When we speak of the revival of Nazism (or the rise of something like Nazism), the response that we receive is almost always one of disagreement. Most people refuse to believe that anything like this is possible. They will dismiss the idea that history repeats itself, or that it even rhymes. The reasoning behind this way of thinking is that we today are radically different from the people of the mid-twentieth century. People today think that we are so different from those times, that the idea that we would ever repeat those past evils is unfathomable. To quote the late great professor of classics, J. Rufus Fears, “as a society, we do not think historically. We do not use the lessons of the past to make decisions in the present and to plan for the future.”

We humans have been on this earth for a limited amount of time, and what do we see in this small duration but the same things happening over and over again? War, and the desire to vanquish, enslave, control and even exterminate other people. Such is the evil of humanity that we have seen since the beginning. Even after our creation, our Designer regretted making us. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Genesis 6:5-6) 

So what makes us so special, that we will not repeat the same sinister things done by the generations that were alive just decades ago? Many people read history. Every month, bookstores are filled with fresh new books on the most discussed historical events and eras. There is always a new book on ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Roman Empire, or Napoleon. Out of all the historical events that are much discussed, none of them have the unique position that Word War Two has, and that is because of the Nazi enemy and the fact it orchestrated the largest policy of the extermination of the Jews. For this, there are many books written on World War Two, the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and there are always new books on these horrors coming out every year, and many people read them. You would think, with so much attention given to, and so many people reading and watching documentaries on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, that more and more people would see the signs that it can actually happen again, but they sadly don’t. They say that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Since the beginning of mankind’s inception, man has butchered himself, and for millennia man has read history and yet has always repeated it. Its not that those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it, but rather — and to quote Hegel — “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.” Because we fail to see the leviathan of history springing forth from the roaring seas of people clouded by rage, the beast of the past manifests itself before we have a chance to see its coming. We see how wrath is reigning over the masses, and we do not expect a gang — like Hitler and his ilk — to come and harness their anger for their own power. We do not see the monster’s coming, because the monster is us.

Our rage, our indifference, our apathy, forms the veins and sinews that adorn the beast’s skeleton, fills it with blood and gives life to this monster, and when it roars, we are in shock at its popularity and power. Nobody expects a revival of the evils of the Western world of the twentieth century — eugenics, militarism and the like — but most did not expect the rise of the Nazis either. If most did not forecast the coming Third Reich, then how can we believe that today people can see it coming? The rise of the Nazis was not obvious to most; it worked in increments, like the replacement of a railway bridge. The engineers cannot simply demolish the whole bridge, because that would disrupt traffic. Rather, they replace the pieces of the bridge, little by little, so slowly that the passengers don’t even notice a single difference, before they finally realize the whole bridge looks different. (1)

One thing that really stood out in the era before the rise of Nazism was the transitioning from mainstream politics to radical alternatives. For some time, middle-class voters swung back and forth between liberal, conservative and special interest parties before making a turn to political fanaticism. This trend really started in the early 1920s and escalated from there. Before the beginning of the Great Depression, about one-third of middle-class voters in Germany abandoned mainstream parties, because they did not address the issues that mattered most to them. People felt disillusioned with the mainstream parties which to them seemed more concerned about helping major businesses as opposed to workers and small business owners. There were clashes between big business and “organized labor” or Marxist groups. None of these sides — be it big business or Marxists — cared about small business owners. As the Economics Party put it: “Big business and Marxism are both striving for the annihilation of the Mittelstand.”

The Mittelstand were the small or family-owned businesses, and these felt neglected by the government. Middle-class people believed that the government cared more about the clash between big business and Marxist groups than it did about them, the regular folk. Pensioners and veterans of World War One grabbed the attention of large audiences, demanding “justice,” and a severe cutting down of taxes and welfare. At the same time, people called for the creation of a strong state that would protect them from the abrupt changes that were the result of Germany losing the war. Nationalism became very popular, to the point that mainstream parties needed to adapt in order to politically survive. Pretty much every German party, including the Social Democrats, started speaking about “national community,” because people were really enthralled by collectivist ideology. (You see a similar situation now where mainstream parties in Germany are giving a modicum of anti-immigration policy in order to adapt to the zeitgeist). 

