Participants gather to demonstrate after AfD won its state election in Thuringia in Weimar, Germany on September 2.  
| Photo Credit: AP

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) have massively upended mainstream politics in two German regional elections on September 1. The AfD’s victory in the stronghold state of Thuringia marks the first time in the country’s post-war history that a radical right-wing party has come within touching distance of forming a government in a region. Similarly, in the regional polls in neighbouring Saxony, the AfD, sections of which Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated as extremist, stood a close second behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Also Read: ​Hollow middle: On the regional election results in Germany

The recent surge follows a watershed moment last year, when it registered a significant presence in western Germany in the legislative elections in Bavaria and Hesse, as the three parties in the German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition suffered a drubbing. Additionally, the BSW, launched in January, overtook all the constituents in the federal coalition in both regions. The AfD and BSW’s inroads has come just a year before Germany’s autumn 2025 elections.

Towards either extreme

Polling over 30% of the votes both in Thuringia and Saxony, the AfD has capitalised the most on the internecine squabbling within chancellor Scholz’s coalition, extreme xenophobia and disapproval of German arms supplies to Ukraine. The scars from the upheavals of transition following German reunification in the 1990s also appear to weigh heavily on voters in the eastern regions.

The political tide turned particularly hostile when the federal government last year sought to ban gas and oil-fired boilers from 2024 to replace them with heat pumps powered by renewable energy. The potential burden on households from the measure sparked intense outrage, forcing the government to water down the legislation. The controversy, moreover, exposed deep divisions in the ruling coalition between the Greens, who spearheaded the environment-friendly shift, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Right-wing resurgence and response

Bjorn Hocke is the AfD’s polarising ethno-nationalist leader from Thuringia who almost single-handedly moulded the AfD to an irretrievably ultra-nationalist hard-right movement. The former school teacher earned notoriety for his infamous denunciation in 2017 of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial to the Jews as a “monument of shame,” calling for a “180 degree turnaround” in the country’s attitude to its Nazi past. Undeterred by fines imposed by two courts, Mr. Hocke continues to spout banned Nazi era slogans in his speeches. He has drawn fresh ammunition from the refugee influx from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was well in excess of the one million inflows from the Syrian conflict in 2015. Mr. Hocke is one of the architects of the party’s aggressive push for the repatriation of migrants, a euphemism for the mass deportation of German nationals with immigrant roots.

Even though Mr. Scholz has warned mainstream parties against forging alliances with the AfD, his own governing coalition is fighting speculation that it might break up and trigger snap parliamentary elections. While the main opposition CDU aims to exploit the slump in the popularity of the ruling coalition in the 2025 general elections, its leader Friedrich Merz has so far proved ineffective in realising his pledge to halve the poll ratings of the AfD. The failure may have something to do with the CDU’s controversial approach, in its new programme adopted in May, to return the party to its old conservative principles. The new programme requires immigrants to sign on to the country’s dominant culture and knowledge of German history, besides recognising Israel’s right to exist. Most controversial of them all is a plan to discourage refugees from seeking asylum in Germany, by transferring applicants to “safe” third countries.

Mr. Merz has been explicit that Germany could emulate the U.K.’s controversial policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The way forward

The victory in Thuringia could prove the biggest test yet to the mainstream parties’ notional firewall to preclude any collaboration with the AfD.

Sahra Wagenknecht, the BSW leader, has emerged kingmaker following the CDU’s invitation to explore a coalition in Thuringia. While such a deal seems the only realistic option to isolate the AfD in the state, there are clear indications that talks are headed for a hard bargain. For a start, there are rumblings within both the CDU and BSW against working with an arch ideological opponent.

Some of the terms Ms. Wagenknecht has placed for discussion fall outside the purview of the regions. She has for instance insisted that her party’s support for a government would be conditional upon the cancellation of plans Chancellor Schulz and U.S. President Joe Biden have finalised with respect to stationing medium-range missiles in Germany. Her other condition, to the discomfort of many in the CDU who regard her as an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is to explore a diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.

The writer is Director, Strategic Initiatives, AgnoShin Technologies.

