Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, has urged voters not to abandon support for Ukraine or the NATO alliance as the country confronts a dramatic surge by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, warning that economic frustration must not be allowed to undermine Germany’s democratic and security commitments.

The intervention comes after the AfD secured a historic victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, taking 43.8% of the vote in the September 6 regional election and more than doubling its previous share. The result gave the party 39 seats in the 83-member state parliament, leaving it just short of an outright majority and creating the possibility that a far-right politician could eventually lead a German state government for the first time since the Second World War.

The result has shaken Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government and sharpened an increasingly difficult national debate over how much Germany should spend on defence, how long it should continue financing Ukraine, and whether voters are prepared to accept economic sacrifices in the name of European security.

For Wadephul, those questions have become inseparable from the future of German democracy itself.

His message is that Germany cannot treat NATO membership, assistance to Kyiv and domestic political stability as unrelated issues. Russia’s war against Ukraine and alleged hybrid operations inside Europe, he argues, mean that Germany faces a security environment fundamentally different from the one that existed before Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

Speaking alongside NATO secretary general Mark Rutte in Berlin on Thursday, Wadephul said the Russian threat had become increasingly tangible. Germany has recently accused Russia of involvement in an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle airport, allegations Moscow denies. Rutte argued that Russian attacks and sabotage attempts had strengthened rather than weakened the case for European defence investment.

The AfD Victory Changes the Political Equation

The scale of the Saxony-Anhalt result matters because it moves the AfD beyond the role of a permanent protest opposition.

The party won almost 44% of the vote, compared with 20.8% five years earlier, amid record turnout. Its regional leader, Ulrich Siegmund, has sought to translate that victory into governing influence.

The AfD has built much of its support around opposition to immigration, dissatisfaction with established parties and criticism of Germany’s foreign-policy establishment. It advocates a substantially different approach to Russia and Ukraine, including ending or sharply reducing support for Kyiv and pursuing closer relations with Moscow.

That puts the party in direct conflict with the strategic direction adopted by Merz’s government.

Germany has emerged as one of Ukraine’s largest European supporters and is simultaneously undertaking one of the most ambitious military expansions in its postwar history.

Wadephul has repeatedly described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as Germany’s principal security challenge. Germany, France and Poland recently reaffirmed through the Weimar Triangle that NATO remains the foundation of European defence and that they intend to continue supporting Ukraine militarily while expanding Europe’s defence-industrial capabilities.

The AfD’s electoral advance therefore presents Berlin with more than a conventional domestic political problem. If opposition to Ukraine aid and NATO commitments becomes an increasingly successful electoral strategy, it could eventually constrain Germany’s ability to sustain both.

Germany’s New ‘Guns Versus Butter’ Debate

At the centre of the controversy is a classic political dilemma: how much should a government spend on national security when voters are also demanding improvements in living standards and public services?

Germany is investing heavily in defence after decades in which its military capabilities deteriorated.

NATO governments have committed themselves to substantially higher military expenditures, and Germany has presented itself as one of the European states willing to shoulder a larger share of that burden. Wadephul has argued that Europe must become more capable of defending itself as the United States increasingly concentrates strategic resources elsewhere.

But rearmament is expensive.

Germany is simultaneously facing weak economic growth, ageing infrastructure, demographic pressures and increasing demands on its welfare system. Academic analysis of the current coalition has described the resulting conflict explicitly as a “guns versus butter” problem, in which higher military expenditure competes politically with spending on social services and domestic investment.

The debate is likely to become more difficult as Germany moves toward NATO’s higher defence targets.

For voters already concerned about pensions, energy costs, housing, public transport or declining services, billions of euros in military expenditure can appear remote from everyday priorities.

That creates fertile political ground for parties arguing that resources should be redirected away from Ukraine and defence.

The government’s counterargument is that security cannot be separated from prosperity.

If Russia succeeds in changing European borders through military force or undermining NATO’s credibility, officials argue, the eventual economic and security costs to Germany could be considerably greater.

Ukraine Becomes a Domestic Electoral Issue

Support for Kyiv was initially treated primarily as a foreign-policy question.

It is now increasingly part of domestic German politics.

Wadephul has attempted to address one of the principal sources of voter frustration by linking Ukrainian defence procurement more directly to German industry.

Earlier this week he argued that, because Germany is one of Kyiv’s largest donors, Ukraine should place more defence contracts with German manufacturers. He said Berlin must be able to explain its spending to German taxpayers and suggested that greater involvement by German defence companies could strengthen public support for continued assistance.

That approach reflects an important change in political messaging.

Rather than presenting aid to Ukraine purely as solidarity with another country, Berlin increasingly describes military assistance as an investment in Germany’s own security and industrial capacity.

The government hopes that expanding domestic weapons production will create jobs, strengthen the European defence sector and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers.

Whether voters accept that argument may prove decisive.

