In some electoral districts in eastern Germany, the AfD is polling above 70 percent. Such figures aren't seen every day - except perhaps in the memos of overzealous security services or in the party's own euphoric press releases. It's a phenomenon that can no longer be dismissed: While the established parties cloister themselves in almost gang-like political clusters and continue to trade verbal knife blows, a force is growing in the background that is profoundly altering societal discourse - and not always immediately for the better.

This force receives unexpected support from voices abroad, some of whom see it as the "only salvation for Germany".  A particularly curious example was recently provided by retired US Colonel Douglas MacGregor. He recommended that Germans simply "forget the trauma of World War II,"  since they were "not responsible for the Second World War."  This trauma, according to his bold thesis, leads to collective self-denial and is driving the country to ruin. A daring historical interpretation that is sure to cause more head-scratching in some German living rooms than in others.


Yet while such controversial statements grab headlines, the actual, fundamental issue is astonishingly seldom addressed: Germany's catastrophic demographic development. Looking at current population projections without migration gains paints a bleak picture. Birth rates have been in long-term decline, society is ageing massively - and without countermeasures, Germany is not merely facing an unprecedented shrinkage process, but is already deep within it.

What lies behind the neutral-sounding term "demographic development"  is not fully grasped by most. The described scenario means nothing less than the comprehensive decline of the entire socio-economic sphere. The ultimate nightmare, so to speak, for every politician, regardless of which local or federal parliament they sit in to make decisions for their constituents. Entire regions would, without massive immigration, literally become impoverished and die out.


It does not matter what methods are applied to cushion the blow: Without an influx of people to occupy houses, apartments, offices, and workshops again, the entire social and especially economic sphere would massively downshift for one to two decades. Revenues, profits, assets, land, buildings, leases, returns - almost everything would lose immense value. Everywhere, and for many years, until birth rates might recover in one or two generations. This apocalyptic scenario is not on most people's minds when they hear political salvation promises of an alleged "rescue"  by mostly so-called conservative parties, cheered on by foreign billionaires.

Germany, however, is trapped in a double trauma-straitjacket that paralyzes the country and with which political parties keep German society in a rigid corset. Alongside the Holocaust, this is the trauma of the 1923 hyperinflation, which is closely linked to today's demographic reality. Back then, the Reichsbank printed endless banknotes and flooded the economy with money, leading to a situation where a wheelbarrow full of notes was needed for a few tomatoes. This trauma still burdens many anachronistic economists and financial advisors - shaped in German universities that seem to have lost touch with the pulse of time about 50 years ago.

Technology - the arch-enemy of many European economists and intellectuals - has enabled enormous productivity gains in recent history. Many markets have completely transformed, even if key products like energy in Germany still have to follow old patterns. When it comes to consumer goods, no German supermarket manager today would get the idea to massively raise prices - thereby triggering a postmodern inflation spiral - just because only a few tomatoes are left before closing time. Instead, they try, and nowadays usually succeed without significant price hikes, to organize a quick resupply. The years-long, anachronistic fiscal policy of almost every German federal government has been brainwashed by economists obsessed with hyperinflation trauma. Over decades, it has become an instrument of nationwide impoverishment in Germany, while simultaneously enabling relatively simple wealth accumulation for those who have held capital for a longer time.

This fiscal policy also contributed to convincing society decades ago to massively integrate women into the workforce, instead of fostering a halfway healthy demographic development. Within a consciously tight, over-regulated fiscal policy with disproportionate demands from banks on borrowers, it was easy to convey to people that women, in an environment of scarce financial means, would better serve the state's tax revenue than individual families - or even enable the basic demographic preservation of society by having children. Politics has also failed for decades to appropriately credit women's child-rearing and family time towards their pensions.

The problem child of feminism in the working and business world has not been tackled much better. Since the invention of the birth control pill in the 1960s, increasingly extreme measures have been taken to hyper-individualize women in particular. The pinnacle seems to have been reached around 2017 when Larry Fink, CEO of the globally sprawling investment giant BlackRock, publicly declared that women are the next incoming class, and henceforth a primary focus for the entire corporate world. The dramatic result is a demographic development that, without massive immigration, equates to a worst-case scenario. It was politically authored and has been societally manufactured through decades of creeping change.


Further German-specific peculiarities are its rigid rules. Countries like Japan and Germany are extremely densely populated: many people live in a small space. Such a society needs stricter rules to function. This conflicts with the current upheavals brought by modern technologies, which point to completely new forms of existence: from modern AI and robotics to nanotechnology. The millennia-old, collectively anchored claim to power based on eloquence and the human mind is currently being dethroned by new technologies, demanding a rethink of age-old rules and habitual behavior patterns. And this is precisely what Germans find not just difficult.

Europe, and Germany in particular, have largely slept through these new demands due to unbearable arrogance, hubris, and what can only be described as perverse ignorance. The political and societal elites often appear paralyzed by shock, clinging with pitiful and reflection-free methods to eroding power positions that are only further undermined by technological developments. A tsunami-like obliteration of what can be called an anachronistic European claim to leadership is on the horizon - one need only think of certain German talk shows, which regularly reveal the intellectual poverty of the debate:



Many are now promising the people of Germany a solution and a better alternative, often with foreign support. "Remigration"  is touted as the salvation. Given the facts presented here, it simply cannot be. We already saw the reality check with Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands: Just weeks after their election on promises to stop immigration, it was announced that their respective countries still "need mass migration".  Nothing different is to be expected in Germany. A radical remigration policy would plunge the country into economic and social decline and ruin - for decades, until the demographic development might possibly normalize again.

The immigration deniers may be loud, but demography calculates quietly and relentlessly - and its numbers cannot be politicked away. The salvation could once again be a multitude of children. But such a non-intellectual solution naturally doesn't create highly paid professorships, media slots, or advisory positions.

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