Nicki Kämpf watched her daughter toddle across the sand in a Berlin playground and wondered whether she and her wife should move their 1 1/2-year-old west, after Alternative for Germany became the first far-right party to win a state election in post-World War II Germany.

Ms. Kämpf, 29, and her wife discussed a backup plan as Sunday’s election results came in. They’re concerned that a gay couple and their child might not be safe in the future if parties like Alternative for Germany, or AfD, gain more power in the formerly communist and less prosperous eastern states.

Even though they live in the liberal city of Berlin, Kämpf was scared the far-right’s power could spread. She’s especially worried because the paperwork to formally adopt her daughter is still pending — and could be for another year or more.

“I don’t think I would be able to adopt her if they’re in power,” Ms. Kämpf told The Associated Press on Monday. “I don’t want to bring her up in a hostile environment.”

The couple talked about a possible move west to Cologne — “people there are really open-minded” — but Kämpf is reluctant to take their daughter far from the toddler’s 91-year-old great-great-grandmother and other family in Thuringia and neighboring Saxony.

AfD won its state election in Thuringia on Sunday under one of its hardest-right figures, Björn Höcke. In Saxony, the party finished only just behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union, which leads the national opposition.

Deep discontent with a national government notorious for infighting, inflation and a weak economy, anti-immigration sentiment and skepticism toward German military aid for Ukraine are among the factors that contributed to support for populist parties. A new party founded by a prominent leftist was the second big winner on Sunday — and will probably be needed to form state governments since no one is prepared to govern with AfD.

AfD is at its strongest in the east, and the domestic intelligence agency has the party’s branches in both Saxony and Thuringia under official surveillance as “proven right-wing extremist” groups. Höcke has been convicted of knowingly using a Nazi slogan at political events, but is appealing.

Höcke bristled Sunday when an ARD interviewer mentioned the intelligence agency’s assessment, responding: “Please stop stigmatizing me. We are the No. 1 party in Thuringia. You don’t want to classify one-third of the voters in Thuringia as right-wing extremist.”

Voters went to the polls on the 85th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland at the start of World War II. Some far-left protesters demonstrated against AfD in Hamburg, Dresden and Leipzig.

Lukas Meister said his sons, 6 and 3 years old, are too young to understand elections. But as the 3-year-old played with sand toys Monday, the 38-year-old father thought about how his eldest child will have to learn about it someday.

“We don’t talk much about politics so far. He’s more into ‘Paw Patrol,’” Meister said. “It’s hard to explain. How is it that people are so proud to vote for a party that is so bad for everyone?”

Older Germans who lived through the Nazi reign of terror are frightened. Many believed their country had developed an immunity to nationalism and assertions of racial superiority after confronting the horrors of its past through education and laws to outlaw persecution.

But Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, cautioned against labeling AfD’s successes as an aberration.

“Nobody should now speak of ‘protest’ or look for other excuses,” Knobloch said in a statement. “The numerous voters made their decision consciously, many wanted to make the extremists on the fringes responsible.”

Knobloch was 6 years old when she saw the synagogues of Munich burning and watched helplessly as two Nazi officers marched away a beloved friend of her father on Nov. 9, 1938, or Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass” — when Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.

Gudrun Pfeifer and Ursula Klute, two retirees from the northwestern city of Osnabrueck who are visiting Berlin this week, said Sunday’s vote also brought back grim memories from their early childhood days during and after World War II.

“I know what this can all lead to,” Pfeifer, 83, said Monday as her voice broke, recalling how her family was separated during the last months of the war and beyond. She was stranded in Berlin for more than a year.

“The city was in ruins, we were all starving. I was very ill — my sister thought I was going to die,” Pfeifer added.

Thorsten Faas, a political scientist from Berlin’s Free University, called AfD’s popularity for younger voters “very worrying.” In Thuringia, 38% of people aged between 18-24 gave their vote to the far-right party — compared to 33% overall, according to public broadcaster ARD’s Tagesschau election analysis.

“These first voting experiences are very formative and you can assume that this will also affect future voting decisions of this generation,” Faas said.

Klute, 78, also said she was distressed by AfD’s successes among the younger population.

“People always forget the lessons from history,” she said.