial jobs will be saved in Görlitz,” he said.
As for the highway heading east through Poland, it will be enlarged to carry weightier loads. Similarly enlarged will be the bank accounts of men like Armin Papperger with his Rheinmetall or, in Görlitz, its “comrade-in-arms” Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann (now KMDS), also with over a century of experience in tanks and the like.
Merz and his Christian Democrats are the loudest in cheering the country down this path, but all those with any power go along, including the Greens, who are no longer in power. Of course, as the argument goes, they all want to prepare only for the sake of preserving freedom, democracy, and the safe existence of “our Germany.”
Financing the wars to come
But rearming costs billions, and barely hours before being replaced by the new Bundestag, the old one altered the German constitution to dump the national debt ceiling and permit unlimited military purchases. A previous, seemingly impossible goal of 2% of gross national product for arms is now allowed to soar to 3.5% and, if Trump has his way, to 5% for “self-defense against authoritarians.” That could mean 225 billion euros, almost half the total budget.
Where would all that money come from? Where else but from the pockets of the children, the sick, the jobless, the underpaid? “Work harder, more efficiently”—and longer. That will be the message to German workers. Get rid of the 40-hour work week, delay your pension age, pay more into the medical care system, get less support if you lose your job, and submit to even the worst low-wage substitute job. And who’s to blame for all this? Most likely, the villain will be “illegal immigrants.” Or maybe Russia again.
Is there no opposition to such frightening prospects?
The “Alternative”
Some voters in the recent election believed they would find a credible opposition in Germany’s second strongest party, the Alternative für Germany (AfD), chosen by an alarming 20.8% in February, double its 2021 result. It polls currently at 25%, neck-and-neck with the CDU, and recently ahead of it. So, at least for one day, it was Germany’s strongest party.
Nearly a quarter of Germans support the AfD, which they see as a party which rejects more weapons for the Ukraine war and supports Putin against Zelensky, thus leading them to conclude it is a “peace party.” That hope for peace, which is stronger in the old GDR region than in the West, combines with the fact that there is also less support for western Russophobia in that same area to produce higher vote totals for the AfD in the east.
Many also vote for AfD to oppose an unfeeling “Establishment” controlled by the wealthy, reflecting a lasting disillusionment of many East Germans with capitalism’s supposed “freedom” and “democracy” and the “blossoming landscapes” that were promised as a reward for German unification. In Görlitz, for instance, the AfD is by far the strongest party.
Perhaps the largest number support it because they, too, have been led to believe in anti-immigrant racism, a hatred of “others,” especially Muslims, with whom few have had any human contact. Some of these misinformed feelings and misconceptions may be overcome; with hard-core racists and hatemongers—the outright fascists—it is rarely possible.
When it comes to the war issue, AfD is definitely not a peace party, despite its stand on rapprochement with Putin and Russia. Extremely nationalistic, it wants a big weapons build-up, the return of the military draft, and the state imposition of “traditional family values,” particularly the birth of lots more German kids. And, of course, far lower taxes on the wealthy.
The AfD is also a vigorous supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war on Gaza and Palestine, which it fits into its anti-Muslim worldview. Despite this, some AfD sectors still reveal well-preserved strains of the old antisemitism of the Hitler era.
Though still embarrassingly extreme for many German and foreign leaders, it enjoys the support of many international friends, including U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
There is an effort underway to ban the AfD for its “extremism,” but it stands like a reserve army ready at hand in case of need, such as genuine working-class opposition. Its ideological ancestors, the Nazi Party, played the same role during the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933. Some in the CDU are already flirting with the AfD like the “centrists” of the Weimar era did with Hitler, despite the publicly loud “firewall” rejection of the party.
Wagenknecht stumbles
A counterforce was expected when Sahra Wagenknecht, a former Communist, broke away from the disastrously split and seemingly doomed Die Linke (The Left) party to form a new political outfit under her own name, taking some Die Linke’s best members with it. Within ten short months, this infant, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW, or Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), grew strong, achieving election results surprising for a newcomer, far ahead of its shrunken parent.
Its main talking points: firm opposition to support for Zelensky’s Ukraine and a demand for negotiations and peace there; opposition to Israeli mass annihilation and expansion; rejection of dangerous missiles on German soil, most especially American ones; and a posture of protest against the political “establishment,” though without radical changes.
But questions arose: The new party’s power structure seemed based on a single leader who tried, not always with success, to impose her decisions over differing local tactics, with a related policy of top-level vetting of every single applicant for membership—“to keep out questionable or subversive entries.“
The result: only a few hundred members to fight the campaign in February and a tragically heart-breaking defeat, with 4.98% of the vote—about 0.015% or 9,500 votes short of the 5% needed to get into the Bundestag (out of some 50 million voters). It disputed the dubious results in court, but in vain. BSW polling since then has been glued to 4% and may be weakening, even in two states where it is in the government (hence part of the establishment).
A main problem has been its position, similar to nearly all other parties, against immigration, and basically against immigrants, who Wagenknecht believes should solve their problems in their home countries, not in problem-ridden Germany. Many saw this as a pragmatic attempt to win anti-immigrant voters away from the AfD. If so, it failed. They stayed with the AfD or the CDU.