People wanted Germany to be a national family, not a place for corporations to treat as a giant economic zone for the ultra-wealthy to make money. They wanted a government that uplifted the idea of the nation as opposed to just fixating on profit; they wanted a mix between nationalism and “moral economic” socialism based on the idea of justice. There was only one party that really hit upon this national longing, and that was the Nazi party. It promised to put “common” interests over “individual” interests; it spoke of socialism and justice, and of duty and sacrifice as opposed to individual and group rights. Rather, the Nazis uplifted race, spoke in apocalyptic ways, spoke of the Jews and the Marxist threat and scolded the bourgeoisie. The AfD, the largest nationalist party in Germany, is also capitalizing on the grievances of the working class, such the farmers, which is what the Nazis also did. 

In the decade before the election of Adolf Hitler, there were massive farmers’ protests in Germany. Smaller farmers were not seen with the same importance as major farmers. There were three millions farmers who each owned less than five acres, and they saw how the government gave more priority to the three thousand estates who each had more than five hundred acres. The more land you owned, the more political influence you had. The government gave subsidies to the large grain growing lands in Prussia to protect them from the cheap imports that were coming in from France, Holland, Denmark and Poland. Meanwhile, the small farmers did not receive such protections, and wine growers were unable to rival with the cheap wines of France and Spain which had flooded the country.

Small farmers wanted subsidies to protect them from this deluge of cheap imports. In 1924 and 1925 there were demonstrations by wine growers in Saxony, Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein. In the Mosel, fifteen hundred wine growers gathered together in Bernkastel and marched under a black flag to sack the customs and tax offices. Early 1928 saw massive demonstrations: in Oldenburg, thirty thousand farmers rallied; forty thousand in Stuttgart and one hundred and forty thousand in the towns of Schleswig-Holstein. Farmers became the most radicalized segment of the labor sector, and they at times resorted to terrorism, even murdering and  throwing bombs at those who they considered to be their enemies. They were prime picking for recruitment by folkish, nationalist groups, especially the Nazis. Eventually, farmers groups became nazified. 

Similarly, in late 2023 and early 2024, German farmers organized huge protests against their government’s plan to cancel their subsidies for diesel fuel (which was part of an environmentalist “climate change” policy). As the Nazis capitalized on farmers’ anger back in the 1920s, the German far-right in the 2020s has capitalized on the anger of the farmers of today’s Germany, with the AfD party pledging to double the existing agricultural diesel subsidies. The AfD has proven to be very popular amongst German farmers. For example, in the state election of Brandenburg in 2024, the AfD got 34 percent of the farmers’ votes. In the 2024 election for the state of Saxony, the AfD gained 49% of the farmers’ votes. In Thuringia’s 2024 state election, the AfD took 40% of the farmers’ votes. 

The spirit of Nazism is strong within the AfD, as has been demonstrated by the work of a sociologist named Andreas Kemper who deeply inquired into the AfD politician Bjorn Hocke, listening thoroughly to all of his speeches. He noticed Hocke used a unique term: “organic market economy”. Kemper did an exact search of this term and found one hit: an essay by someone named Landolf Ladig, published in the Eichsfeld-Stimme, the neo-Nazi magazine ran by Thorsten Heise, an official for the neo-nazi party, the National Democratic Party of Germany. Kemper continued looking for more parallels. He noticed Hocke quoted from a book, and saw that Landolf Ladig used the same quote from the same book.

