Rule of Law: Germany Country Study

Summary

The Federal Republic of Germany has a parliamentary democracy and a federal state. Following unification with East Germany in 1990, there are 16 states governed under a 1949 Basic Law adopted by West Germany. Out of the experience of both Nazism and communism, Germany emerged to become one of the freer nations in the world as measured by the annual Freedom in the World survey. 

In ancient times, Germanic tribes migrated from Black sea regions and Central Asia to northern and central Europe to play a major role in the continent’s early history. From the 10th century, German principates made up the Holy Roman Empire, which ended at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. A loose German Confederation was created in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna.

Germany has since experienced some of the most dramatic shifts between dictatorship and democracy, and in rule of law, of any country. Through a series of wars, Prussia, the largest state, established a unified German Reich with a limited democracy. But the Kaiser (or emperor) had supreme power. Willhelm II’s aggressive foreign policies sparked World War I (1914-18) and Germany’s military defeat led to the end of imperial rule.

The 1918-19 revolution established a full democracy known as the Weimar Republic. In 1933, however, the president appointed Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor, who put the country under the Nazis’ iron grip and relentlessly repressed the Jewish population. In 1939, Hitler launched World War II to conquer most of Europe and then ordered the extermination of European Jewry. Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

Nazi Germany was defeated and occupied in 1945 by the Allied Powers, which divided the country in two parts. The west emerged in 1949 as the Federal Republic of Germany to became a stable democracy and a member of the NATO alliance. East Germany, under the USSR’s control, established a communist dictatorship and joined the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1955. In 1989, East German citizens held mass demonstrations against communist rule leading to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall that divided the capital city. East Germany reunified with the Federal Republic under its Basic Law in 1990.

Germany is the 63rd largest country in the world by area and the 16th largest by population (85 million people in 2023). The population is 71 percent ethnic German, 8 percent other European, 3.4 percent Turkish and 1.6 percent each Russian, Kazakh and Syrian, among other nationalities. Religious affiliation is 26 percent Roman Catholic, 25 percent Protestant, 3.5 percent Muslim and 5 percent other. Forty percent have no religious affiliation. Germany's projected gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024 is $4.6 trillion, the world's third largest economy according to the International Monetary Fund. It ranks 18th in projected GDP per capita for 2024 ($52,291 per annum).

History

Early History, the Code of Euric, and the Holy Roman Empire

During the fifth century CE, the king of the Visigoths wrote down the oral tradition of Germanic laws as the Code of Euric, which influenced the development of later European political systems.

Germany became a modern nation state in 1871, but from ancient times its peoples and principalities played a central role in European history. Around 500 BCE, Germanic tribes began migrating from the Black Sea and Central Asia regions to the Baltic Sea region. Starting in the 1st century BCE, various groups migrated west and south to present-day Austria, Belgium, Czechia and Slovakia, France, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Switzerland.

After centuries of attack by Roman legions, Germanic tribes repelled Rome's imperial army and in 410 CE the Visigoths sacked Rome. During the fifth century CE, the king of the Visigoths wrote down the oral tradition of Germanic laws as the Code of Euric, which influenced the development of later European political systems. One lasting contribution was the manner of choosing successor kings by a grand council of electors from different regions.

The Frankish Empire became the dominant Germanic tribe in central Europe under the rule of Charlemagne (768–814 CE). He expanded Frankish control from central parts of France to northern Saxony, east to present-day Austria, and south to Lombardy in Italy. Charlemagne’s empire was divided in three among his grandsons: the East Frankish Kingdom (present-day Germany and Austria); the West Frankish Kingdom (a large part of present-day France); and the Middle Kingdom, a confederation of German and Italian principalities.

