After an intensive search, the police in Germany detained a suspect in a Friday stabbing attack at Berlin’s iconic Holocaust memorial that left one person seriously injured. The attack, two days before a pivotal national election, occurred in the labyrinth of concrete stelae that make up the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located…
Friedrich Merz, the man favored to be Germany’s next chancellor after elections on Sunday, is a conservative businessman who has never been a government minister and was forced out of party leadership years ago for challenging Angela Merkel. As a Christian Democrat and committed trans-Atlanticist, he has been considered a potentially better match for President…
When Vice President JD Vance criticized his German hosts last week for sidelining far-right parties, he did not mention by name the Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD. But soon after his speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he stunned the room by comparing democracy in today’s Europe to Soviet-era totalitarianism, Mr….
The world shook this weekend as deep cracks appeared in the transatlantic alliance during a glitzy security summit in Munich. One guest was ready to capitalise: China. Top officials from the United States and Europe spent a chaotic weekend trading barbs over values, Ukraine and democracy, with US Vice-President J.D. Vance clashing with a series…
The American vice president visited a concentration camp on Thursday afternoon. He laid a wreath at the foot of a statue, made the sign of the cross and paused before a memorial wall where in multiple tongues, including German and English, the words “Never Again” were written. JD Vance told reporters he had read about…
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago. A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their…
Vice President JD Vance’s defense of a divisive far-right political party in Germany was the latest jarring example of his willingness to embrace a provocative political issue and showed how hard-line immigration policy has emerged as the thread tightly knitting together a global patchwork of populist movements. The thrust of Mr. Vance’s speech on Friday…
Vice President JD Vance told European leaders on Friday that their biggest security threat was not military aggression from Russia or China, but their own suppression of free speech — including efforts to block hard-right parties from joining governments. An audience that was largely expecting Mr. Vance to lay out the Trump administration’s priorities for…
On Thursday morning, a 24-year-old Afghan refugee drove into a union demonstration in central Munich, injuring nearly 40 people. The police say they are investigating whether the driver, who confessed to a deliberate attack, acted alone. The attack happened just 10 days before federal elections that have been focused on migration, and the crash could…
A chorus of criticism greeted Friedrich Merz, the favorite to become Germany’s chancellor, last month when he broke a taboo against working with a hard-right party to pass legislation. But it was a lone voice of dissent that rocked the country’s political scene: Angela Merkel, the once-beloved former chancellor, who called Mr. Merz’s decision simply…