In Germany, moral memory and a fight for our future

A weeklong speaking tour in Germany with former Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), organized by the U.S. Mission in Berlin, revealed deep anxieties about the post–World War II world order on both sides of the Atlantic. Although we’re more than 90 years from 1933, we may be as close as ever.

I’m not suggesting a return of the singularly unique evil we witnessed in the Nazi era. But after 19 meetings, panels, roundtables, interviews and exchanges in eight German cities, I picked up one consistent theme: a deep and pronounced worry about resurgent authoritarian movements within America and Germany that were assumed to be effectively vanquished after the war. Or, as one German expert told me, “The things we thought were impossible after the war now seem possible.”

What’s most chillingly possible is that Alternative for Germany (AfD), an extremist right-wing movement that echoes (if not stammers) Nazi sentiment is gaining momentum in German politics. The party is currently polling at 20 percent support nationwide — making it Germany’s second-most popular political party, behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). It may even score electoral victories in the German states of Saxony and Thuringia in elections this fall.

Just days before we arrived, AfD members participated in a meeting of extremists to discuss the forced deportation — under the softer-sounding codeword “remigration” — of migrants already admitted to Germany. Meetings to discuss the same issue were standard practice in the Third Reich. The attendees in November were not only unbothered by the historic parallels, but may have delighted in the irony that their meeting in Potsdam took place only a short drive from the Berlin neighborhood of Wannsee, where the Nazis met in 1942 to coordinate the Final Solution.

The meeting triggered a heartening response across Germany. Our drive from the Berlin airport to a hotel was delayed by the endless stream of over 100,000 people returning from a protest rally in bitterly cold weather. Another 100,000 took to the streets in Düsseldorf, and thousands more in Mannheim, Kiel, Munich, Hamburg and even in Austrian cities like Vienna. The AfD also suffered an unexpected defeat in a local election held the day after Holocaust Memorial Day.

This moral memory is vital. In the 1930s, the population either fell silent, into compliance or, as I read during a tour of the Dachau death camp, “self-coordination” — meaning grassroots beatings, assaults, discrimination and confiscation even before government authorities sanctioned or ordered them. In 2024, silence and complicity are not options.

The protests of hundreds of thousands may be enough to defeat a heinous idea, but not to deter or deflect a sustained trend: a perfect storm of social-economic pressures giving right-wing extremism the oxygen to become a wildfire. In fact, many of our meetings sounded like a congressional town hall: talk of inflation, fuel prices, paychecks and immigration. A population that feels increasingly stretched and stepped on will seek solutions in right-wing strongmen.

I’ve called it the “G.A.M.E” — the convergence of globalization, automation, migration and the empowerment of others. When people feel they have no hope of winning this game, they want leaders who’ll break the rules or reset them with new terms.

The same game has dealt us a bad hand in the United States, paving the way for Donald Trump to reach towards his own authoritarian presidency, part two.

Which brings us to the second persistent question we received across Germany: If Trump wins, will Washington continue to set and help the rules of the international liberal (small L) order: defending democracy, remaining in NATO, supporting our allies and standing up to Putin?

The question is understandable — not long after we arrived, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius publicly predicted that Putin could invade a NATO country within five to eight years. People tend to take threats more seriously when they’re in the same neighborhood.

I can’t imagine a second Trump administration abandoning NATO. In fact, Congress has already passed legislation barring a president from withdrawing without congressional approval. But I do worry that cheap soundbites like “America First” can have expensive consequences: the validation of an expanding isolationist movement across the GOP. While many Republican members of Congress believe in our collective security obligations, will they stand up to Trump when he tweets his opposition? For an answer, go ask the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Capitol insurrection. Only two remain in office.

The fruits of American sacrifices for freedom, the repayments of blood spilled and lives lost, are evident across Germany. I saw them firsthand — the signs at Dachau acknowledging the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division for liberating the camp; the college students who reminded us that they support America’s leadership in protecting the future from a repeat of the gravest sins of the past; the American flag flying from an embassy within eyesight of the Reichstag and the former Chancellery where Hitler’s machine planned and perpetuated Nazi crimes; the reunification of a city once divided by a wall between democracy and tyranny.

Meanwhile, there were ominous signs back home, with Republicans threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine unless they get a deal for border security. The negotiations were thrown a curveball (cannonball may be more accurate) when Trump and his allies suddenly reversed course in order to deny Biden a legislative accomplishment.

I thought of that as I gazed at one of the most vivid sites in Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate, where President Ronald Reagan issued the famous line that helped topple the Berlin Wall. Will the party of Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” allow Putin to take Ukraine, so they can build a wall in Texas?

History offers timeless lessons. A trip to Germany reminds us: Appeasing tyrants never works. Robust alliances and moral clarity do.

Steve Israel represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. Follow him @RepSteveIsrael.