From the 900s CE, these territories loosely joined to form the Holy Roman Empire (later known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation). The height of its influence was during the Crusades when military orders like the Teutonic Knights arose in response to Papal calls to restore Jerusalem and the Holy Land to Christendom following the Islamic conquests. After their defeat, the Teutonic Knights returned to conquer Prussia and expanded east under papal orders to Christianize pagan lands (see, for example, Country Study of Estonia). But the Holy Roman Empire faded, finally ending in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars (see below).

The Reformation & Its Consequences

In 1517, Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenburg. In them, he attacked the widespread practice of Catholic clergy to sell indulgences (absolution for forgiven sins) and other aspects of Church doctrine. Earlier groups had challenged papal authority to establish new churches, but Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses are often pointed to as launching the Reformation, a continent-wide development of alternative Christian churches and sects called Protestant (since they protested Church doctrine and papal authority).

Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses are often pointed to as launching the Reformation, a continent-wide development of alternative Christian churches and sects called Protestant.

The Germanic principalities and kingdoms divided into a largely Protestant (Lutheran) north and mostly Catholic south. The bloody Thirty Years' War (1618–48), which drew in all European states, was fought to prevent the Reformation’s spread to other parts of the Holy Roman Empire. The fighting concentrated on German lands and resulted in the deaths of four million people from war, famine and disease. The signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 ended the conflicts, establishing the basic principle of national sovereignty (see also Freedom of Religion).

Prussia and the Rise of the First German Empire

Over the next century, the Protestant principate of Prussia ascended in military and economic power to eclipse the neighboring Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire. But its power was stemmed by Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1806 in the famous Battle of Jena.

At the Congress of Vienna following Napoleon’s final defeat by monarchical powers in 1815, thirty-nine German states agreed to establish a new German Confederation under Austrian leadership. After the 1848 revolutions, Prussia re-ascended as the dominant state within the German Confederation. When William I became Prussia’s Kaiser (emperor) in 1861, he named Otto von Bismarck, his top diplomat, as minister president. In 1867, Bismark helped negotiate a broader German Confederation. In 1871, following Germany’s victory in the French-Prussian war in 1871, Bismarck negotiated further consolidation of principates into the German Reich (empire).

World War I and the Weimar Republic

With Bismarck as Chancellor until 1890, Germany emerged as a modern nation-state, propelled by rapid industrialization and a high level of militarization. A representative parliament gained some powers, but the authority of the emperor was supreme. In his role as Kaiser, Wilhelm II’s aggressive foreign policy in the early 20th century brought Germany into conflict with other European states leading to the onset of the World War I.

With Bismarck as Chancellor until 1890, Germany emerged as a modern nation-state, propelled by rapid industrialization and a high level of militarization. A representative parliament gained some powers, but the authority of the emperor was supreme.

After four deadly years of fighting on western and eastern fronts, Germany surrendered in November 1918 to western Allies led by the United Kingdom, France and the United States, which had entered the war in 1917. Wilhelm II abdicated and imperial rule ended. In the German Revolution of 1918-19, a new government formed under the Social Democrat Party (SPD), which put down a communist rebellion and oversaw adoption of a constitution. The new democracy was commonly called the Weimar Republic for the city where the National Assembly adopted the constitution.

In 1919, the National Assembly was compelled by the Allies, or Entente Powers, to agree to the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty required Germany to cede territories, pay reparations, demilitarize and de-industrialize in key sectors. The Weimar Republic was among the more liberal democracies to rise from the devastation of World War I, but it struggled to gain stability under the terms of Versailles. Under coalitions of the left SPD and Center and Democratic parties, the governments faced numerous challenges, including attempted putsches, temporary occupation by France, hyperinflation and, beginning in 1929, economic depression.

The Rise of Hitler and the Third Reich

In the late 1920s, the National Socialist German Workers Party led by Adolf Hitler gained greater support as part of the larger rise of fascism in Europe. In part due to economic instability during the Great Depression, the Nazi Party won a plurality in the Reichstag (the dominant lower house of parliament) in two elections in 1932. Center-right and left parties would not cooperate with Hitler but neither would they unite together to form a majority coalition. In early 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg used plenary powers to break the deadlock and named Hitler as Chancellor, the head of government.

