We have to go back to the vote of August 14, 1949 to find in Germany (and in Europe) an election as decisive as the one tomorrow, February 23, 2025. Then the Federal Republic, the one in Bonn to be clear, was called upon to decide the future of the country after 12 years of Nazi dictatorship and the shame of having provoked one of the most ferocious conflicts the continent had ever experienced. For the record, that time the two Christian Democratic parties (CDU/CSU) led by Konrad Adenauer gained over 7 million votes, reaching 31% of the vote; while Kurt Schumacher's Social Democrats of the SPD secured just under 7 million, stopping at 29,2%. 78,5% of the nearly 24 million citizens entitled to vote voted and Adenauer became chancellor in a coalition that included the CDU/CSU, the liberals of the FDP and the DP, a conservative party that would later disappear in 1961.
Of course, we are talking about half of Germany (the other, the Democratic Republic was under the heel of Moscow) and we are talking about a context in which the world was also divided in half by the "Iron Curtain”, an expression attributed to Churchill, but actually used since the First World War. And yet never like in these weeks have the symbols aligned and the shadows of the past hover over the great country and over Europe as a whole: in second place in the latest polls, after the CDU/CSU, given between 29 and 32%, at 21%, there is a party that directly refers to Nazism, Alternative fur Deutschland, (AfD), led (so far) to success by a lady, Alice Weidel, 46 years old, who contradicts all the values that the far right is supposed to believe in: lesbian, living with an immigrant from Sri Lanka, parent of surrogate children; and what's more, resident in another country, Switzerland.
But that's how it is. While the Spd of the resigning chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, 67 years old, is on his way, according to the polls, to reaching his worst result ever, more or less between 13 and 15%. And to conclude the picture, the Verdi are given at 12%, the Liberals of Fdp at 4%, and the two lefts, Lefties e Bsw, the first between 7 and 9%, the second between 4 and 6%. To add concern to concern, it should be remembered that the "tech" soul of the American government expressed itself in favor of the Nazi candidate, Elon Musk, for which Alice Weidel represents the real novelty of the European vote.
So, what kind of awakening could Germany have in the aftermath of the vote? We discuss this with a careful and fine scholar of Germany, Angelo Bolaffi, philosopher and political scientist, animator of magazines and newspapers, former director of theItalian Cultural Institute in Berlin.
Bolaffi, what will happen then if this remains the situation?
“A premise: this time the German pollsters themselves, who usually hit the mark with their predictions, are cautious, they are not sure of the results of their research. It is possible – they say – that there are surprises. It could be that those who want to vote for the AfD are ashamed to say so, and that therefore the Nazis could get more. Or, on the contrary, that the SPD does not collapse as expected or that the Linke gains more. And, however, assuming this picture is true, an important fact must be noted, namely that the Christian Democrat candidate, Friedrich Merz, 70 years old, has declared himself against any alliance with the AfD. Of course, this did not stop him from trying, at the end of January, to “unfreeze” the Nazi votes to pass the motion that indicated a tightening of the policy on migrants. But the electoral move, when it came to translating it into law in Parliament, did not succeed and therefore, perhaps, he ended with unscrupulousness. However…”.
But what?
“Before continuing with the reasoning, however, let me say something else. I detest conspiracy theories in history, but I cannot help but observe that on the very day that there was the Munich meeting on Ukraine, a meeting that decreed the abandonment of Kiev by the Americans, allowing all observers to make comparisons with 1938, when the democracies “satisfied” Hitler by giving him a good piece of Czechoslovakia to avoid an inevitable war, right in Munich, in Bavaria, the region most attentive to order and security, there was yet another attack. And it was carried out by a person who has the classic characteristics of the attacker drawn by the Nazi Weidel: an immigrant, a Muslim, who asked for asylum, was not recognized, was in Italy, which was supposed to expel him but did not. In short, if this is not a strategy of tension, I really don't know what else to call it…”.
The fact is that all of this will most likely weigh on the vote…
“Unfortunately, I fear so. The German electorate is worried, frightened, also because the attack in Munich on February 13 was the fifth in recent months. We remember the one in Manneheim, in Baden-Wurttemberg, on May 31 of last year; the one in Solingen, in Westphalia, on August 23; and the one in Magdeburg, in Saxony-Anhalt, on December 20; and then the one in Aschaffenburg, also in Bavaria, on January 22. All this has a bad smell, and we Italians, who understand the strategy of tension, having experienced it first-hand in the Seventies, smell it before others”.
Let's start from the political picture: what coalitions could be possible if the one with AfD is not feasible?
