Germans fear Angela Merkel’s migrant policy will strengthen far-right and take country back to 1930s
One poll placed Chancellor’s Christian Democrat party in third place — three points behind the anti-Islamic Alternative for Germany
GERMAN voters fear the political bloodbath over Angela Merkel’s open door policy could send the country back to the 1930s.
A growing far-Right movement is being fuelled by anger towards the German Chancellor’s decision to allow 1.3million migrants into the country, putting a huge strain on services.
Author and journalist Birgit Lohmeyer, 58, told The Sun on Sunday: “The mood in Germany now is similar to the 1930s when the Nazis came to power.”
Today Merkel, whose popularity has slipped to a five-year low, faces losing state elections in her own political backyard of Mecklenburg.
It would be a massive humiliation for the woman dubbed Mama Merkel and send shockwaves through Europe.
Defeat may spell the beginning of the end for her reign, leaving Britain to negotiate Brexit with a new boss of the EU’s most powerful nation after the national elections next autumn.
But there are also serious concerns that the backlash to her migrant disaster will allow the far Right to get a firm grip on German politics for the first time since World War Two.
Last night one poll placed her Christian Democrat party in third place — three points behind the anti-Islamic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
One AfD leader has offered to back the neo-Nazis in the state parliament. The Centre-Left Social Democratic Party remained in the lead at 28 per cent.
Many ordinary Germans are desperate for change in response to the growing tide of migrants.
In the pretty German seaside town Wismar, dad-of-two Hans Detlev-Kuss summed up the mood.
“Too many immigrants have come”, says the 53-year-old sausage seller.
“No one’s taking care of the Germans. We’ve got many poor families in Germany which don’t get as much money as refugees now. I used to support Merkel but not any more.”
Rural backwater Mecklenburg has long been a fertile breeding ground for the far Right.
It is the only state where the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) has seats in the regional parliament. It won six per cent per of the vote in 2011.
An AfD spokesman this week admitted it wouldn’t oppose “sensible” NPD policies.
It led Federal Minister of Family Affairs Manuela Schwesig to say: “The AfD is now officially fraternising with the neo-Nazis in order to form some sort of brown coalition.” She was referring to the colour of Nazi uniforms.
Few have had a better view more of Mecklenburg’s far-Right menace than Birgit and Horst Lohmeyer.
The couple have witnessed cute-looking fair school children sieg-heiling, received death threats and had their barn torched to ashes.
Their cottage is in Jamel — East Germany’s infamous Nazi town.
The Lohmeyers say 32 of the village’s 40 residents are neo-Nazis.
Horst, 59, says: “A lot of NPD supporters moved to the AfD. Both parties support each other. The NPD want to spread their ideas with violence so people see the AfD as a respectable alternative. It makes them all the more dangerous.”
Birgit says: “We haven’t slept well since our barn was burned down last year. But we won’t leave. If we go the Nazis have won.”
RELATED STORIES
In a back room of Wismar’s Wyndham Garden Hotel on Thursday evening, I watched AfD’s deputy leader Alexander Gauland spout his anti-Muslim message to around 50 grey-haired voters.
Local journalist Nicole Bachmann says of the sparse crowd: “People don’t like to be seen to be supporting the AfD but they are happy to vote for them.”
When I corner English-speaking lawyer and journalist Gauland after the meeting he makes no effort to hide his opposition to Islam.
I ask him about numbers of refugees likely to enter Germany this year. He replies: “There should be no Muslims coming.”
Gauland tells me Turkish migration to Germany has led to a “slow increase of Muslim people who don’t belong here”.
The 75-year-old wants to ban minaret towers on new mosques, the wearing of veils, and says the burkini has no place in Germany. On banning the veil, he insists: “I don’t like it if they’re veiled and I can’t see if it’s a man or a woman.
“It doesn’t fit our life in Germany, France or Britain.”
In May he disgusted many with racist remarks about black German football star Jerome Boateng.
Gauland said of Boateng, born in Berlin to a German mother and a Ghanaian father: “People find him good as a footballer, but they don’t want a Boateng as a neighbour.” The politician believes the controversial “Breaking Point” poster of refugees crossing the Croatian border unveiled by Nigel Farage during the Brexit campaign helped sway the vote.
Yet he bridles at comparisons with Ukip, whose policies, he says, were just about leaving the EU.
Gauland wants Germany to stay in a reformed EU.
Instead he compares his party to the far-Right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party in Austria and France’s National Front. “Merkel’s ‘Yes we can’ is wrong,” Gauland tells me. “It’s ‘No we can’t and no we won’t’.”
Under pressure for AfD’s soaring popularity, Merkel has admitted she made mistakes in the way she flung open Germany’s borders last year.
Amid the uncertainty, she last week refused to commit to running for the premiership again next year.
Yet many in Germany are terrified Merkel’s demise could herald old hatreds from Germany’s dark past.
In Wismar, IT worker Ramona Schonnig, 35, is switching her support from the Greens to Merkel.
She tells me: “AfD’s rise has really frightened me. We must stop them.”
Angela is best bet for Brexit, says TIM MARSHALL, Foreign Affairs Analyst
IF Chancellor Merkel was to fall, the EU would be deprived of the outstanding European politician of the century.
PM Theresa May would be deprived of a pragmatic negotiating partner as we Brexit, one who, if the price is right, would not necessarily refuse us a unique status deal.
The position of a post Merkel Germany would be partially dependent on who took power.
However, the UK is likely to remain Germany’s third largest trading partner. Personalities matter greatly in politics, but in democracies they are usually trumped by national interests.
Don’t write Merkel off yet. She’s a brilliant politician and although she spoke with her heart last summer, she may speak with her head in an election year. She may be able to survive humiliation this month.