In his political manifesto Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), published in 1925, Hitler had declared his intentions to wield absolute power and impose Aryan racial domination. As Chancellor, he acted swiftly to fulfill those plans. When a deliberately set fire destroyed the Reichstag building, Hitler declared that it was a provocation of the German Communist Party and arrested its leaders. President von Hindenburg then approved emergency powers allowing Hitler to rule by decree and set new elections in which the Nazi Party gained control of parliament.

Hitler then had the Reichstag pass the Enabling Act giving the Chancellor absolute power to rule by decree. To achieve the two-thirds majority needed to supersede the constitution, Hitler banned the Communist Party, arrested parliament members and physically barred others from voting. In doing so, he effectively carried out a coup d’état. Following the Enabling Act’s passage, Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor, banned opposition parties, made the Nazis’ paramilitary organization (the SS or Schutzstaffel) the government’s security force, and purged the civil service and judiciary.

The Nazi regime ruled through violence, mass surveillance, purges and other forms of intimidation against all political opponents and minority groups, but it especially targeted the Jewish community as an enemy race, adopting the Nuremberg Laws that denied any citizenship rights to Jews. Concentration camps housed tens of thousands of people.

As Germany remilitarized and retook territories, France and Britain adopted a policy of appeasement. The 1938 Munich Agreement allowed Germany to re-occupy the Sudetenland, a German-populated territory ceded to Czechoslovakia by the Versailles Treaty. But Hitler was not appeased, only emboldened. Having built the most powerful military on the continent, he pursued his plans for world domination through an Axis already formed with two other fascist powers, Italy and Japan.

The Cataclysm of World War II

To launch World War II, Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, its main potential enemy, in August 1939. Secret protocols divided Europe between the two powers, making the USSR an effective part of the Axis. By agreement, German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, invaded Poland from the west on September 1; the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland’s east on September 17. The USSR then occupied the Baltic Republics and other eastern European territories. The Wehrmacht overran France and most of Western Europe and waged war on the United Kingdom. At the same time, Hitler ordered the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” known as the Holocaust, the systematic effort to eradicate European Jewry as well as murder all Jews within reach in other Nazi-occupied territories.

The number of lives lost in World War II’s European theater alone was unprecedented in human history. Between 40 million and 60 million soldiers and civilians were killed, including in the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of six million Jews, or two-thirds of European Jewry.

Still pursuing greater “lebensraum” (living space), Hitler broke the pact with the USSR and Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Third Reich also declared war on the United States after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The Wehrmacht reached Moscow and the Caucasus in 1941-42 but was then repulsed. Over three years, the Allied Forces, now partnered with the USSR, defeated the Wehrmacht on Western and Eastern Fronts to jointly occupy Germany in May 1945.

The number of lives lost in World War II’s European theater alone was unprecedented in human history. Between 40 million and 60 million soldiers and civilians were killed, including in the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of six million Jews, or two-thirds of European Jewry. Three million persons of other targeted groups, including Roma, Slavs, the disabled and homosexuals, were also murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators in occupied countries.

The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)

Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered on May 8, 1945. The three main Allied powers ─ the US, the UK and the USSR ─ set the final terms of post-war Europe in Potsdam, Germany in July. Some eastern territories of Germany were ceded to Poland (while Poland’s own eastern territories were ceded to and annexed by the Soviet Union). The rest of Germany was divided into four occupied zones but essentially two parts: the west by the United States, United Kingdom and France and the east by the Soviet Union. Berlin, in the eastern territory, was similarly divided into four sectors but really in two, West and East Berlin, which remained the capital of East Germany.

The USSR blockaded Berlin’s western zones in 1948, confirming Joseph Stalin’s intentions to occupy also all of Berlin. In response, the US, UK and France organized an airlift to maintain four-sector control of the city and thus maintain its West-East division.

