Silence falls: "We remember all too well what a re-armed Germany can lead to"

The AfD won a record 43.8 percent of the vote in Sunday’s regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt, more than twice its 2021 result, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won 17.2 percent—its worst result in the eastern German state, Brussels-based Politico reported.

“We want Germany, under democratic leadership and as Europe’s largest economy, to play a strong role in strengthening our shared security,” Sikorski said in an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt.

However, he stressed that “we remember all too well what a re-armed Germany can lead to when it is in the hands of a far-right, pro-Russian party, and that is precisely what the AfD represents.”

In Warsaw, the prospect of a far-right party coming to power in a heavily armed Germany carries a particularly strong historical resonance, the outlet noted.

Parts of present-day Poland were occupied by Imperial Germany during World War I, while Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, triggering the start of World War II in Europe.

Poland was subsequently subjected to brutal German occupation, Politico reported.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent a similar message following the elections in Saxony-Anhalt, saying that in Poland, “only idiots or traitors” could be happy about the AfD’s success.

Merz pledged at the beginning of his term in 2025 to turn the Bundeswehr into “the strongest conventional military in Europe,” Politico recalled.

The AfD remains in opposition at the federal level, while Germany’s mainstream parties refuse to cooperate with it.

For now, they continue to uphold a political “firewall” against the far right, aimed at preventing a repeat of the circumstances that enabled Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party to come to power in the 1930s, Politico reported.