GERMANY - Once it was the slogan of East Germans rejecting Communism. But as crowds chanted, 'We are the people,' at Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday, it was the sound of an enraged nation that could be on the brink of ditching democracy. When Germany's politicians are barracked and threatened by a populist mob that despises everything the establishment stands for, comparisons to the early 1930s are inevitable. Adolf Hitler, the leader of a fringe party consisting of thugs and extremists, rose to power on just such a wave of anger. Not long ago, the rise of another Fascist popular leader to power in Berlin seemed unthinkable. But the Germans have a word for just such a reversal in psychology: Gestalt-switch. It means an overnight change in the way people think. Germans had one for the good after 1945, but if they switch back now, all Europe will be plunged into chaos.