In its drive to Germany, the Red Army had occupied most of Eastern Europe, in essence extending the USSR’s border to the Elbe River in eastern Germany. The Soviet Union would install loyal communist regimes in each of the central and eastern European countries. The USSR blockaded Berlin’s western zones in 1948, confirming Joseph Stalin’s intentions to occupy also all of Berlin. In response, the US, UK and France organized an airlift to maintain four-sector control of the city and thus maintain its West-East division.

In May 1949, these three Allied powers approved the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), with Bonn as its capital, out of 12 western regions in their zones. (Three regions later combined to form one, Baden-Württemberg. The Saar region, under French control, eventually joined in 1954.) The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was formed in October 1949 under Soviet control, with Berlin as its capital (see below).

During the 1945-49 occupation in their three zones, the western Allies jointly carried out a general (if not full) policy of de-Nazification, re-established democratic institutions and began to rebuild Germany's economy through the Marshall Plan. Trade unions and political parties were reformed and led by those who had been in resistance, imprisoned or escaped to exile.

After West Germany was formed, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) won the first elections in August 1949 by 31 to 29 percent over the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Led by Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU would form center-right coalition governments from 1949 to 1963. Under Adenauer’s leadership , the Federal Republic of Germany achieved political freedom, a multi-party system, stable transfers of political power, an independent judiciary, a decentralized federal system marked by separation of powers and a broad repudiation of its Nazi past.

West Germany joined France and other western European countries in 1951 to create the European Coal and Steel Agreement (the precursor to the Common Market and subsequently the European Union). In 1955, West Germany joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to complete this part of the country’s surprising transformation from military enemy to Transatlantic ally.

The German Democratic Republic (East Germany)

In Germany’s east, the Soviet Union imposed a communist dictatorship, as it did in other Eastern European countries, based on a cadre of German communists who had spent the war in Moscow. The Social Democratic Party was forced to merge with the Communist Party to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED). In 1949, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was established with a Soviet-style constitution concentrating power in the SED. In 1955, East Germany was incorporated into a new Soviet-led alliance of Eastern European satellite countries called the Warsaw Pact, ensuring the maintenance of large concentrations of Soviet troops ─ as many as 300,000 at one point ─ on East Germany’s borders to face off against NATO.

East Germany was among the most repressive of the Soviet Bloc countries. Worker unrest was brutally put down in 1953 by the Soviet Red Army. Political opponents were imprisoned. All institutions were placed under the control of the secret police, known as the Stasi (Staatssicherheit), which oversaw a vast surveillance system ultimately involving 2.5 percent of the population who served as collaborators and informants. The Stasi, in turn, was overseen by the Soviet KGB.

From the West, the most obvious sign of the GDR's repressive system was its shooting of people trying to escape across the Iron Curtain fence that ran the length of the German border. Overall, 1,200 people were killed.

From the West, the most obvious sign of the GDR's repressive system was its shooting of people trying to escape across the Iron Curtain fence that ran the length of the German border. Overall, 1,200 people were killed. To prevent escapes in the divided city of, Berlin, East Germany’s capital, the Soviet Union ordered construction of a massive wall in 1961 that became the most visible symbol of the Cold War.

Over time, the Soviet Union faced economic crisis. By the late 1980s, with its own challenges from national independence movements, it reduced control over several satellite countries. The opening of Hungary's border with Austria in August 1989 led thousands of East German citizens to flood into Hungary and through to the West. This sparked massive anti-communist protests in cities across all of East Germany.

The popular uprising led to a demonstration of 500,000 citizens on both sides of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1981.  Easterners and westerners together broke through to tear down parts of the wall. The communist regime collapsed soon thereafter. Following these dramatic events, the two countries proceeded to reunify quickly as an agreement was reached with the Soviet Union for the gradual withdraw of its armed forces. In October 1990, five states of East Germany joined the Federal Republic of Germany to be governed under its Basic Law. The last of the Soviet — by then Russian — armed forces left eastern Germany in 1994. The period of re-united Germany is described below.