The similarities could not be happenstance. Kemper concluded: Bjorn Hocke is Landolf Ladig. In 2011, Landig (Bjorn Hocke) praised the Third Reich as “the first anti-globalization movement”, and stated that both World War One and World War Two were “two economic preventive wars against the German Reich. The second war, however, was not only economically motivated, but can also be described as an ideological preventive war, since the first anti-globalization movement had been established in Nazi Germany, which, had it been granted more years of peace to test, would probably have found imitators everywhere.” The fact that Hocke wrote this shows his own Nazi ideology and by extension exposes the Nazism that is within the AfD which is now one of the mainstream parties of Germany.

What came with Nazism was not just militarism and darwinist racism, but fantasy, the return to mythic fascination. Before reaching the heights of political rule, Hitler was an artist who adored the operas of Richard Wagner, which were filled with German mythology, sparking within Germany’s future fuhrer a heroic fantasy world. (2)

In Germany today, one of the biggest parties — Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) — has for one of its major leaders Bjorn Hocke (the head of the party’s Thuringia branch) who has expressed his desire for the German people to cultivate within themselves strength from mythology. He preaches one of these myths, that the savior of Germany is residing inside of a cave on the hills  of Kyffhäuser, and that he will emerge from his seclusion to revive the German reich. Hocke speaks of his desire for “another Germany” where nationalism is enforced, and where the people grow strong through mythic ideas and getting inspiration to crush the enemies of Germany by harkening back to ancient history when the Germanians, in their Teutonic fury, crushed the Romans: 

“An emperor is sleeping in the cave of Kyffhäuserberg. And when the need is greatest, he will awaken and restore glory to the kingdom [Reich]. To draw inner strength from myths has always been helpful in times of change. And we are undoubtedly living again in a turning point. We have the task of us, our great story again re-appropriating. Whether we succeed in opening up a new feeling, a new myth for our people, that will depend on whether we as AfD can feed this new spirit into the political discussion and enforce it. This country, this people, dear friends, must finally find back its lost masculinity! The patience of our people is at an end, and even the ancient Romans knew about the legendary Teutonicus fury, dear friends, we will not be abolished. We have initiated the turnaround, we want to create this turnaround and we will make that turnaround. … Yes, I want another Germany!”

The Nazis also put an emphasis on myth. The head ideologue of the Nazi party, Alfred Rosenberg, taught that myth would bring about the elevation of the German folk:

“A belief, a Myth, is only real when it had grasped the entire man. In the best interests of the future, all political, tactical and propagandist considerations must step back. Frederick The Great’s concept of honour, Moltke’s method of discipline and Bismarck’ s sacred will—these are the three powers which, embodied in different personalities in varied mixture, serve only one thing: the honour of the German nation. It is the Myth which must determine the type of the future German. If one has recognised this, then it will have already begun to take shape in the present.”

Just as Bjorn Hocke promotes the creation of “a new myth of our people,” Rosenberg also pushed for the creation of a new myth for the Third Reich: “The problem of the coming Reich as fulfilment of a German longing thus consists in preaching a new world view to these tormented, falsely led millions, to present to them—on the basis of this new Myth—a new supreme value.” This is why, during the reign of Hitler, the German government organized festivals with sculptureswith the intention of reimagining the Germanic past and even celebrating pagan gods. (3)

The AfD’s Bjorn Hocke points to a coming messiah who will “restore glory to the kingdom,” that is, the German reich. He speaks of how the patience of the Germans “is at an end”. Patience with who? Migrants and political rivals. And in light of this patience’s end, he references the “Teutonicus fury”, which means he wants blood. Hocke is hoping for a coming messiah figure who will revive the reich, which means he is hoping for another Hitler who will lead the German people who are out of patience and filled with fury. This spells an aspiration for a Nazi revival with all of its bloodshed. This is not just a political movement, but a political cult, with mythology and its own apocalyptic worldview. It is like the French Revolution which Tocqueville called “a species of religion’, which “like Islam [has] overrun the whole world with its apostles, militants, and martyrs”. Just as the militants of the French Revolution are filled with violent fury, so are the current day German nationalist militants. Bjorn’s desire for a German messiah was repeated in his book in which he wrote: “longing of the German people for a historical figure who will heal the wounds in the Volk, overcome division and bring back order.” He is awaiting for a supreme leader — a messiah, a fuhrer. You may argue that he is simply asking for a strong leader, but one cannot ignore the speech about an emperor sleeping in a cave, and how this myth must be used to “draw inner strength”. Hocke is not looking for a mere politician, but a grand leader upon whom he would apply a political mythology. In other words, he wants a political cult of a supreme leader bent on bloodshed. 

