The Return of Germany to History

By Jacob Shapiro

GoldSeek source

Over the weekend, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a major victory in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, taking 43.8% of the vote. That was a 23-percentage-point improvement on its 2021 result. Three other parties, all representing various shades of the far left, won 22.3% between them. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Germany’s governing center-right party, saw its share fall from 37.1% in 2021 to 17.2%. Voter turnout reached a record 77.8%.

Coverage has focused on the AfD’s platform and ideology, but the broader political meaning of the result should not be overlooked. The election was not a vote for a specific program so much as a protest against an incumbent political establishment presiding over a status quo that a large and growing share of the electorate considers unacceptable. Treating the success of a far-right populist party in a state election as a return to 1933 misses the political earthquake that has already taken place in Germany. The AfD’s victory matters, but not necessarily for the reasons emphasized by Western media and mainstream German parties.

The Professors’ Party

The AfD was founded in 2013 by German economics professors and conservative journalists. It was nicknamed “The Professors’ party.” At the time, Europe’s dominant political issue was the sovereign debt crisis. Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain—the so-called “PIGS”—needed bailouts, while Germany insisted on austerity.

The AfD emerged from that debate as a single-issue party seeking the dissolution of the euro. Most of its 2013 manifesto addressed a return to national currencies within the European common market. A smaller section, consisting of three bullet points, expressed support for tighter immigration policies.

The party’s founders were responding to European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s 2012 pledge to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. They were intellectual, relatively moderate Germans who believed the euro was not worth saving from Germany’s national perspective.

Storm Clouds

Germany’s geopolitical problems were only beginning to become visible in 2013. The debt crisis had made Germany Europe’s de facto leader, but storm clouds were gathering even as Berlin pushed austerity across the bloc.

At the end of 2012, a little-known compromise candidate, Xi Jinping, was appointed General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2013, Germany still expected to sell cars to China’s rapidly expanding middle class for the foreseeable future. Today, Chinese electric vehicles are placing German car companies under considerable pressure.

The Euromaidan protests in Ukraine began at the end of 2013. By 2014, Russia had seized Crimea and the Donbas war had begun. Germany nevertheless expected to continue importing cheap Russian energy; Nord Streams 1 and 2 had been completed in 2011 and 2012. By 2026, the Nord Stream pipelines are gone, and Germany is trying to end its energy dependence on Russia.

In 2013, President Barack Obama urged European countries to devote a larger share of their GDP to defense. Germany, however, expected the United States to guarantee its security indefinitely. It took another decade, along with President Trump’s threats, for Germany to begin sharply increasing defense spending.

The European migration crisis of 2015, which brought more than 1 million people fleeing wars in the Middle East and Africa, was still ahead. When those migrants arrived, German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that Germany—and every other European country—would do its part, using the rallying cry Wir schaffen das, or “We can do it.” That the policy would become a source of her downfall appeared not to occur to her.

More Than Its Extremes

The AfD is no longer the Professors’ party. It has become a broad vehicle for populist grievances arising from Germany’s geopolitical challenges and a decade of policies that failed to address them.

Some voices within the party are unsavory. Germany was the country that brought National Socialism, or the Nazis, to the world, and those ideas have not disappeared. Calls within the AfD for more aggressive “remigration” of non-ethnic German citizens, a “new, patriotic, cultural policy,” or an end to both aid for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia have found a home in the party.

But, as an Israeli cab driver once told me, “In every house there is a trash can.” The AfD is more than its most extreme elements.

After 2015, immigration became the AfD’s raison d’être. In its 2025 manifesto, the party calls for “remigration”—a combination of expelling illegal migrants, significantly tightening German immigration laws and preserving enough ambiguity to deport anyone deemed a “security threat.”

The remainder of the AfD’s platform is less extreme than it may appear. The party remains broadly Euroskeptic and supports a return to the Deutschemark, though without an abrupt rupture. It also wants to retain a European common market, external border control and defense. Yet the latest Eurobarometer survey found that 69% of Germans support membership in the European Union. The more responsibility the AfD assumes, the more it will be compelled to do what Euroskeptic parties in Italy, France, Poland and elsewhere in Europe have done: accept that electoral success is not necessarily a vote against the EU.