The Rule of Law

For much of German history, like that of Europe generally, the rule of law developed within a framework of monarchical rule and hierarchical societies dominated by land-owning aristocracies. In German principates, there was adoption of a judiciary, the practice of Roman civil law traditions, and principles of political consensus established from the Code of Euric.

The rule of law evolved with the German Reich formed in 1871 and, more so, in the First Republic of 1919-33, usually referred to as the Weimar Republic. With the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933, the Weimar Republic became synonymous for democratic failure, but its constitution was among the most democratic in Europe, instituting universal suffrage, proportional representation, clear separation of powers, protection of human and cultural rights and an independent judiciary.

Hitler’s Third Reich, along with Stalin’s Soviet Union, gave rise to the term totalitarianism to describe a form of rule by a single leader or party having no effective constraints on state power.

Democracy, however, failed due to the rise of political extremism and weaknesses in the constitutional structure. Using plenary powers granted by President von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler was able to quickly consolidate power after being named Chancellor in January 1933. Through adoption of the Enabling Act, Hitler ruled by decree, overriding the constitution to establish a new Third Reich and make the Nazi regime a state of lawlessness. Mass surveillance, repression and violence were the means to achieve Hitler's maniacal goals of racial purity and world dominance. 

In this setting, courts existed to serve the dictates of political leaders and police services. Hitler’s Third Reich, along with Stalin’s Soviet Union, gave rise to the term totalitarianism to describe a form of rule by a single leader or party having no effective constraints on state power.

Following Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, the country was divided in two parts in 1949, offering another stark contrast of governance and the rule of law. The German Democratic Republic (DDR), or East Germany, was under the control of the USSR, which imposed a communist dictatorship that ruled society through mass repression and surveillance. Courts were again arbitrary instruments of state power. In the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, a stable democracy was forged out of the three Allied sectors and the Basic Law strengthened the independent judicial system from the Weimar period. Its rule of law system is described below. When East Germany’s regime fell due to popular protest in 1989, it reunified with West Germany in 1990 under the Federal Republic’s Basic Law.

The Basic Law

The Basic Law, or constitution, was originally adopted in May 1949. Article 1 reflects the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see also Essential Principles). It states: “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.”

Article 1 of the Basic Law firmly rooted all state institutions in the protection of human rights. Article 79 prevents amendments that might restrict them.

In the Weimar Republic, human rights had not been guaranteed but instead were "state objectives" that could be overridden by emergency powers. Article 1 of the Basic Law firmly rooted all state institutions in the protection of human rights. Article 79 prevents amendments that might restrict them.

The Basic Law also established a federal structure (reflecting both American influence and Germany's own history) together with a parliamentary system of government. The national parliament has two-chambers: the Bundestag (Federal Assembly) and a Bundesrat (Federal Council). The president of the Republic is elected by a National Convention comprised of the Bundestag and an equal number of electors allocated proportionally by population and selected by state legislatures. The president has largely advisory and ceremonial duties but is the highest representative of the state.

Members of the Bundestag, the lawmaking chamber, are elected in a mixed-member proportional system (with district and party-list voting). There are fixed national elections held every four years. The Bundesrat is a Senate-like chamber with advisory and approval powers. It is made up of representatives elected within federal states, now 16 in number. The Federal Chancellor, elected by a majority of the Bundestag on the formal recommendation of the president, is the head of government.

The main separation of power is an independent judiciary consisting of a Federal Constitutional Court, a Federal Court of Justice, state courts and administrative, labor and social courts. The Constitutional Court is guardian of the Basic Law and rules on the constitutionality of laws and actions by state bodies.

