Eighty years after World War II, Germany stands between remembrance and rupture. The defeat of Nazism in 1945 grounded its democracy in human rights and the pledge “Never again.” Yet rising extremism and antisemitism test those lessons. Recent CDU cooperation with the far-right AfD in the Bundestag sparked outrage, especially near Holocaust remembrance events. A long-standing consensus against working with extremists has been breached. As debates on security and conscription grow, history remains not past—but a warning demanding vigilance.
