Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskFrom greying autumn skies to the highest inflation recorded since 1951 and the biggest war in Europe since 1945, there are ample reasons to justify such a dark mood. But the reality is rather more nuanced. Not only does Germany’s economy appear to have been more resilient than might have been expected in the face of a tenfold surge in the price of electricity.
Just-released numbers for industrial production in September, for instance, show an unexpectedly robust 2.6% rise over last year. More impressively, the jump was achieved despite a 14% drop in consumption of natural gas, a feedstock for heavy industries that used to be largely supplied from Russia. A recent study suggests that the making of just 300 products, many of which could be cheaply imported, accounts for some 90% of industrial use of natural gas.
“There never really was a bad mood, to be honest,” says Nico Lange, a defence analyst who has lately met hundreds of ordinary citizens in a series of meetings intended to explain the, or overhaul of German security policy, planned in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “What we find is not that people are negative about Ukraine policy, but that they have a lot of questions that they don’t feel the government is bothering to answer.
Mr Lange says the impression of gloom may come from a media focus on certain disgruntled groups, particularly in former East Germany. A poll in November by, a broadcaster, supports this view. Across a range of issues Germans in the east worry more: some 71% fear that the high cost of energy could lead to strife, compared with 58% in the west.
No so under Austrian migrant German Hitler, the greatest leader of any country ever. Germans in the millions sacrificed themselves to Make Germany Great Again. And they chanted Ale Itler. All of them except Jewish & Gypsy ancestry Germans!
Not always of course.
don't be an angst-monger