“First of all, we need to see how many votes the SPD will get. Will it really collapse as the polls seem to predict? And then we will need to take into account what is happening to its left. There is the BSW, Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht, that is, the party that has in its name the name of its founder, Sahra Wagenknecht, 56 years old, who left the Linke, the other party on the left, because it is considered too moderate. Like her colleague Alice Weidel, of the AfD, she is pro-Putin, in the sense that Putin, as a good strategist, wanted to be covered on the right as well as on the left. But, as with the AfD, it is also difficult for BSW to be involved in some kind of alliance. As long as it enters Parliament because in Germany there is a 5 percent threshold”.
And then there's the Left...
“Exactly, which means Left, founded in 2007 as a result of the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), direct heir of the SED, which governed the German Democratic Republic at the time of the division of Germany, and Labour and Social Justice (WASG). It presented itself at the elections with a tandem of women and men, the parliamentarian Heidi Reichinnek, 36 years old, and the president of the party Jan van Aken, 64 years old. And it is registering an increase in consensus especially among young people thanks to the battles for climate and social justice. So much so that according to one of the polls, that of RTL, a private television network, voters in the 18-29 age group consider it the first choice at the ballot box, giving it 19% of voting intentions, the same percentage that the Greens would get in that age group, only that they decrease compared to 2021; and gaining more than AfD, which among the youngest would still get 17%”.
A miracle?
"A miracle, if you consider that just a few months ago the Left was a party at risk of dissolution. And what is incredible but true, it was precisely the firm opposition to the anti-migrant policy that made it reborn. Among the most clicked videos in this election campaign was the one in which Heidi Reichinnek attacks Merz in Parliament for the anti-migrant law that was later rejected: "That you are allying yourself with a fascist party is a disgrace", she shouts at Merz while the cameras focus on the face of Rosa Luxemburg who has had it tattooed on her forearm. It was such a surprise that even the Faz, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, headlined: Suddenly the left is cool".
And so could we imagine a coalition much more to the left?
“Be careful, in the meantime we are in the field of analysis, only after the vote will it be possible to draw the reality. Not to mention that even in the opposition it is necessary that there are reasonable political forces. Imagining instead real hypotheses of alliances, the most natural one seems to be again the grand coalition, Christian Democrats, Socialists and Greens. Probably without the Liberals considered government wreckers, the latest victim being Scholz's, but even Merkel had to face the unpredictability of this party. But will there be the numbers to do it?”.
Let’s get to the topic of topics: the relationship with the USA. For Germany it has always been a vow of fidelity as well as loyalty. At least until now…
“The political history of post-war Germany, and we mean first of all that of Bonn, has been, it is true, that of a faithful ally for Washington. American politics has never been a problem for the Germans, whoever the president was. Even if the Germans did not disdain having good relations with the “enemies” of the time, the communists of the “other” Germany, the Democratic Republic, and consequently with Russia. It was what was called Ostpolitik. The history of France is different, which has always had a relationship of respect with the US, but not of loyalty. Suffice it to remember that when Macron speaks of European sovereignty, he means that it is an “alternative” to that of the Americans; while when they speak of European sovereignty in Germany they mean that it is “complementary” to that of the Americans. Until yesterday. Today I think everything has changed, because it will be difficult to forget the snub and insults received at home precisely from two big names in US politics, the vice president and the minister of Defense. Suddenly the US is an enemy, and one of the most evil ones. The Germans are in shock today, and not only them, since things have gotten worse after Munich with Trump's speeches. They are in shock for economic reasons, for political reasons, for cultural reasons. For France, everything that is happening today was already obvious with the first Trump and in fact Macron appears the least surprised by the anti-European fury of the American president. Italy appears stunned, stalls or pretends nothing is happening. After all, we are friends with everyone, with Biden, with Trump, with Ukraine. At a certain point we will have to make a selection: and who will we remain friends with? As for the general picture, with respect to the global disorder that Trump is working on, who today "gives" Ukraine to Russia and gives him the green light to take over the rest of Europe, with the aim of dedicating himself only to the race with China, there are only two ways out of it".
Which?
"Either the Germans become the center around which a new, different Europe is born, strong in its merits and proud of its achievements, no longer counting on the American umbrella, even imagining that we will not all immediately go together towards this goal; or, if everyone for himself and every man for himself prevails, not only will Europe vanish, but in each of the States the worst scenario could prevail. Which does not necessarily include tanks and coups d'état, in the age of Artificial Intelligence they will not be necessary, it will be enough to attack the infrastructure of a country to bring it to its knees. As Russian hackers are already trying to do against us, without success for now".
And, who knows, to avoid problems with potential opponents, perhaps by closing access to the networks of the rest of the world, chaining humans each in their own "cocoon" of virtual-national reality. As he imagined in his latest book, Nexus, the writer of Sapiens, Yuval Harari.
