Germany is Like an Overheated Boiler and Politicians Keep Adding Fuel

Practically every day, Germany witnesses violent attacks perpetrated by migrants, whom the country continues to accept in undiminished numbers. Unfortunately, the responses of Germany’s ruling politicians to this literally tragic security situation remain consistently stupid and eerily reminiscent of a notorious statement by the former Prague mayor for the ODS party, Igor Němec. In 2002, during the peak of the largest flood in modern Czech history, he declared, „I would say that Prague is not threatened. The situation is, I would say, excellent. All authorities are working as they should. … So more cubic meters of water will flow in…“ The problem with today’s Germany is that even if the migration wave of those who largely hate us were to end tomorrow (which is far from over), they wouldn’t leave so that we could start repairing the damage, as was the case with the floods. They are here, and moreover, our own rules, created in a different time based on experiences with people who shared the same values as the majority European society, now prevent us from effectively returning those who ostentatiously reject these values and who certainly did not come to us because they were persecuted for their opinions in their home countries.

It is paradoxical that Germany, which succumbed to Nazi madness ninety years ago and whose then-residents, with few honorable exceptions, did not resist the extermination of their Jewish fellow citizens, and often directly participated in it, has massively supported and continues to support the arrival of people who hate Jews as intensely as the Nazis did and who also want to exterminate them. It is worth noting that the Jews living in Germany in the 1930s were almost indistinguishable from their fellow countrymen. Many were even assimilated, including religious conversion— they did not identify with Judaism but with Catholicism or Protestantism. They were German citizens who unequivocally saw Germany as their homeland and considered themselves Germans first and foremost. Many of them also fought and died for their country in World War I, with many receiving the highest honors of the German Empire. This is a significant difference compared to the newcomers from the Middle East and Africa, who decidedly do not want to adapt to their host country. On the contrary, often according to their behavior and what they say, they want to turn Germany into the same places of despair from which they came.

I personally like Germany and the Germans. I know many great people there. After moving with my parents from Prague to the western borders of the then Eastern Bloc as a child, I discovered the magic of West German television broadcasting during the communist regime, which became my first daily contact with the world beyond the Iron Curtain. It seemed not like a country forty kilometers away, but as if it were on the other side of the globe. After the revolution, I had the opportunity to visit places that weren’t much visible in television broadcasts, except perhaps in crime series with Commissioner Horst Schimanski from the Duisburg homicide department. But even back then, during my hitchhiking trips, I often encountered Germans of Turkish origin and never thought of perceiving them differently than as Germans. On the contrary, perhaps because they did not belong to the social elite, they had no problem picking up hitchhikers and, upon finding out that it was a student from the former Eastern Bloc, sharing food or helping arrange lodging.

When I spoke earlier about Germans and their constant sense of guilt for the horrors of World War II, I cannot fail to mention the annual meetings of fighter pilots from World War II, known as Fliegertreffen, held at different locations in Germany. These events, which I was introduced to in the late 1990s by our fighter pilot František Peřina, were places where former adversaries, who fought each other to the death decades ago, now sat at the same table, and none cared who was British, German, American, Russian, or Czechoslovak. Every former Luftwaffe pilot I met then, as a young man from the Czech Republic, invariably mentioned how sorry they were that Germany started the war and caused so much suffering. I often wonder what they would say if they saw the suffering Germany is going through today, a country they helped rebuild into a prosperous and democratic state after the war. If they saw that today, once again, in the streets of German cities, calls for the death of Jews are being made.

I dare say that I know Germany a little and visit it often. I know people from various social classes, of different ages, from different places. And I see how Germany is changing. Unfortunately, I cannot say it’s for the better. Increasingly, I encounter something best described as „bad mood.“ It has many sources; the German industry is no longer the engine that determines development and which everyone tries to emulate, as it was in the times of Helmut Kohl. Today’s German politicians are far from the caliber of this unifying chancellor, a man who not only symbolized prosperous „West Germany“ but, with his bulldog tenacity, managed to achieve what many of his contemporaries saw as an unattainable dream. In the end, Angela Merkel, whom he himself brought into high politics, politically buried him. That same Angela Merkel who buried the Germany I knew and loved.