The main separation of power is an independent judiciary consisting of a Federal Constitutional Court, a Federal Court of Justice, state courts and administrative, labor and social courts. The Constitutional Court is guardian of the Basic Law and rules on the constitutionality of laws and actions by state bodies. The Constitutional Court has two chambers (senates) of eight members each elected by the Bundestag and Bundesrat to single 12-year terms at the nomination of the president through a Federal Selections Committee. Retirement is required at age 68.

Ministries of justice in the states appoint state court judges. Much of Germany's administrative, civil and criminal law remains rooted in Roman and Germanic tradition, but due process rights under the Basic Law are similar to those in the US Constitution. During a rise in left-wing extremist violence in the 1960s and ‘70s, the government adopted emergency exceptions, but these were limited in time and scope. Violent groups weakened and dissolved after their leaders were convicted of crimes.

Germany bans the advocacy of Nazism and the display of Nazi insignia or paraphernalia and forbids the denial of Nazi crimes, most importantly the Holocaust. Such restrictions are challenged by free speech advocates as overly restrictive, but their application has been limited. Still, these are considered an essential part of the postwar political consensus in Germany to not allow totalitarianism to take hold again. Further restrictions are being considered in light of the rise of the extreme right Alternative for Germany (see below).

A New Basis for International Law

After World War II, the Nuremberg Trials and related trials held at Dachau were carried out by the occupying Allied powers from 1945 to 1949. For the first time, a tribunal held individuals accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by a nation state. The Nuremberg Trials included the Major War Criminals Trial of 24 leading Nazi officials. They also included trials of 185 SS and army officers, doctors, judges, lawyers and others who were complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity, most significantly in carrying out the Holocaust. The Dachau trials, held separately, convicted 1,419 persons, mostly those engaged in running concentration and extermination camps in Germany. The trials were a new development in international law strengthening rule of law principles (see also Accountability and Transparency).

Within Germany, the trial also laid a foundation for public acknowledgment of the crimes of the Nazis, complicity of German society in those crimes, and Germany’s overall responsibility for reparations to victims. These have been made mostly to Israel but also to Jews still in Germany. Yet, many perpetrators remained at large (see Current Issues below).

A Stable Democracy

West Germany became a stable democracy through de-Nazification, the development of democratic institutions, the holding of free and regular elections, the re-establishment of the rule of law, and broad adoption of social democratic policies that altogether aided business growth, empowered workers’ councils and trade unions and provided a social safety net.

Since the reunification of West and East Germany in 1990, political power continued to alternate between Center-Right and Center-Left coalition governments as well as Right-Left unity governments. But there arose a fragmentation of political parties on the Left with the rise of the Green Party in western Germany and addition of a post-communist left party as well as on the right with the rise of the Alternative for Germany (see below).

In the 2013 federal elections, the Christian Democrats/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), led by incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel, scored its third first-place finish since 2005. It gained 41.5 percent of the vote and 311 of 631 seats. Lacking a full majority, Merkel established a “grand coalition” with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The CDU/CSU and SDP continued their coalition after the 2017 elections, with Angela Merkel elected to a fourth term as Chancellor. But the CDU/CSU fell to 33 percent and 246 of 709 allotted seats while the SDP gained slightly to score 23 percent and 146 seats. (See Current Issues for more recent elections.)

The Refugee Crisis Tests Democracy

In 2014–15, more than 1.3 million refugees entered Europe from war-torn Afghanistan, the Middle East and Northern Africa, the largest refugee influx in post-war European history. With refugees facing hostility in other countries, especially in Eastern Europe, Chancellor Merkel announced a policy to welcome them under the slogan “We Can Do This.” Many Germans volunteered to help the newcomers, but when the number grew to 1 million Merkel faced increased political and social opposition. At the end of 2015, she stemmed the number of refugees by working with the EU to stop crossings of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and giving $1 billion to Turkey to keep 3 million refugees from Syria remaining in camps there (see Country Studies).

