MARK ALMOND: Worrying echoes of Germany in the 1930s... with added deep resentment over mass migration
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Once it was the slogan of East Germans rejecting Communism. But as crowds chanted, 'We are the people,' at Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday, it was the sound of an enraged nation that could be on the brink of ditching democracy. The German leader was in Magdeburg to lay flowers and pay his respects to the five people, including a nine-year-old boy, killed when a deranged Saudi doctor ploughed his car into crowds at the Christmas market. More than 200 people were hurt, dozens with critical injuries.
![[The German Chancellor visited the site where a car drove into a crowd of a Christmas market]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/23/00/93412837-14220079-The_German_Chancellor_visited_the_site_where_a_car_drove_into_a_-a-69_1734913195339.jpg)
When Germany's politicians are barracked and threatened by a populist mob that despises everything the establishment stands for, comparisons to the early 1930s are inevitable. Adolf Hitler, the leader of a fringe party consisting of thugs and extremists, rose to power on just such a wave of anger.
![[The Right-wing Alternative For Germany [AfD] party and co-leader Alice Weidel (pictured) are gaining ground across the whole country]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/23/00/93412805-14220079-The_Right_wing_Alternative_For_Germany_AfD_party_and_co_leader_A-a-68_1734913195338.jpg)
And when German protesters take to the streets shouting, 'We are the people,' the whole of Europe should shudder. The democratic Weimar Republic, which ruled Deutschland after the First World War, was hated because the populace felt they were made to pay far too high a price for peace and democracy in terms of inflation and unemployment after 1918. People from all points on the political spectrum were united by a shared sense of injustice.
The same is becoming true today, with added deep resentment over mass immigration. Figures published this year show more than 20million people in Germany are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, with more than a third of them arrivals within the past decade.
