For the first time since the Nazi era, a far-right party has won control of a German state, as the Alternative for Germany captured 43.8 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, 2026. The result — more than double the party's 2021 showing — does not yet hand the AfD outright power, but it marks a threshold that many believed Germany's postwar political culture would never permit to be crossed. In a country where historical memory has long served as a guardrail against extremism, the question is no longer whether the far right can rise, but how far, and how fast, the rest of the pol