In the region that once gave the Nazi party its first state government in 1932, the far-right AfD has won 44 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt — not as a bolt from the blue, but as the slow harvest of a reunification that absorbed rather than embraced the east. An East German writer traces the arc from the wall's fall to the Treuhand's fire sale of an entire economy, arguing that what looks like a turn toward fascism is also, at its surface, a cry from communities that were promised blooming landscapes and received instead depopulation and condescension. The danger, she warns, is that legit
Why East Germany votes AfD: A reckoning with reunification's unfinished business
Approximately 2 million jobs were eliminated in East Germany during reunification, displacing workers and destabilizing communities.