Allow me to share a few examples of Germany’s transformation from my own experience. My friend Michael, a captain with Lufthansa, a typical representative of the successful upper-middle class, lived with his family in a luxurious villa district on the outskirts of Munich and was always, as a proper German, a supporter of an open and multicultural society until another culture arrived at his doorstep. His teenage daughter Silke started dating a boy adopted from Africa by another German family. After less than ten months, her new boyfriend forbade her from talking to other boys, and those who didn’t respect this were brutally beaten by his school gang. The relationship ended, and hell began: threats, ostentatious standing of his gang in front of their house, vandalized cars if not garaged overnight. The school and police refused to intervene because there were never any witnesses to the assaults, and it is not a crime for masked troublemakers to loiter. That is unless you are a German who can be labeled a „right-wing extremist.“ As a result, Silke changed schools, and she and her siblings no longer ride bikes as they used to, but only drive and with parental accompaniment. Michael no longer wants to hear about multiculturalism and is seriously considering a job offer in Saudi Arabia.

Another example is Sigfried, affectionately known as Sigi, an elderly gentleman who is among the European elite in aerodynamics and thermodynamics. Not only does he still lecture in both fields, but he also runs a small but successful company that provides turnkey solutions for various firms in the aviation sector. Lately, I often visit him because he selflessly helps us with our drone undercarriage needs. Once, while driving through the entrance to his manufacturing halls, a group of „new Germans“ sitting there, drinking alcohol, began immediately shouting at him in very poor German that he was crazy to work but that it was good because they needed money. Sigi ignored them but later told me they sit there and drink every day. In his face, that of an incredibly kind person who helped build the German economic miracle, there was only resigned sadness.

Lastly, I received an invitation to a private gathering of genuinely successful people from German business, where I gave a lecture on the transformation of the Middle East and opportunities for investment in wealthy oil monarchies. In the end, we discussed migration to Germany and its consequences on the country’s transformation. I was applauded, and Harald, who invited me, took me aside and said, „You know, it’s great that they listened to you and even genuinely applauded, but believe me, if you had said the same thing two years ago, half of them would have left or called the police, reporting that they were at an event with either a right-wing extremist or a police provocateur.“

The transformation of Germany into a fragmented country is far from complete, so many people can still say, it’s still okay, we can still endure it. After all, we just need to avoid certain parts of our cities, our women and daughters won’t go out at night, we won’t go to public swimming pools or we’ll fence them with barbed wire, maybe we’ll avoid public transport and even trains… But it won’t end there; this creeping submission continues, and when it reaches the point where crosses are preemptively removed from churches, women preemptively cover up in the name of „not provoking“ new Germans who never actually wanted to be Germans but only wanted the comfort of German life to which they contributed nothing, it will be too late. I fear that the eintopf currently mixed with so many foreign elements cannot end in anything but an explosion. And the water is already boiling. Yes, Germany reminds me of a boiler where societal tension has reached boiling point, and only the innate German sense of order, along with nearly eighty years of democracy strictly imposed in the former western occupation zones, prevents it from overflowing. But the temperature is rising, and German politicians, instead of trying to perceive the growing frustration of their voters, which is already bubbling beneath the surface, tend to keep adding fuel to the boiler.

Recently, among my friends, a case from Sylt resonated (by the way, a great place for a summer trip), where a group of slightly intoxicated young people sang „Foreigners out“ and „Germany for Germans“ to the popular disco hit „L’amour toujours.“ As a foreigner, it’s not something pleasant to hear, especially with one idiot attempting a Nazi salute. It’s definitely not something I want to excuse or downplay, but I understand the current frustration of even those Germans who wouldn’t touch the AfD with a barge pole, let alone vote for it, when they see the disproportionate reactions of their politicians to this incident compared to the increasingly frequent terrorist attacks, street riots by Islamists, or extreme leftists from the „Last Generation.“ While one foolish party, even though it was stupid, ends with the publication of unblurred photos of the participants, the disclosure of their full names, and their expulsion from schools and jobs, along with loud and radical condemnation from politicians from both government and opposition parties—whose stupidity even extends to banning the playing of this disco melody at public events—terrorists in photos and videos (if they are published at all) have their faces blurred, their names and nationalities are usually not immediately revealed, and it is often reported that the motive for the act is unknown, likely due to their poor mental state. Just look at the front pages of German and European media after the murder of a German police officer by an Afghan migrant last Friday.

I understand that Germans feel they are losing their own country and that they cannot find support from their own politicians, who tend to have more sympathy for people trying to dismantle Germany and its post-war values. I fear for Germany, the Germany I know and love. Before World War I, people in Europe marched off to war to the rhythm of the waltz; I dearly wish that we do not dance into another, this time internal conflict, to the rhythm of the disco hit „L’amour toujours.“