Recently, for the first time, I saw a slow, endless column of green or yellow tractors. I learned later that 5,600 of them, after blocking traffic while driving in from North, South, East and West Germany, had converged at the Brandenburg Gate, parked in orderly rows and then voiced their demands: “Fewer or better pesticides, OK! Less or better fertilizers, also OK! We too want to save our planet. But not without consulting with us, who are fighting a bitter battle against monopoly agriculture giants and monopoly retailing giants which are threatening the survival of us family farmers.”

Four days later, also at the Brandenburg Gate, 35,000 “Friday for Future” demonstrators joined other kids around the globe to demand an end to long dates about wind farm placement, higher prices for gas and plane tickets, lower ones for railroad fares, to dubious procrastination and all kinds of bamboozlement so as to quickly produce results in cutting global warming.

The next day, in southeastern Lusatia, other young people, mostly in white, blocked roads to the huge, landscape-devouring pit mines for low-grade lignite coal until the police tear-gassed them away. As its sole natural resource, the GDR had been forced to excavate this crumbly fuel as a needed base in building or saving its economy, but the motivation of the privatized pits is now simply profit.

In southwestern Stuttgart, a week earlier, IG Metall, Germany’s biggest union, organized an angry outdoor rally with 8,000 workers from the nearby giant Mercedes plant, also from Audi and parts suppliers like Bosch and Continental.

Germany’s auto industry, its major exporter, is huge and powerful. It helped build up Hitler, made billions from slave laborers during the war and grew even stronger after 1945, as the backbone of West Germany’s “economic miracle”. Those with steady work making Mercedes, BMW, Opel, VW, and Porsche won relatively high wages and benefits and became one of the best situated sectors in the economy – but no longer the most militant. The atmosphere in worker-manager company councils was often friendly, sometimes even chummy.

But that is changing – fast! The nasty emission-concealing scandal, an escalating switch from stinky fluid fuels to odorless electricity, from assembly lines with humans to twisting, turning robot arms, with software replacing skilled workers, are taking effect.

The problem with Germany now is that all parties are in turmoil. The strongest, the two joint “Christian“ parties, are sinking in the polls as their commanding figure, Angela Merkel, though still chancellor, gradually fades. Any hopes that her follower as party head, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, might move the party in a moderate direction also faded, but not so gradually.

AKK, as she is known, is now Minister of Defense and just as belligerent and aggressive as her predecessor, Ursula von der Leyen, who now heads the key European Union Commission. AKK has called for a new German National Security Council to help achieve “a stronger German military presence in the world … ready, together with its partners, to assume more responsibility.”

All partners (except the U.S. and perhaps France) would be junior partners, so when AKK says “we cannot simply stand on the outside observing things but must join in international debate, pushing things forward” we are wise to be worried. AKK defied a challenge from even further-right and gained her party’s full support, for now, not on a question of policy but of personal power.

Her party rules in coalition with a frightened Social Democratic Party, whose poll results have sunk to a sickening 14% (while the Christians stand at 29%). And now it is suddenly in a state of total turmoil. Is its loss in membership and poll figures caused by its membership in the increasingly unpopular Great Coalition (Grosse Koalition or “GroKo”)? If so, should it heighten leftish demands, maybe cause a crisis, leading to an early election – and perhaps an even worse disaster for the party? Or should it stick it out? Its leading politician Olaf Scholz, a right-winger and now deputy chancellor and powerful Minister of Finance, says energetically; Stick it out! He clearly prefers the bird in the hand! A turkey?

But after six months of electioneering, with as many candidate duos as there are Democratic candidates in the U.S., two relative unknowns have won out in a membership vote for party leadership, beating a visibly stricken Scholz duo. And now the winners, a hitherto largely unnoticed Bundestag deputy, Saskia Esken, and an equally unknown minister in a state government, Norbert Walter-Borjans (shortened to NoWaBo), are thinking about insisting on a higher minimum wage law.

The Christians would not go along! Even the militarist foreign policy is being questioned. The Young Socialists, a party adjunct, and a majority of the voting membership see a left turn as necessary to save the party, even with risky new elections. The present leadership is really scared, rather like the Tony Blair establishment with Jeremy Corbyn or establishment U.S. Democrats with Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Who will win out? A party congress next week may be decisive.

As for the Greens, still euphoric after overtaking the Social Democrats in the polls (with 22%) and despite a slow-down of their upward swoop, they stick largely to their stress on the environment. But in international affairs they sadly remain the most belligerent of all in their confrontation policy towards Russia. Just now they are hinting that, if really necessary, they might just patriotically consider replacing the Social Democrats in a government with the Christians.

They have done this before. Right now, in Saxony and Brandenburg, state governments of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Greens are in the making, called “Kenya” coalitions (with the colors of that country’s flag), and both excluding the Left (die Linke) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The AfD held its congress this past weekend in Braunschweig, after finally finding a hall willing to accept them (the Volkswagen company in this case). While outside thousands of anti-fascists protested all day, kept carefully at a distance by a thousand cops, they chose their leaders. One artisan painter now represents East Germany, where they have registered their biggest gains. Known for using unmistakable Nazi jargon and, when questioned, resolutely sticking to it, he will replace Alexander Gauland, 78, now honorary president and still the main AfD spokesman of its 91-man Bundestag caucus (almost no women).

They are all still viciously anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner but ousted one delegate for being too overtly anti-Semitic. They now make a policy of this, supporting Israel as a bulwark against Islam. Although their far-far right group “Der Flügel” (“The Wing”) stayed in the shadows, its dominance prevailed, and Gauland’s prediction that the “Christians” would soon have to seek the AfD as partners was as menacing as the words: “Just wait two or three years.”

The Leftwing DIE Linke also had a meeting as the 69 members of its Bundestag caucus chose co-chairs, always a man and a woman. Dietmar Bartsch, an East German, remained in office. But prominent Sahra Wagenknecht had decided to step down after sharp disagreements as well as health problems, so a new co-chair was needed.

The winner, with 36 to 29 votes, hitherto largely unknown outside Oldenburg in West Germany, was Amira Mohamed Ali, 40, whose father was Egyptian, her mother German. She is considered closer to the left wing but called for more unity within the party and stated: “What’s important is to achieve notable improvements for the great majority of the people. If that is possible by working with the Social Democrats and the Greens I am naturally in favor!”

So, there is allround confusion in the political life of Germany symbolising the instability facing Europe as a whole. There are yet no indication that the situation will improve.
(IPA Service)