Day X, the AfD, and Hans Fallada: an author born 130 years ago and the rise of the new German far-right

Stamp to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Hans Fallada’s birth (Image: Deutsche Bundespost, NobbiP, Hans Fallada 1993, MiNr 1683)

As a student of Russian, Spanish, and formerly French, a citizen of Sweden and Britain, and a Jew, Germany has constantly been at the edge of my peripheral vision.  

I repeatedly find myself drawn to studying this country in its own right, and whilst I would like to imagine that I am just desperate for more knowledge for knowledge’s sake, it is depressingly likely that my fascination is a result of an ethnically inherited obsession with Nazism and the Holocaust.

Indicative of this focus was my selection of the first German novel that I would read: Alone in Berlin or Jeder stribt für sich allein, by Hans Fallada. It tells the story of a painfully ordinary married couple, Otto and Anna Quangel, who, in response to the death of their only son on the front line in the Second World War, begin to drop postcards with slogans of resistance all over the capital. The novel expands to encompass the varying degrees of resistance put up by the acquaintances of the Quangels, as well as the efforts of the Gestapo to apprehend ‘the Goblin’ responsible for the postcards. It is a far cry from scenes of battlefield drama, shocking cruelty, or glorified heroism present in films depicting Germany at war, and contains a muted sense of optimism about the everyman’s potential for courage in the face of danger. And, like any satisfying work dealing with recent history, it is based on a true story.

Although the book was published over seventy years ago, the legacy of Nazism still scars Germany; one only has to think of its hesitancy in sending tanks to Ukraine to realise that the fear of history repeating itself (or even appearing to repeat itself) is palpable.

And unsurprisingly, it is not only Germans who are concerned about the repetition of the past; the whole world tunes in when ominous bubbles of neo-Nazism rise to the surface in Germany, such is the might of Hitler’s legacy. Last year’s ‘motley crew’ plot to overturn the government captured the media’s attention as the country’s biggest police investigation into extremists was conducted, ending in the arrest of 25 suspects. More recently, we learnt of another coup plot whose organisers were eventually charged for founding a domestic terrorist group and violating weapons laws. Although unsuccessful and generally perceived as no ‘real’ threat to German democracy, the convictions and intentions of these groups are poignant; the belief that the modern German state has no legitimacy and the desire to foment civil war like conditions to take power are both chilling.

This anticipation of a ‘civil war’ has been particularly well-covered by the media. The so-called plan for ‘Day X’ provided the focus for a New York Times podcast investigation that was released during the summer of 2021. And while this podcast was being serially published, Tortoise Media released their exploration of the far-right in Chemnitz, where a house allegedly acting as a base for Neo-Nazis is located.

But if anxiety about the past explains our concern, what lies behind the far-right’s actual rise in activity and popularity?

It is both correct and evasive to answer with ‘the legacy of Nazism’. Of course, this does lie at the centre, but it seems that the true explanation is more complex than this response suggests.

For instance, the regional differences in the far-right’s popularity challenge this one-dimensional answer. The AfD, set up in 2013, won its first state-level seats in the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia in 2014, compared to 5% in northern Hamburg and Bremen a year later. In the federal elections of 2017 (which took place in the context of Angela Merkel’s ‘open doors’ policy) their popularity in the East gifted them 12.6% of the vote, and they entered the Bundestag for the first time. And, having added an anti-lockdown angle to their purpose, they retained 10% of the vote in the 2021 elections, becoming the most successful party in Thuringia, and remaining so in Saxony.

Why this predilection for the far-right in the East? Gabi Engelhardt, who spoke to Tortoise during their investigation, explains that because the GDR declared itself to be an antifascist state, there was a sense that it didn’t need to deal with remnants of Nazism. The lack of visibility or discussion around the issue essentially allowed far-right sentiment to remain in an incubator, leading to its contemporary existence and resurgence today.

Moreover, the experience of the Gestapo, (and then the Stasi in the East), means that Germany has particularly zealous freedom of speech laws. The only topic that is tightly controlled is Holocaust denial, but attempting to limit debate on any other topic constitutes an incendiary act, making Germans more free to air radical opinions.

But even the nasty cocktail of Nazi and Communist legacies does not tell the whole story behind the rise of the far-right.

Put simply, the same factors that motivate people in the rest of Europe to choose far-right parties are also present in Germany. Recently proposed legislation aims to change the laws surrounding citizenship, allowing people to apply after 5, rather than 8 years, or even in three if they have made a significant effort to integrate; learning German, doing volunteer work, achieving high marks in school. Some critics claim that the sanctity of citizenship is being eroded, arguing that you cannot be truly assimilated into a culture after three years. Fear of social change and the loss of ‘traditional values’ point to how immigration is an inescapable issue in most (all?) wealthy European countries, and can function as fuel for the cultivation of far-right sentiments.

Although the many answers to ‘why’ are fascinating, I will leave it to others to respond to the ‘where next’. But what I will suggest is that by exploring Germany’s tussle with its past, we will become better equipped to understand the emergence of the new far-right, and thus more capable of successfully engaging with it.

The past is famous for providing lessons for the future, and my quiet optimism is increased by the story of Alone in Berlin, which suggests that totalitarianism will always be resisted, and one crack in the system dooms it to failure.