We are transitioning to the evils of the past, to bygone ideologies that are obsessed with genes and race. In the mid-twentieth century, the Western world was engulfed in such ideas, as it gloried in its worship of race.

In light of Hocke’s Nazi beliefs, we can see his sinister motivation in the things that he says. For example, his blatant eugenist ideology. In 2015, Hocke did a talk for the “Institute for State Policy” (founded and ran by the far-right identitarian Gotz Kubitschek) in which he stated that Africa and Europe have “two different reproduction strategies”. In Africa, the “r-strategy” prevails, which aims at the highest possible growth rate, while the so-called expansion type dominates there. This is contrasted by the European “K-strategy”, “which aims to make optimal use of the capacity of the habitat”. Hocke exhorted the audience to “put on the population-ecological glasses”. This is explicit eugenics. Biologists use the terms “r-strategy” and “K-strategy” to differentiate between the reproductive behavior of different species. R-strategists include bacteria, lice and ants, which rely on a high reproduction rate. Most mammals, including humans, follow a K-strategy: they produce few offspring that have a high chance of survival. In other words, Hocke is comparing Africans to bacteria and lice. The Nazis of the Third Reich had the same way of thinking: other races are are like parasites. Hocke and his acolytes would argue that they are simply following science. This way of arguing echoes the ideology of Hitler when he said: 

“National Socialism is a cool and highly reasoned approach to reality based on the greatest of scientific knowledge and its spiritual expression. …The National Socialist movement is not a cult movement; rather, it is a volkisch and political philosophy which grew out of considerations of an exclusively racist nature. This philosophy does not advocate mystic cults, but rather aims to cultivate and lead a nation determined by blood.” (4)

In light of Hocke’s ideology, one can see his nazi motivation when he expressed his spite for Holocaust memorials: “we Germans, that is, our people, are the only people in the world who have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital.”

Hocke deemed remembrance for the Holocaust as a “dead rite” and called for a renewed awakening for German pride:

“We don’t need any more dead rites in this country. We no longer have time to execute dead rites. We no longer need empty phrases in this country, we need a living culture of remembrance that, above all, brings us into contact with the great achievements of those who came before us.”

This new sense of patriotism, according to Hocke, should be enforced:

“In short: It’s about giving the newly created facades, here in Dresden, but also Potsdam, and in Berlin the city palace is currently being rebuilt – thank God it’s being rebuilt – it’s about giving these newly created facades a new, worthy appreciation to breathe spirit. It is the spirit of a new, honest, vital, deeply founded and self-confident patriotism. Because we know: Without such a new patriotism, no civil society can survive.  …  But we dare to demand this inner renewal. Not only do we dare to demand it, no, dear friends, we will also enforce it for the sake of our dear fatherland.” 

In summation, Hocke longs for a supreme leader (upon whom he applies the mythology of a German emperor who will bring glory to the reich), he sees European and African procreation like a biologist sees animal procreation and bacterial multiplication (respectively), and he wants to enforce nationalism. Hocke’s ideology may not have shown itself with goose stepping, swastikas and sieg heil salutes. But with such red flags, it is indeed showing its parallels with nazism.  