Most localities in Germany successfully absorbed the refugees, but extremist groups organized protests and carried out violent attacks directed at Muslims and mosques. Even before the crisis, there were concerns about the rise of the National Democratic Party (NDP). Despite having Nazi sympathies, the courts allowed it to run in elections. Merging with another extremist party in 2011, it cleared the 5 percent threshold for representation in some state elections.

Other extremist groups then emerged. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which began in 2013 as a Euroskeptic party opposed to adoption of the Euro as a common EU currency, gained popularity by adopting a far-right anti-immigration and anti-Muslim platform. Gaining popularity especially in eastern Germany, it won seats in several state elections and became the main opposition party after the 2017 elections (see Current Issues below).

The Rule of Law and the Nazi Legacy

Reminders of Germany’s Nazi past and its lawless rule have remained frequent, as with the complexity and limits of the rule of law.

One illustrative case is that of John Demjanjuk, a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland. Following the war, he lied about his Nazi service to gain entry to the United States. After an investigation by a US Department of Justice special task force as well as lengthy court proceedings, Demjanjuk’s identity was confirmed and he was extradited to Germany in 2011 to face trial. The charge was facilitating the murder of 27,900 Jews. Convicted, he died still free pending appeal at age 91.

While justice was not served, his case set a precedent for finding guilt of mass murder based on service at an extermination camp. German prosecutors revived efforts to prosecute guards serving in the camps who had mostly been left unprosecuted by the Nuremberg and Dachau trials (see above).

The testimony brought to public view excruciating details of the workings of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the roles played by ordinary officers. In sentencing Gröning to 4 years’ imprisonment, the judge lamented the limited term and criticized the legal system for having allowed many thousands of officers to escape justice.

One major case brought was against Oskar Gröning, a 94-year old former SS officer at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest extermination camp. He admitted his complicity in the Holocaust and was found guilty in the murder of 400,000 Hungarian Jews who were force-marched to the camp in 1944. The testimony brought to public view excruciating details of the workings of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the roles played by ordinary officers. In sentencing Gröning to 4 years’ imprisonment, the judge lamented the limited term and criticized the legal system for having allowed many thousands of officers to escape justice.

German prosecutors brought more cases based on these precedents. One case opened in February 2016 for Reinhold Hanning, an ex-SS sergeant who served at Auschwitz and was then 93 years old. He was charged with complicity in 170,000 murders committed during his time at the camp in 1943. He, too, admitted guilt and was among the few who publicly apologized for his role.

New academic and human rights study brought focus to the mass killings of Jews outside death camps at “informal” extermination sites run by the SS (Schutzstaffel). One conference was organized in Krakow, Poland around International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2014. (The date marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which is nearby Krakow, by Soviet Red Army troops.) Scholars at the conference were now putting the number of Jews killed outside the camps at 2 million, most in the “bloodlands” of Eastern Europe. The findings also brought to light the 1.3 to 1.5 million non-Jews estimated to have been killed at extermination sites.

There were other reminders of the Nazi past. In January 2014, museum officials in Bavaria found a guillotine in storage used to murder hundreds of opponents of Hitler, including 14 members of the White Rose, a student resistance group. The group distributed fliers informing Germans of Nazi persecution and urging fellow students to rebel. The discovery reminded the public of the forgotten group and the student’s bravery. It also renewed public debate about German society’s knowledge of and complicity in Nazi crimes given that relatively few people had resisted.

All of these cases show the importance of the rule of law, its frequent limitations when seeking justice, and the lack of determined prosecution of Nazi officers in post-war Germany. Most importantly, these cases highlighted to current generations the dangers to society and the world when rule of law does not exist. (To explore any of these cases further, see articles in Resources.)

Current Issues

Angela Merkel, the first woman and longest serving German Chancellor in the post-war period, announced soon after winning her fourth term in the 2017 elections that she would resign as chairman of the CDU/CSU and not run again in the next elections scheduled for 2021.