Left revival
Turn this story on its head for the party she left, Die Linke. Down to a seemingly hopeless 3-4% last November, it changed gears completely. Knocking on some 60,000 doors in key areas and avoiding appeals or pressure, it simply asked those who opened what they most wanted and centered its campaign on the response. It was almost always frightening rent increases, the lack of affordable housing, and rising prices, especially of groceries and heating.
The party offered help centers, on the internet or in person, for people needing advice, and helped those fighting illegal rent increases. Especially in Berlin, they promoted coordination with people of immigrant background, often Turkish or Kurdish, and adopted a newly fresh, clearly anti-establishment tone, breaking with attempts to look respectable in hopes of acceptance into the government as “really not radicals but good boys.”
A new central figure was young Heidi Reichinnek, whose clothes, tattoos, fast-talking speech, and forceful words and gestures were evidently just what many young Germans liked, judging by the response she got on TikTok. When the votes were counted, Die Linke had climbed in just two months from 4% to 8.8%. It was the top vote-getter nationally among women under 30, and it won an incredible first place (19.9 %) among Berlin voters.
It won six Bundestag seats directly: the former Thuringian minister-president Ramelow won a spot, as did a popular leader in Leipzig and four in Berlin, including one, with a Turkish background, who was the first Die Linke deputy elected in any formerly West German or West Berlin district.
Add in the seats won due to proportional representation, and the party now has a total of 64 in the Bundestag (out of a total of 630). As usual, a majority (37) of Die Linke deputies will be women, and after the election, the party is polling steadily at 10%.
One reason for Die Linke’s success was no doubt its refusal to join the other parties, including Wagenknecht’s, in playing to anti-immigrant prejudice. We are a class party, it was stressed (a return to forgotten roots). Every working person is our comrade; we stand for international solidarity regardless of color or origin, and we fight together for their and our rights. Are there problems involved? Of course, the party admitted, but they can be overcome by spending not on weapons but on schools, home construction, recruiting new teachers and doctors, and helping newcomers get training, jobs, and homes.
Foreign policy was far more complicated, though, with Die Linke facing internal disagreement about Israel and Palestine and about Ukraine. But during the election campaign, these questions could be avoided, as they were not upmost in voters’ minds. This was a pragmatic decision aimed at rescuing the party, and it worked.
At the Die Linke party congress in late April, the situation was different, however. Some “reformist” party leaders lean toward NATO positions; others condemn Russia’s march into Ukraine but view NATO, led by the USA and junior partner Germany, as the most menacing threat. With Washington eager to maintain its hegemony, this sector of the party recalls Yeltsin, Yugoslavia, and Maidan Square.
Regarding the other main disagreement, one delegate angrily defended Israel’s right to “self-defense” and attempted to “balance” events in Gaza. In a heated response, another delegate stated: “It is not Israel’s right to existence which is threatened but, acutely, the lives of the Palestinians and the right of existence of Palestine!”
The party reached a compromise, surprisingly seen as necessary in a party calling itself “The Left.” Delegates rejected the virtual ultimatum of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which stamps any criticism of Israeli atrocities as “antisemitic” in order to silence dissenters. Instead, they endorsed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, adopted by hundreds of academics, including Israelis, which defends the total right to criticism.
Die Linke’s new co-chair, Ines Schwerdtner, still spoke out most forcefully on the matter, though: “Children in the Gaza Strip are being purposely starved to death. We are the opposition to this. We are against cuts in help for Gaza, against sending arms, against war. There can be no double standards in regard to war criminals.”
A future for Die Linke?
In general, the Congress as a whole was defined by compromises, avoiding a split and leaving tough questions to be decided in the future. There was agreement on limiting deputies and office-holders to three terms only, to expect—or require—deputies to donate shares of their large salaries to good public purposes, and to turn attention far more to action in the streets, workshops, colleges, and neighborhoods, with far more working people as candidates.
There was a novel stress favoring good spirits in the party, friendliness, cultural activities, and even humor. In a way, the congress was a peaceful, even joyful celebration of the party’s rescue, with justified pride in the election success and joy that, within a few months, party membership shot up from less than 60,000 to over 120,000, with most of the new recruits being young people. The road ahead will hardly be free of obstacles and potholes, but there is finally new hope.
As opposed to the past drift towards reformism and status quo acceptance by too many leaders, Schwerdtner, formerly editor of the German edition of Jacobin, spoke at the congress urging that capitalism be replaced by an economic order which “no longer oppresses people but offers them dignity and health.” That, she said, “is the heart of our policy.”
She was seconded by the party’s new live wire in the Bundestag, Heidi Reischinnek: “Yes, we want to rid ourselves of an economic system in which the wealthy get wealthier and the poor ever poorer; where seniors must collect bottles for the deposit pennies, and children sit in school classes with hungry stomachs.
“Where the jobless are duped, the many exploited, people lose their lives in hospitals because of the orientation to profit making… such a system has nothing in common with democracy, nothing whatsoever.”
She wrapped up her remarks by declaring, “If it is radical to demand freedom and rights for everyone equally, then let us be radical. We must be radical in these times!”
It is still not fully clear which direction Die Linke will take or whether someday the departed faction in the BSW will return to the fold. Despite all the pitfalls, however, there seems to be a genuine basis for left-wing hope and new, militant action—all of which are desperately needed in Germany and Europe.
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