On Sunday, the 85th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland coincided with the first victory of a far-Right party in a German state election since the Second World War.
What makes this coincidence especially ominous is that both Hitler and Stalin invaded and partitioned Poland, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Today, the leading German apologists for Putin’s Russia are the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has just triumphed in the eastern provinces of Thuringia and Saxony.
Combined with the rise of the populist far-Left party led by a charismatic ex-communist, Sahra Wagenknecht, the electoral success of the AfD poses a serious threat to liberal democracy in Germany.
That democracy has been remarkably stable in the postwar Federal Republic. Yet it is no coincidence that both extremes of the German political spectrum are united in their pro-Russian sympathies and their hostility to Ukraine, Nato and the United States.
Hence the impact of the AfD and Wagenknecht success in Sunday’s elections – likely to be amplified later this month in Brandenburg – will be felt far beyond the borders of Germany.
The grip of anti-war and pro-Putin propaganda on German public opinion is fuelling the rise of radical nationalism in the East. Meanwhile the mainstream parties are in full retreat from military and financial support for Kyiv.
Already the present German government is planning to halve its aid next year and reduce it to almost nothing by 2027. Ukraine’s second biggest contributor in the West is collapsing under the pressure of domestic politics.
Across the Continent, the German political crisis is bound to exacerbate the uncertainties created by the US election. A victory for Donald Trump would in any case plunge the Atlantic alliance into chaos. He has promised to end the war immediately, on terms presumably dictated by the Kremlin.
If Germany is no longer committed to resisting the Russian invasion, not only is this catastrophic for Ukraine, but it could deal a fatal blow to Nato, too.
At present, Europe is bitterly divided on the war. The frontline nations, such as Poland and the Baltic states, are rearming and preparing for the Russian threat. But countries more remote from the conflict are still spending far too little on defence. Under the guise of calls for ceasefires and peace talks, some are inclined to appease Moscow.
Germany is the pivotal Nato member state, with the size and strength to swing the alliance either way. Europe cannot hold the line on Ukraine without German economic muscle.
Britain, too, will be affected by the political upheaval in Berlin that will flow from Sunday’s débâcle in East Germany.
Last week Sir Keir Starmer flew to the German capital for talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz – one of the Prime Minister’s few centre-Left soulmates in Europe. Both leaders hope will result in a bilateral treaty covering everything from trade and culture to defence and security.
But the humiliating defeats suffered by all three coalition parties means that Scholz is a dead man walking. Next year’s federal elections will sweep him and his partners out of office, to be replaced a centre-right government dominated by the Christian Democrats (CDU).
The new Chancellor will, barring accidents, be Friedrich Merz, who has already responded to the challenge of the AfD by promising to refuse entry to asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan – anathema to a human rights lawyer such as Sir Keir.
Not only will Merz have little time for Starmer’s progressive agenda, but he may well ignore British pleas for more generous military aid to Ukraine.
Then there is the threat of anti-Americanism. Björn Höcke, the hardline AfD leader in Thuringia, accuses the CDU of being a “vassal” of the US – an echo of the Nazi and Communist eras. It will be fascinating to see if Merz maintains his party’s traditional Atlanticism even under a Trump presidency.
Whether Kamala Harris or Trump wins in November, Europe will remain vulnerable to Russian aggression and American isolationism.
After 1945, the “German Question” was temporarily solved by the division of the country between East and West. Now a new German question is emerging.
Will the German people stand by the Western civilisation which they fully rejoined only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989? Or is Germany now becoming once again the free world’s weakest link?