The German Question

The recent German election results visualize old divisions and one old question

Updated and edited version in the wake of last Friday’s scandal at the Oval Office.

The Germans have voted and the returns on the map show a country divided along the lines where the infamous wall once separated the free from the unfree.

After 35 years, the political landscape still marks the fault lines of the Cold War, including even the enclave of West Berlin. As I have mentioned before, the Germans show considerable difficulty in tearing down the walls in their heads and hearts. My own observations and numerous conversations with East Germans over the years have been corroborated in last Sunday’s election. Germany is far from being a united country. In fact, a closer look at the election results reveals an ever-growing gulf between the aspirations of the formerly disenfranchised East and the defensive nature of inherited prerogatives of the West.

The question looming in the back and knocking on the door of keen observers once again is an old one: Under the current circumstances, what are the implications of a united Germany for Europe and the world? Will it even remain a democratic federal republic, and will it be able to weather the storm brewing in its midst?

The map above dramatically illustrates the loss incurred by the once proud Social Democrats (SPD) whose only significant strongholds remain in the large cities of the North (red). Beneficiaries were the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the West (black) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the East (blue). The trend has been in the making for a decade – and it will not stop by itself and perhaps even accelerate for reasons we will discuss below.

First, the numbers:

There is no room for celebration here. The political center may have received a mandate to constitute the next government headed by the CDU’s Friedrich Merz who will have to form a coalition with the weakened SPD (now at only 16.4%, a historic low) having excluded a deal with the numerically stronger AfD (now coming in at 20.8%, a historic high). But the Union’s 28.6% lead is not a strong showing and at risk of evaporating at the federal level next time around as it has in Saxony already, turning the entire former GDR (except East Berlin) into an AfD stronghold.

The center has not been strengthened, it has been weakened. The CDU win is pyrrhic if the parties with an authoritarian bend continue to garner support not just in the East but also in the West. Taken together, the parties catering to a public skeptical of democracy now add up to a total of 34.5% at the federal level (AfD, die Linke, BSW). The Kremlin friendly folks now make up a good third of the German voting public, a huge jump from about 15% only three years ago. The portion of authoritarian leaning parties among East Germans is even more troubling, highlighting the division along the former wall dividing the country. In the East, the Putin parties taken together have won comfortable majorities exceeding the 50% hurdle easily especially when we add the BSW percentage (the narcissistic vanity knight movement of Sahra Wagenknecht) which narrowly missed the 5% vote share needed to be seated in the Bundestag. Still, if we add her 4.97% to the AfD (38% at least) and Linke votes (12% at least, depending on the state) we get a somber picture.

Again, we need to look at the dynamic and not just the current numbers. Yelling and hurtling insults in the Bundestag apparently works. The Linke had been declared brain-dead until a young woman representative began throwing tantrums in parliament and posting her drivel as wisdom on social media. Young people especially are mesmerized by her abbreviated logic and offensive language. Among the group of 18- to 24-year-old voters the Linke appeals to 27% of them which, if extrapolated, should sound alarm bells not just in Germany but across Europe. But that is not the case.

What will Germany look like two, three, or fours years from now when the next elections will be held? With the democratic center eroding before our eyes the prospects are not good. Merz and his CDU may be able to govern more effectively than the uninspiring crew around Olaf Scholz, but there are no indications the divisions within Germany will subside. In fact, signs abound that they will increase.

Let us look at the map again. The point we need to make is two-fold.

One, maps are great tools to visualize social cohesion in a region or a country. We saw a similarly stark picture after the elections in the United States last November. The geography of political preferences emphasizes the tenacity of territorial groupings that speak to the importance of shared experience within a given space and time. Maps help explain the inertia of history.

Two, Germany has failed to grasp the wider ramifications of the reunification in socio-historical terms. The emphasis 35 years ago was on economic integration of the East into the successful West German post war story. But apart from allowing citizens to comb through their Stasi files, there was no serious attempt to discredit the brutal dictatorship the GDR had been. The complicity of the western left played a major role in the shameful accommodation of former communist apparatchiks into the new power structure. This nonchalance has been fatal. It has permitted the rehabilitation of authoritarian, anti-democratic discourse and made large segments of the population amenable to Russian propaganda.