In 2016, Frauke Petry, who was then the leader of the AfD, stated that a Darwinian conflict between Europeans and “proletarians from the Afro-Arab world” is inevitable. Darwinian conflict entails “survival of the fittest,” wherein the stronger race wipes out the weaker one. Within the ideology of Darwinism, extermination is seen as natural and normal; it teaches that it is within the natural order for the strong to exterminate the weak. In Darwinism, genocide is normalized. Alfred Russel Wallace, an occultist who “discovered” the idea of natural selection before Charles Darwin (whom Wallace influenced), said that in “the future of the human race … the higher — the more intellectual and moral — must displace the lower and more degraded races.” Speaking before the Anthropological Society of London, Wallace affirmed: “the mere fact of one race supplanting another proves their superiority … that two races came into contact, and that one drives out the other. This is proof that the one race is better fitted to live upon the world than the other.” In in his Decent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote that “when one of two adjoining tribes becomes more numerous and powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption.”

In the same work Darwin wrote: “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.” When “darwinian conflict” is evoked, what is being foreseen is a war of extermination. Darwin’s normalization of genocide, in which the vanquished are to go through “war, slaughter…slavery,” was embraced wholeheartedly by the Nazis. In a speech given in Posen on October of 1943, Heinrich Himmler declared before senior SS officers:

“Whether other nations live in prosperity or perish through hunger only interests me in so far as we can use them as slaves for our civilization, otherwise this is of no interest to me. Whether or not ten thousand Russian females drop down with exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch only interests me in so far as the anti-tank ditch is completed for Germany. We will never be brutal and heartless where it is unnecessary to be so; that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people on earth who have a decent attitude towards animals, will adopt a decent attitude towards these human animals, but it is a crime against our own blood to be concerned about them or to give them ideals, whereby things will be made still more difficult for our own sons and grandsons. If someone comes to me and says: ‘I can’t build an anti-tank ditch with women and children. That is inhuman because they’ll die doing it’ — then I have to reply: ‘You are a murderer of your own blood, for if that anti-tank ditch is not built, then German solders will die, and these are sons of German mothers. That is our blood.’” 

The deeming of human beings as “human animals,” the embracing of slavery, indifference towards human suffering, and the reverence for race is all expressed in this quote which so reflects Darwinism. But this way of thinking is also echoed in today’s fanatical German nationalism, when you hear Frauke Petry speak of a Darwinian struggle between Germans and foreigners. The Darwinian struggle for survival entails the belief that one must wipe out the race of his enemy or else the latter will destroy him and his race. This mentality was viciously believed in by the Nazis. Himmler used the war with the Soviets to justify the genocide of the Jews and the Slavs who he saw as bacterium (just as Bjorn Hocke compares Africans to bacteria): 

“We had the moral right, we had the duty towards our people to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us. … We have exterminated a bacterium because we do not want in the end to be infected by the bacterium and die of it.” 

The one behind the AfD’s success on TikTok is the social media strategist Erik Ahrens, who is a eugenist fixated on blood. He made the leading AfD candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah (who sparked outrage when he said: “I won’t say that [someone] was automatically a criminal” because they were members of the Nazi SS) known in the world of the internet. Ahren’s focus on race and blood are clearly seen in his own posts. For example, he wrote on X: “Anyone who is not concerned with racial research in 2024 is living on the moon.” Another post reads: “I talk a lot about race and blood and people say that it is out of date. But how can blood be out of date? It has been around for millions of years.” Ahrens explains his strategy to lure 13 year old Germans into his ideology through social media, with the goal of getting them to become focused on blood:

“My strategy is as follows: A 13-year-old intelligent German comes across right-wing influencers on TikTok: hiking, martial arts, fitness, identity, anti-Talahons and left-wing. At 15, he joins up with like-minded people in real life and digs deeper online. The algorithm gradually brings him into our gravitational field. At 18, he reads Twitter and comes across the core content: blood and will, innate destiny, German worldview, real view of history. All or nothing. With this mindset, he then goes to university, to the student association, to training, to work, to marriage, to war, to life.”

