How Germany's Communist Past Shapes Today's Politics

Germany has learned to fear the return of one dictatorship. It has been far less willing to remember the other.

In many European countries, there is little awareness that German history has two totalitarian pasts: National Socialism, followed by communist rule in East Germany until 1989. Yet that blind spot is not confined to foreigners. Many Germans themselves, especially younger ones, are barely conscious of this double history.

That may seem paradoxical. After all, the time when party functionaries in the East could imprison political opponents at will and have people shot at the Berlin Wall for trying to escape is not some distant past. Yet it plays only a marginal role in history lessons, while politicians and the media invoke the danger of a “new 1933” almost every day.

The reason Britons and Frenchmen, for example, do not usually think of Germany as a country shaped by two dictatorships is simple. In their own historical memory, the struggle against the National Socialist Reich occupies a central place. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), by contrast, was seen as an insignificant member of the Eastern Bloc that disappeared in 1990.

The Neo-Communists Return

In Germany, however, socialism did not vanish into the past. On the contrary, the neo-communists of the repeatedly renamed GDR state party are more self-confident than ever. At their latest party congress, speakers called for “putting an end to capitalism”. Their new chairman, Luigi Pantisano, placed the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a party firmly rooted in the moderate center, close to “fascists”.

There is more. Much like the radical left in France, their German counterparts have also moved closer to aggressive Islamists. Yet the Social Democrats, the Greens and even representatives of the CDU regard the Left Party as a strategic partner in a grand alliance against the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The neo-communists are already part of government in two federal states. In the state of Berlin, they could lead a radically left-wing coalition in September. In Thuringia, the CDU minister-president has no parliamentary majority of his own, which means he already depends on votes from the far left.

The next federal government, too, could become dependent on the votes of a party that combines left-wing extremist authoritarian ambitions with sympathy for Hamas, provided the strict refusal to work with the AfD remains in place. In return for its support, it would be likely to demand a political price – and to receive one.

Why Washington Is Paying Attention

This is where the United States enters the picture. Harry S. Truman established the American policy of containing totalitarian movements in Europe. US Vice President JD Vance also stands in this tradition. He has made clear several times, without diplomatic embellishment, that the United States will continue to engage in European security only where shared principles exist: a commitment to the West, to the market economy and to individual freedom.

If the neo-communists, hand in hand with Islamists, succeed in expanding their power and setting the agenda, Germany will drift into dangerous territory. At some point, it will become increasingly difficult to convince the American public that money, and if necessary blood, should be spent on an ally with which it shares ever fewer political convictions.

A Warning, Not Interference

Many Germans see the warnings from Vance or Marco Rubio, more conciliatory in Rubio’s case but identical in substance, as patronizing. They are wrong. Vance and Rubio do not want to prescribe a path for Europe’s most important country. They merely want to explain the position of their own nation: at some point, a Federal Republic strongly influenced by socialism and Islamism will no longer be able to count on the US security guarantee.

Strategically, Germany has long since ceased to matter as much as it did before 1990. The United States does not need Germany for its own security. Germany, by contrast, will not be able to defend itself alone for the foreseeable future.