We might as well acknowledge that the German penchant for walls is not going to go away anytime soon. I am going to repeat it here, they love their fences in all shapes, ways, and forms. And it now appears that walls have played an even more important role in shaping their collective psyche than I had assumed in the past. A recent study by the University of Jena concluded that regional differences in well-being could be traced back all the way to the Limes, the Roman line of defensive walls built about 2000 years ago, dividing the German lands into a Roman controlled Southwest and a larger tribal territory to the North and East. Here is the study’s abstract:

In light of persistent regional inequalities in adaptive outcomes such as health, well-being, and related personality traits, psychological research is increasingly adopting a historical perspective to understand the deeper roots of these patterns. In this study, we examine the role of ancient cultures, specifically the impact of Roman civilization around two thousand years ago, on the macro-psychological character of German regions. We compare present-day regions that were advanced by Roman culture with those that remained outside of Roman influence. Even when accounting for more recent historical factors, we find that regions developed by Roman civilization show more adaptive personality patterns (Big Five) and better health and psychological well-being today. Results from a spatial regression discontinuity design indicate a significant effect of the Roman border on present-day regional variation in these outcomes. Additional analyses suggest that Roman investments in economic institutions (e.g., trade infrastructure such as Roman roads, markets, and mines) were crucial in creating this long-term effect. Together, these results demonstrate how ancient cultures can imprint a macro-psychological legacy that contributes to present-day regional inequalities.

The study supports my long-held assertion that the dividing lines in Germany are centuries old and shape its socio-political awareness to this day. It cannot be accidental that the CDU is strongest in the parts of Germany once controlled by the Romans. Nor is it a fluke of nature that Germany’s economic prowess is concentrated there also.

Although the study does not address the political angles, it makes it clear that the political landscape cannot ignore the cultural underpinnings. The implication is that political forces are up against deeply ingrained cultural legacies that trend towards specific political preferences. Roman civilization had emphasized well-being, infrastructure, markets, and a legal system that sustained social cohesion – as the study points out – and was averse to chaos and arbitrariness. Certainly, the loudmouths of the Bundestag who are quick to abandon prudence and reflection would appear barbarian to the Roman observer. Maybe we should read Tacitus again, but more critically this time.

If the CDU does not want to sustain a similar fate as the SPD, then the center party must articulate and implement a credible identity around the key concepts of democracy and freedom to overcome regional differences. No more waffling about the support for democratic forces everywhere.

Here are the steps to take:

1. Look to Denmark and Poland for inspiration on what the language of freedom sounds like. The countries that had once felt the German boot know what freedom is all about. The recent remarks by the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, are of a quality and clarity missing in Germany. Of the ten parties represented in the Danish parliament, all of them support Ukraine’s bid for freedom. The Bundestag on the other hand is an embarrassing picture of defeatism and deference to dictatorships past and present.

2. Friedrich Merz and his crew must call the left to task for torpedoing an effective democratic foreign policy. The complicity in of the left in enabling Russia in Ukraine must be exposed and called what it is: cowardice and hypocrisy.

3. The shameful withdrawal of the United States of America from the camp of democratic nations is an opportunity for Germany and Europe. For the record, on Monday, February24, 2025, the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine, the United States in a UN vote refused to name Russia as the aggressor, a slap in the face of a country’s struggle for freedom and an affront to all democratic nations. —> Update February 28 2025: In a disgraceful showing of malice towards victims and cowardice towards war criminals, JD Vance and DJ Trump publically humiliated President Zelensky of Ukraine. The U.S. leadership made it abundantly clear that it is abandoning long-standing American solidarity with democratic Europe, aligning itself instead with the world’s worst dictators and aggressors.

Germany must step up to the plate here and stop equivocating on the issue.
In the meantime, the UK has over the weekend taken the lead. Germany was too slow, no doubt also because Scholz once again waffles on crucial issues and fails to read the room. But at least Germany can join the United Kingdom, a non-EU member, to stem the tide against Russian imperialism.

The stakes are huge. If Germany fails to draw up a clear profile on the side of freedom and democracy, the country will not only fail Europe, but Germany may well go under and cease to exist as an independent country in a few years. Now is the time to realize that the forces of authoritarianism are the strongest they have been since World War Two and if they are allowed to carry the day, Germany will fall apart along the seams we have seen above. As a historian, I look to similar patterns in the past when Germany became the battlefield of outside forces, and there is no reason that may not happen again if the Germans fail to overcome their various walls dividing them, virtual and real.

The democratic center in Germany must stop being bamboozled by the left and the right. The debates on immigration, the economy, social security, and many other issues are important, but they must not be allowed to deflect from what is important above everything else: freedom and democracy. The center must force the left and the right to commit to freedom and democracy by going directly to the voting public and emphasizing the values that sustain them and keep the country together against all odds.

The U.S. withdrawal from Germany and Europe (let’s call it what it is) allows Germans to see freedom and democracy as something worth defending beyond U.S. interests. The U.S. is no longer relevant in public discourse, and that may be an opportunity in a country where anti-Americanism has been part of the underlying creed for many for a long time. Suddenly, the bogeyman is gone.

It is high time to discover freedom and democracy as indigenous German values with the power to overcome walls, past and present.