The Shadow of Weimar

The AfD’s extraordinary advance has also revived one of the most sensitive historical comparisons in German politics: the collapse of the Weimar Republic.

The comparison requires caution. Germany in 2026 is not Germany in the early 1930s, and the Federal Republic has strong constitutional institutions, an independent judiciary, entrenched democratic traditions and membership in European and transatlantic alliances.

Nevertheless, the history of Weimar remains central to Germany’s political culture because it demonstrates how democratic systems can be weakened by economic anxiety, political fragmentation, collapsing trust in mainstream institutions and the normalisation of extremist movements.

Modern scholarship on Weimar stresses that its destruction was not inevitable. Political elites, institutional decisions and the gradual erosion of parliamentary norms all played critical roles in enabling authoritarianism.

That history helps explain why the rise of the AfD generates a response in Germany different from that produced by populist breakthroughs elsewhere in Europe.

The party’s success is interpreted not simply as another electoral realignment, but as a test of a political system deliberately constructed after 1945 to prevent a return of authoritarian nationalism.

The Firewall Is Under Growing Pressure

Germany’s mainstream parties have historically maintained a political “firewall” — the Brandmauer — against formal cooperation with the AfD.

The Saxony-Anhalt result is testing that strategy.

The AfD remains three seats short of a majority, but the hard-left Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht secured five seats and could potentially become decisive in determining whether an AfD-led administration can emerge. Both parties differ sharply on many issues, but they share scepticism toward military support for Ukraine and favour improved relations with Russia.

Any cooperation would represent an extraordinary rupture in modern German politics.

Mainstream parties have so far maintained their refusal to work with the AfD, but the larger the party becomes, the more difficult it becomes to construct stable alternative governing coalitions.

That could ultimately create a paradox.

The firewall may prevent the AfD from entering government, while simultaneously producing increasingly complex coalitions between parties with very different programmes — potentially reinforcing voter perceptions that mainstream politicians are cooperating principally to preserve themselves.

Eastern Germany’s Political Discontent

The strength of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt also cannot be explained solely through foreign policy or immigration.

The eastern German state has experienced decades of demographic decline, migration of younger residents and persistent economic disparities with western Germany.

Research and recent electoral analysis suggest that these factors have contributed to a widespread feeling of political abandonment in rural and economically weaker communities.

There is also a distinctive historical relationship with Russia in parts of eastern Germany.

Saxony-Anhalt belonged to communist East Germany, where Soviet political and military influence was a fact of everyday life. Some older residents retain cultural or personal connections to Russia that differ significantly from attitudes in western Germany.

That has helped the AfD’s calls for renewed dialogue with Moscow find a particularly receptive audience in parts of the east.

For the federal government, this creates a difficult communications problem.

Policies presented in Berlin as essential responses to Russian aggression can be viewed by some eastern voters as evidence that Germany has unnecessarily abandoned a historically important relationship.

A German Debate With European Consequences

The political implications extend far beyond Saxony-Anhalt.

Germany is Europe’s largest economy and one of NATO’s most important continental members. A significant reversal in German policy toward Ukraine or Russia would fundamentally alter Europe’s strategic position.

Ukraine already faces growing funding requirements as military costs increase. European governments are under pressure to provide tens of billions of dollars in additional assistance, even as voters become increasingly resistant to further expenditure.

If German public support weakens substantially, maintaining a unified European position could become considerably more difficult.

The same applies to NATO.

Washington has repeatedly pressed European allies to assume greater responsibility for their own defence. Germany’s ability to increase military spending is therefore essential to the alliance’s long-term effort to strengthen its European pillar.

An AfD-driven shift toward lower defence spending, weaker sanctions and reconciliation with Moscow would point Germany in almost exactly the opposite direction.

The Real Contest Is Over Germany’s Strategic Identity

The political struggle now unfolding is therefore larger than one state election.

It is a contest over what kind of country Germany intends to be.

One vision sees Germany as a central European security power — heavily invested in NATO, prepared to finance its armed forces, committed to Ukraine and willing to confront Russia when necessary.

The competing vision questions whether Germany benefits from that role at all, arguing instead for reduced military commitments, renewed relations with Moscow and greater concentration on domestic economic problems.

The AfD’s result in Saxony-Anhalt suggests that the second argument now has a constituency too large to dismiss as politically marginal.

For Wadephul and Chancellor Merz, the challenge is therefore not merely to defend existing policy.

They must persuade voters that Germany’s commitments to NATO and Ukraine are compatible with — rather than obstacles to — economic security and social stability.

Failure to make that case could have consequences far beyond the survival of the current government.

As Germany confronts its most significant far-right electoral breakthrough of the postwar era, questions of defence spending, Ukraine and NATO have become intertwined with an even more fundamental question: whether the political centre can retain the confidence of voters while asking them to bear the financial costs of a profoundly more dangerous Europe.