Leon Mangasarian

Nine months into the chancellorship of Friedrich Merz, the outlook for Germany looks grim. The country's economy, the world’s third biggest, has been in recession or stagnation for the past three years as its leaders confront the worst economic crisis since the 1950s. Damningly, portions of the German press have accused Merz of presiding over an 'economically lost year'. Last year’s data makes for tough reading: industrial production was down 1.3 per cent and large corporate bankruptcies up 25 per cent. In the first six months of the year, 109,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. 48,000 of these were in the battered car industry which has a 24 per cent share of total industry revenue.

Friedrich Merz, chancellor candidate of Germany’s Christian Democrats, stumbled in his bid to end Social Democrat-Greens domination of migration policy. After winning a Bundestag motion to reinstate border controls with votes of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the chamber rejected a law on to clamp down on migration. Merz’s use of the AfD drew the ire of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, his predecessor as CDU leader. Her stunning public stand against Merz may have convinced 12 members of his own bloc to vote against the law. The bill was defeated on Friday with 350 members voting ‘no’ and 338 in favour.

Germany’s government after the election on 23 February will likely be led by pro-business Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz. His coalition partner, probably the Social Democrats of failed Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or else the Greens of economy minister Robert Habeck, will torpedo any serious economic reforms. Equally worrying: Merz’s own reform blueprint is far too timid. A new wild card in the vote – up to now dominated by the economy – is spiralling migrant violence and failures of German authorities to lock up people known to pose acute threats. A horrifying knife attack on a nursery school group in a park in Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, on Wednesday, allegedly by an Afghan man, killed a two-year old boy and a 41-year-old man who tried to protect the children.

Angela Merkel, who last month published her memoirs on her 16 years as German chancellor, was a great tactician. But she was dead wrong on many of the strategic questions hurled at Germany during her time in charge. Merkel is the architect of a Germany that’s again the sick man of Europe, now in a second year with a shrinking economy and surging parties on the far-right and far-left. Merkel doesn’t do mea culpas and this has annoyed some reviewers of her book. Those who hoped for admission of failures misunderstand Merkel. She’s a physicist, who disassembles problems before making, what she sees, as fact-based decisions. Her manner of deflecting mistakes is always the same: based on the information at the time my decision was correct.

The demise of chancellor Olaf Scholz’s lacklustre coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats is unsurprising. The ideological blend fits Germany, as Stalin might have said, ‘like a saddle fits a cow.’ The election that may truly define Germany’s future will be held in 2029 Scholz seems almost to have modelled himself on Liz Truss; though it took him longer to damage the world’s third-largest economy, he has done a thorough job. Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, is expected to contract for a second consecutive year in 2024. Ludwig Erhard, the architect of the West German economic miracle, must be spinning in his grave.

How do we defend Europe without the Americans? With Donald Trump inciting Russia to 'do whatever the hell they want' to Nato members not paying enough, it’s clear a Trump 2.0 could shatter the alliance. This isn’t news. Leaders of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, have known this since Trump took office in 2017. They know what’s strategically necessary to fill the gap. The trouble is, this would be politically impossible for Berlin. A Trump-led unravelling of Nato would confront Germany with a daunting to-do list Compensating for the United States, which provides 70 per cent of alliance defence spending, would be staggeringly costly for Germany.

Arndt Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven couldn’t have had a worse start as Germany's ambassador to Poland. Germany’s fraught historical legacy with the country – six million Poles killed in the Second World War and Prussia’s role in wiping Poland off the map from 1795 to 1918 – inspired Freytag von Loringhoven in his final posting to push hard to improve ties with Warsaw. But the Polish government saw things differently. His approval as ambassador – a role he finally took up in 2020 – was delayed by members of Poland’s then ruling PiS party, who campaigned against him using Nazi slurs. They targeted him because his father, Bernd, was a junior officer in Hitler’s bunker during the final months of the Second World War.

West Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, hated eastern Germany and said – possibly apocryphally – that Asia begins at the east bank of the Elbe River. When people visit my forest in what’s long been Brandenburg’s rustbelt, I caution that Asiatic Germany isn’t Adenauer’s bucolic Rhineland, let alone Munich or Hamburg. Yet the 'rustbelt' moniker no longer suits a region that, while down and out for decades, is rebounding, powered by new industry and proximity to booming Berlin, the capital’s new airport and a Tesla factory. Even low-tech forestry is making money after having been on life-support five years ago. But there are also levels of anger I have never seen in the 22 years I’ve lived here. What riles people up?

German chancellor Olaf Scholz still doesn’t get it. ‘Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf’ (the fish stinks from its head) is a popular German saying. It’s proven right by Scholz’s abysmal failure to lead since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He’s failing again with Israel, declaring the Jewish state is Germany’s ‘Staatsräson’, or raison d-etat, but never spelling out what this means. Scholz has flopped with his tepid attempts to explain what’s at stake for Germany and Europe in Ukraine and Israel and why Berlin should be the leadership power of the EU. This problem is partly due to Scholz’s nature. If you think you’re the smartest guy in the room you don’t bother with pesky stuff like explaining things.

Germany’s Robert Habeck might well be an excellent children’s book author but he is proving to be a dismal economy and climate minister. Habeck, who also serves as the Greens vice-chancellor in the country's coalition government, rode to power in 2021 promising to speed up the transition to renewables. At the heart of his pledge: more windmills, bigger windmills and, above all, built much, much faster. But these promises are proving to be little more than hot air, as my own fruitless struggle to build windmills attests. Wind energy is crucial if Germany is to meet its goal of renewables producing 80 per cent of electricity by 2030, up from 46 per cent last year. Chancellor Olaf Scholz says that 'four or five windmills' must enter service daily between now and 2030.

'Ku Klux Klan Brandenburg' was emblazoned across the black T-shirt on a guy in line behind me at the Total petrol station in Peitz, 90 minutes south of Berlin. I considered asking why he liked the KKK but thought better of it after noting his girth and the grimace he gave me. Popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and neo-Nazi groups is surging in eastern Germany. The AfD is now the second strongest party in nationwide opinion polls after the opposition Christian Democrats and ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. It is anti-immigrant, pro-Russian, anti-American and demands Germany quit the euro.