In recent years a certain “liberal Germanophilia” has taken hold in Britain, says Samuel Rubinstein. The conviction that Germany is a. But the central thesis was always flawed, and in the past three years it has suffered two major blows. First, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine discredited Germany’s energy policy and vindicated long-standing US concerns over German reliance on Russian gas. Second, the growing success of the populist AfD (which recently won its first mayoral election and is riding high in national opinion polls) raises questions over Germany’s future direction. In particular, it contradicts the idea that Germany is permanently inoculated against far-right politics by its 20th-century history. There are, of course, many reasons to love the country. But Germany is a country like any other, and with problems “that are in some cases sharper than our own”. A strain of “Germanophilia denied this basic fact – but that strain has now had its day, and it is best left for dead”.
