Israel, Memory, Europe: Is the AfD Bringing Germany’s Postwar Consensus to an End?

The rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is usually analyzed through an electoral lens: rising poll numbers, the weakening of governing parties, the future of Germany’s political Brandmauer (“firewall”), and speculation about possible coalition governments.

These questions matter. But they may not be the most important ones.

If the AfD were eventually to become an unavoidable force in German politics, the implications would extend far beyond a simple change of government. The real question is whether Germany is gradually entering a new chapter in its political history.

Since 1949, the Federal Republic has been built around a broad national consensus: firm integration into the Western alliance, European integration, NATO membership, reconciliation with its neighbors, and a special relationship with Israel elevated to the level of Staatsräson—a reason of state.

For more than seven decades, these principles have shaped Germany’s political identity. The question now is whether that consensus can remain intact throughout the twenty-first century.

When Konrad Adenauer became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic, Germany was emerging from the greatest catastrophe in its history.

The country lay devastated, occupied, divided, and morally discredited.

West Germany’s leaders made a defining strategic choice: to rebuild the nation by embedding it within a political order larger than Germany itself.

Europe, the Atlantic Alliance, and Franco-German reconciliation became the pillars of this new identity.

Over time, this orientation ceased to be merely a political option. It became one of the constitutional foundations of the Federal Republic itself.

The Passing of the Founding Generation

One factor is often underestimated in discussions about Germany’s political evolution: generational change.

The generation that experienced World War II, the ruins of 1945, Allied occupation, Germany’s division, the Berlin Wall, and the country’s economic reconstruction is gradually disappearing.

Today’s political, business, and intellectual leaders were born after those defining events. For them, World War II belongs to national history—but not to personal memory.

The past has not disappeared.

What has changed is the way it is experienced.

The central question is becoming less, “What happened?” than, “How central should that past remain in defining contemporary Germany?”

Eastern Germany Changes the Equation

Nowhere is this transformation more visible than in the states of the former East Germany.

Four decades of communist rule produced a historical memory very........

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