Notice that he describes the hoped for indoctrinated German as going “to war”. Militarism is also part of the goal. And “to war” with whom? If the two World Wars are a teacher, then a future war with Russia is in mind. 

On October of 2024, Ahrens was in a discussion on X over the topic of eugenics. What was said in that talk was detailed in an article published by the German eugenist website, Erblehre (which means “Theory of Inheritance”). Ahrens spoke about how “In earlier times, child mortality was very high, especially in the lower social classes. This led to natural selection, whereby genetically healthier children survived, while weaker genes (eg susceptibility to disease) were selected out. However, thanks to medicine and prosperity, almost all children now survive, regardless of genetic predisposition, which leads to an accumulation of genetic burdens in the genome.” Ahrens supported “direct technical interventions such as the new embryo selection.” The discussion concluded that eugenics is not an option, but a necessity for German society: “Eugenics is not just a concept of the past, but the only answer to the dysgenic challenges of our time. It is more than a technical question – it demands that we as a people decide on the future of our descendants and their best possible genetic conditions.” 

In March of 2024, the AfD held a conference in Jüterbog in which it passed a declaration of solidarity for the party’s youth branch, Junge Alternative. During the conference, Junge Alternative passed out fliers which read, “Blood is thicker than water”. It also had advertising cards for the patriotic center “Castell Aurora” in Austria, where the right-wing extremist Martin Sellner also appeared. 

Hitler’s eugenist policy was the product of the zeitgeist in his day (just as eugenics is looming in our own zeitgeist). Decades before Hitler took power, eugenics and the desire to get rid of the mentally handicapped was growing by leaps and bounds. Decades prior to the 1930s, an army of doctors, psychiatrists, scientists and ideologues in numerous Western countries were pushing for the purging of ‘undesirables,’ or people who were deemed genetically inferior. The first professional chair in eugenics on earth was founded in 1909 in University College London. In 1922, the first dedicated Institute for Racial Biology was established in Uppsala, Sweden. In the United States, the first state to pass a law in favor of the sterilization of the mentally handicapped was Indiana in the year 1899. Thirty-five more states followed Indiana, with California forcefully sterilizing more people than any other state. In 1927, the US Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell, constitutionalized forced sterilization, and this would inspire Adolf Hitler who wanted to do the same thing in Germany.  In Hitler’s own words:

“I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.”

The 1920s also saw an explosion in anti-immigration sentiment, and this was reflected in America’s 1924 Immigration Restriction Act which sought to severely limit immigration in the name of preserving the genetic stock of Anglo-America. German eugenists were excited about American eugenist laws and the 1924 Immigration policy, thinking that Germany could adopt something similar to keep out Eastern European Jews and Southern Europeans. When it came to producing children, the German Nazis wanted certain families to have children, so they encouraged a high birthrate amongst professionals or the ‘respectable’ working class. In Darwinism, there is the concept of Natural Selection, or nature purging out unfit genes and passing down the fit genes.

The eugenists — Nazis included — wanted to become Natural Selection, selecting who should be born, who should be prevented from being born, who should live and who should die. They were inspired by an ancient evil, the eugenics of the Spartans who would put their babies outside their city walls to see if they would survive after so many days and be worthy of the name Spartan. Hitler noted this inspiration in his speech in the 1929 Nuremberg Party rally:

“If Germany was to get a million children a year and was to remove 700-800,000 of the weakest people then the final result might even be an increase in strength. The most dangerous thing is for us to cut off the natural process of selection and thereby rob ourselves of the possibility of acquiring able people. The first born are not always the most talented or strongest people. Sparta, the clearest case of a racial state in history, implemented these racial laws in a systematic way. We implement the exact opposite in an equally systematic way. As a result of our modern sentimental humanitarianism we are trying to maintain the weak at the expense of the healthy.” 

