Are Germans Becoming Fascist Again?

The September 2026 regional election in Saxony-Anhalt appeared, in view of the small population of 2.12 million in this East German state, as a minor European event. Yet, the election represented a historic turn in the political development of the Federal Republic of Germany, Europe’s largest country and economy, since 1949 when the FRG was founded. For the first time, a right-wing radical party, “Alternative for Germany,” known by its German abbreviation AfD and founded in 2013, has achieved, with a result of 43.8%, a victory of such proportion in a regional election.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The AfD has gained 39 of the 83 seats in Saxony-Anhalt’s regional parliament and thereby come close to an absolute majority of mandates. Coalition talks and parliamentary voting rounds during the next weeks will show whether the AfD will manage take over also the executive of Saxony-Anhalt. A regional state government dominated by the AfD – if it materializes – would represent an even more fateful new trend in German politics. Moreover, Sachsen-Anhalt’s landmark election was not an outlier within formerly communist eastern Germany. Two weeks later, there were elections in the neighboring, northeast German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Here again, the AfD received a regional landmark result of 38.2%, on Sept. 20, 2026. Being a nationalist, Eurosceptic and anti-immigration movement as well as a culturally monist, politically illiberal, yet economically libertarian party, the AfD stands at the right fringe of Germany’s otherwise liberal, pro-European party spectrum of Christian, social, free and green democrats. Other Topics of Interest Germany Warns Russia Against Escalation in Rare Wadephul-Lavrov Talks German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul urged Russia to abandon escalation after tit-for-tat consulate closures over the Leipzig/Halle Airport drone attack. Some of the AfD’s regional organizations, including that in Saxony-Anhalt, have been classified by the Federal Service for the Protection of the Constitution as “extremist,” i.e., as opposed to Germany’s constitutionally enshrined liberal-democratic order. Because of the AfD’s ambivalent stance to Germany’s fascist past, even many other European right-wing radical parties, such as France’s National Assembly, refuse to cooperate with the German nationalists, at the European level. On the contrary, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have both publicly greeted the electoral success of the AfD. While the AfD contains a fascist faction, neither the rise of the organization as a whole nor its growing electorate during the last 10 years indicate an impending return to German Nazism. Instead, the AfD functions in many ways as a protest party which manages to channel social frustration, political disappointment, and cultural pessimism. That concerns especially East Germany, which had been part of the Soviet bloc in 1945-1990 and today comprises (without Berlin) 12.4 million of Germany’s 83.5 million inhabitations. On the territory of the formerly communist, so-called German Democratic Republic (GDR), the AfD is far more popular than on the territory of West Germany which has been a political democracy since the 1949. East Germans were shielded from democratic trends by the Iron Curtain until 1989. Often East Germans’ dearth of democratic experience and the socio-economic turbulence of the 1990s transition are used to explain their different voting behavior. These traumas – as well as an outflow of young people and women, a low presence of Christian churches, and a rapidly ageing society – are standard explanations for the “Ossis” (Easterners) preference for both far left or far right anti-systemic parties. In East Germany itself, there is also a widespread belief that, allegedly, “Wessis” have been insufficiently respectful of “Ossis.”What might be the strongest determinant of low support of liberal democracy in East Germany, is that, under Soviet occupation, it had missed out on West German society’s liberalization and pluralization in the aftermath of the 1968 student revolutions throughout the West. Since the 1970s, Western societies have become increasingly shaped by individualism, pluralism, feminism, ecologism, post-colonialism, cosmopolitanism, and similar anti-conservative ideas.East Germans in the GDR, however, were shielded from these trends by the Iron Curtain until 1989. They thus preserved, more so than West Germans, remnants of the traditionally hierarchical, illiberal and ethnocentric German political culture that goes back to the immediate post-war and even pre-war periods.The most important gap between the cultural developments of West and East Germany concerns the depth of thinking about the historical and political meaning of the 1933-45 fascist period for post-war Germans. In West Germany, the Nazi mass crimes and German responsibility for them, historical failure of German anti-fascism and their implications for today have become discussed, researched and problematized within an all-encompassing multi-decade deliberation. This national debate has become known under the label Vergangenheitsbewältigung which can be translated as “coming to terms with the past.”To be sure, the educational policies, critical approaches and public discourse concerning the origins, nature and consequences of German crimes under Nazism were extended to the territory of the former GDR as a result of Germany’s reunification in 1990. Yet, East Germans’ only belated and partly imposed participation in Vergangenheitsbewältigung has led to far less skepticism towards right-wing extremism than in West German society. It also resulted in a higher degree of anti-Americanism in the East than in the West of Germany.Today, this expresses itself through, among others, more support for the anti-Western regime of Vladimir Putin and tolerance for the Moscow connections of the AfD. While all centrist German parties have become supportive of Ukraine, Germany’s far right as well as far left have taken a more or less pro-Putinist position, and are opposed to both sanctions against Russia and military help for Kyiv.So far, the proportional, parliamentary and multi-party political system of Germany is limiting the influence of the AfD as it remains a growing, yet isolated and stigmatized political force. Unless the German nationalists become more moderate – as, for example, the Swedish and Italian radical right have recently become – and thus a possible coalition partner, the AfD’s direct influence on Germany’s domestic and foreign policies will remain limited. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.