The Divide

The result is instead a vote against German policy failures, with reunification among the most significant. The AfD draws most of its support from East Germany, where it now polls as the strongest party in every eastern state. East Germany trails West Germany in GDP per capita, productivity, support for the EU—closer to 50%—and faith in democracy.

These are hollowed-out industrial regions that suffered most when cheap Russian energy disappeared and China changed from a promising market into an existential competitor. The divide extends back centuries, far beyond the East-West division created by the Cold War.

The structural problems addressed by the AfD are real, have nothing to do with Nazis and have been aggravated by a political class that responds with neglect and derision.

One example came after a fiery speech by Alice Weidel, the AfD’s admittedly controversial leader. Chancellor Friedrich Merz then addressed the Bundestag and attempted to downplay the party’s success in Saxony-Anhalt. Merz said Germany needed to embrace “the opportunities offered by new technology to modernize industry.” An AfD member jeered, “How is that supposed to work without energy?” Merz replied, “How is that supposed to work without any natural intelligence?” A politician who defaults to ridicule does not have an answer.

Ghosts

It would be flippant to dismiss the historical overtones. The National Socialist Party never won a majority; it entered power through a coalition and then manufactured the emergency it used to end democracy. But that was a different time, a different context and a different party.

If Germany is to lead Europe and rebuild its defense capacity—as Washington demanded well before Trump—it must confront and transcend those ghosts. Ignoring the voters represented by such parties is the surest way to worsen the situation.

A generation is coming of age that did not experience World War II, has no memory of the Berlin Wall and sees only feckless, ineffective government. Rather than support the status quo, at least in Saxony-Anhalt, those voters chose change. Whether that change is right-wing or left-wing may matter less than whether a party can deliver it, or at least create the feeling that it can. That party will win elections.

Do Not Underestimate Germany

In 1999, The Economist put Germany on its cover as “the sick man of Europe.” By 2013, the year the AfD was founded, Germany had become the beating heart of the European economy after implementing tough reforms that commentators had considered impossible.

In democracies, conditions sometimes worsen before they improve because deterioration creates the electoral conditions for politicians willing to pursue change. Few countries have demonstrated an ability to change as successfully and rapidly as Germany.

From a macroeconomic perspective, Germany has faced headwinds in recent years, and those pressures will continue. But German companies such as Siemens, Rheinmetall and SAP have also demonstrated strength. Germany can no longer outsource its security, energy and market-access needs. The world is changing, and Germany must change with it.

History suggests that when Germany changes, the world changes. An AfD victory in a state election in eastern Germany is not the beginning of the Fourth Reich, but it may represent Germany’s return to history.

Map/Chart of the Week: Blind Spot

Bloomberg reports that Malaysia is “seriously evaluating using Huawei’s AI hardware as the backbone of a 2 billion ringgit ($494 million) initiative intended to give the country greater control over national data.”

The development illustrates several broader points. First, it demonstrates how protectionist US measures against China not only failed to stop Chinese technological growth but also created conditions for a company such as Huawei to vertically integrate and innovate its way into the technological frontier.

Second, it shows that even Malaysia—which signed an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade with the United States in 2025 before the tariffs were struck down by the US Supreme Court—is not merely hedging its bets on the United States. Malaysia may also be embracing Chinese technology because developing its AI infrastructure is more important than avoiding tariffs.

Third, the report presents a test for the Trump Administration: How will it respond? Other Southeast Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, will be watching. Vietnam’s trade deficit and transshipment issues have made it a focus of the Trump administration’s ire in recent months. If the United States does not respond strongly, those countries may decide to take their chances as well.

About the Author

Jacob Shapiro

Jacob Shapiro is an independent geopolitical analyst who helps investors and executive teams understand how a multipolar world is reshaping markets and strategy. He provides bespoke research, private briefings and keynote presentations for clients ranging from investment firms to corporate leadership teams. He publishes the free newsletter The World Isn’t Ending at Mauldin Economics and hosts The Jacob Shapiro Podcast, which features long-form interviews on geopolitics, markets and global risk.

He lives in New Orleans with his wife and two daughters. When he is not parsing international developments or working on his first book, he may be found at a pickup basketball game doing his best Larry Bird impersonation.