The rise of the AfD is a sign of the rise of German militarism. The AfD is the biggest pusher for mandatory conscription, demanding that “Compulsory military service is reactivated.” The AfD wants Germany to have a General Staff again. After World War Two, the victorious powers abolished Germany from having a General Staff. But the AfD wants to reverse this, writing in their policy: “The German Bundeswehr is building a general staff.” What is interesting is that after World War One, the victorious powers imposed the same rule that Germany was not allowed to have a General Staff. Hitler, like the AfD now, sought to reverse this and was successful, his revival of German militarism being the lead-up to the outbreak of the Second World War. If the German nationalists get what they want, it will only be a repeat of the mission of Hitler after the First World War. 

The AfD wants Germany to be the defender of Europe, writing that “Germany’s geographical location and economic weight justify a claim to military leadership among the European NATO partners in Europe.” The AfD also writes that“Germany is making its contribution to security guarantees for the Eastern European states.” 

The AfD parliamentary group has made it clear: “We stand firmly by the side of our armed forces and are committed to strengthening them.” The AfD’s militarism is seen in the fact that it has the largest group of military officers in the Bundestag. The AfD also wants for Germany to have nuclear weapons. The AfD’s military program says that “nuclear capabilities” “represents an essential component of military deterrence” and Germany has “a vital interest in participating in this capability until an equivalent alternative is available.” 

The AfD wants to end America’s control over Germany’s military. The party’s remonstrance against this American control is expressed in their military policy: “Germany is increasingly dependent on the protection and support of allies, especially the USA, and is unable to adequately represent its own interests.” The AfD does not want Germany to conform to the demands of NATO, as it makes clear in its policy: “We are to ensure that every engagement in NATO is in line with German interests and corresponds to a targeted strategy.” Therefore, if NATO calls for a particular action to be done, and it is not to the interests of Germany, the nationalists would not want to acquiesce. What the AfD is essentially asking for, is a rebellion against the American empire. 

Germany’s aspiration to be militarily strong is reflected in an interview on the Hoover Institution’s “Uncommon Knowledge” in June of 2024. The show’s host, Peter Robinson, told Douglas Murray:

“If the Germans pulled themselves together to demonstrate the seriousness the Poles have demonstrated … half the seriousness that the Estonians have demonstrated; that the Finns have demonstrated … that the Swedes have demonstrated … if Europe stood up for Ukraine and said that’s it Vladimir, that’s it.  He would have no choice. So the question then is, why hasn’t this happened? … Putin invades Ukraine, Olaf Scholz, the new Chancellor of Germany, gives remarkable speeches that shock all of us, thrill all of us in the United States,  [he says] ‘We’re going to get serious, there’s an emergency addition to the defense budget, we’re going to increase it,’ and of course nothing happens.”

To this Murray brought up an off-the-record conversation that he had with a German minister some years ago in which the official told him that Germany will have to be willing to kill for its country:

“I was at a conference in Berlin. It was a sort of trilateral. I think it’s an, it’s, long enough in the past that I can tell this story …  there was a German minister who gave rather an encouraging speech in which he said, and of course none of us hear this sort of rhetoric without a certain amount of chill in our spine, but nevertheless he said, Europe and Germany will have to at some point realize, we have enemies and we have to at some point be able to get to the stage where we not only are willing to die for our way of life, but to kill for it.”

The rise of German nationalism and militarism is a presaging sign that a war between Russia and a Germany on the warpath is on the horizon. 

(1) This analogy was found in Michael Burleigh’s book, The Third Reich, intro, p. 6. Burleigh learned this analogy from a reporter who was contemporaneous to the rise of the Third Reich.

(2) Burleigh, The Third Reich,  ch. 1, p. 86

(3) See Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory, ch. 12, p. 215

(4) See Burleigh, The Third Reich, into, p. 13