In those elections, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) improved its standing to win a plurality of the vote at 26 percent. Without Merkel, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) fell to 24 percent, nearly 9 percent less than in 2017. The Green Party had its best electoral showing at 14 percent and the Free Democratic Party, a center neo-liberal party, rebounded from 4.8 percent in 2017 to 10.7 percent. The Alliance for Germany (AfD) fell to 10 percent. This eased fears, if only temporarily, of the rise of far-right extremism (see below). The Left party, the rump post-communist party from eastern Germany, got 5 percent.

Germany’s complex electoral system awards compensatory seats based on discrepancies in the votes for national party list and district seats. As a result, the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, expanded to a record 736 seats from its usual 611. 

Germany’s complex electoral system awards compensatory seats based on discrepancies in the votes for national party list and district seats. As a result, the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, expanded to a record 736 seats from its usual 611. (It became the largest legislative chamber of any democracy.) A new law proposes to reduce the number of compensatory seats, which would make the legislative chamber less equal proportionally.

Out of the fractured elections, the SDP, Green Party and Free Democrats formed a coalition with a majority of 416 seats. The SDP’s Olaf Scholz, the previous finance minister in the “grand coalition” government, was elected Chancellor with an ambitious set of economic and climate policies.

Four months after the election, however, the coalition’s priorities changed when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. European countries and the United States viewed the invasion as a serious security threat to the international order. The US, EU and NATO countries quickly provided economic and military support to Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and repel the invasion. Germany welcomed a million war refugees, second to Poland. (A total of 5.2 million Ukrainians initially fled the war.)

Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared a Zeitenwende (“turning point”) in German policy to break from its decades-long Ostpolitik (“East politics”) that encouraged trade and friendly ties with Russia. Scholz announced increases in defense spending to meet NATO’s 2 percent GDP goal and a change in policy to allow delivering major armaments to a country at war. (Germany is the second largest contributor after the United States of military aid to Ukraine.)

Germany also agreed to the EU’s broad sanctions against the Russian Federation along with a policy to reduce energy imports from Russia, in Germany’s case from around fifty percent to zero. This required amending climate goals, keeping coal plants slated for decommissioning open for the time being and instituting an unpopular requirement to immediately change heating systems from gas to renewable sources.

While support for Ukraine is widely popular, support for the government coalition parties declined. The AfD again increased in the polls to second place and won pluralities in two small state elections in 2022. The extremist rhetoric of AfD against immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized groups, as well as an ongoing relationship with Putin’s United Russia Party, has raised concerns among German’s security agencies, which gained court approval to surveil the party and is considering to declare it an extremist party (see article in Resources). Those concerns heightened with the AfD's leading performance in one eastern regional election (Thuringia) second place performance in EU parliament elections in June. (In the EU elections, the AfD won 16 percent of the vote and 15 seats. The CDU/CSU won 30 percent and 29 seats and the SPD 14 percent and 14 seats.)

Another concerning development was the discovery of far-right pro-Nazi and monarchist groups embedded in military and security agencies. In the last two years, a large pro-Nazi cell was found in a specialized military unit; in another case, the police arrested 26 persons of the Citizens of the Reich, a monarchist group with ties to Russia that had active plans to overthrow the government.  Investigators found further conspirators.

Based on principles established by the Nuremberg and Dachau Trials, German courts have pursued several cases of crimes against humanity involving universal jurisdiction to try persons from another state. In a precedent, a security officer at a detention center in Syria was convicted and sentenced to life based on testimony of a number of Syrian refugees whom German prosecutors had taken depositions from in various countries. As reported in The New York Times, the ruling concluded that the former officer, Anwar Raslan, oversaw the torture of prisoners and the killing of at least 27 people, in addition to the sexual abuse and “particularly grave rape” of other detainees.

In another case, one woman was convicted and sentenced to 4½ years for her participation in ISIS and her role in the murder and kidnap of Yazidis in Iraq in 2014-15. Other cases were brought against individuals involved in crimes against humanity in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.