Right-wing extremism never fully died in Germany after the Second
World War, but it has taken many new forms over the course of decades.
Germany today is making headlines in the political sphere thanks to its
Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) party,
which formed less than 15 years ago and is already a major political
force—especially in the former East, which was once behind the Iron
Curtain. What is different about the AfD versus the pre-reunification
right-wing parties of Germany, and why is it experiencing so much more
electoral success?
Fuel for Extremists? Postwar Migration to Germany
In the two decades immediately following the conclusion of World War II, Germany experienced
a massive wave of emigration, one of the most significant in the
country’s history. In part in an effort to counter this, Germany began a
recruitment process to attract foreign workers, and migration
agreements with several countries were established
in the postwar years, including Italy (1955), Spain (1960), Greece
(1960), and Türkiye (1961).
The German-Turkish agreement was unique,
however, in that the “ethno-political orientation of German policy was threatened, as one of its central tenets was that only Europeans would be recruited,” according to Johannes-Dieter Steinert in a 2014 Journal of Contemporary History article. In a 1974 study, W.S.G. Thomas stated that 22 percent of the foreign workforce in Germany was comprised of Turks. Postwar Germany became
a migration destination for vast numbers of foreign workers, many of
them considered “Gastarbeiter” (guestworkers).
By 1975, it is estimated
that more than four million foreign workers were living in Germany, up
from just over 100,000 in 1957; by 1980, seven percent of Germany’s
total population was foreign workers. However, in 1973, West Germany halted
the recruitment of non-EEC (European Economic Community) workers which,
according to Thomas, was “basically a reflection of increasing
hostility by German nationals towards immigrant labour.”
Decades later, a turning point came in what is commonly referred to as
the refugee crisis of 2015. While Germany had been a popular choice for
foreign workers throughout the second half of the twentieth century, an
unprecedented number of refugees—decidedly different from the
Gastarbeiter of the Cold War years—entered Germany’s borders.
“For a few
weeks in the late summer and autumn of 2015,” Fabian Georgi states in Racism After Apartheid: Challenges for Marxism and Anti-Racism,
“Europe’s borders were open like never before since the fall of the
Iron Curtain in 1989/1990.” However, this “period of almost euphoric
solidarity with refugees was short-lived.” The “long summer of
migration,” as this period is sometimes called, likely “ended
in mid-November 2015 when terrorist attacks in Paris enabled right-wing
forces to associate refugees with ‘Islamic terrorism.’”
A relatively
new German political party at the time, the Alternative für Deutschland
(Alternative for Germany, or AfD), founded in 2013, capitalized on the
growing uneasiness and political tensions surrounding the refugee crisis
to grow from a fringe party (as it still was in 2015) into a national
political force (now the second-largest in the country after February
2025), using anti-immigrant rhetoric to exploit economic anxieties and
cultural fears, particularly in the former East.
Antecedents to the AfD: Pre-Unification Right-Wing Movements in Germany
While postwar Germany (especially the newly formed West Germany)
remained strongly against outward nationalism and fascism, right-wing
extremism still persisted in some forms. The 1960s saw the establishment
of the National Democratic Party, led by right-wing extremists exploiting the “sharp economic downturn” Germany was experiencing at the time.
The party’s executive committee consisted
of 18 members; “twelve were believed to have been active Nazis during
the Hitler era,” Gerard Braunthal explains in his 2009 book Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Germany. In 1983, former Waffen-SS sergeant Franz Schönhuber, “[a]mbivalent about the Nazi past,” founded the Republikaner party. As Braunthal states, Schönhuber “admitted
that the Hitler regime brought about the country’s destruction and
defeat, but he also espoused patriotism and self-sacrifice,” two
qualities associated with Nazi ideology.
According to Braunthal, the
Republikaner’s 1987 platform targeted economically and socially insecure
Germans, fearful of an increase in crime due to the presence of
foreigners, attributing Germans’ hardships to immigration from poorer
countries. The platform advocated
for stricter immigration controls and was characterized by
“anti-European,” “ultra-nationalist,” and “xenophobic” rhetoric. This
echoes the rhetoric of the AfD today.
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