Meanwhile today’s nationalists have coined a new one – “remigration” – reminiscent of mass deportations. This week’s watchword was “Munich”. The Bavarian capital suffered an alleged terrorist attack when an Afghan migrant drove his car into a crowd. But it was also the scene of the annual security conference, attended by JD Vance, the US vice-president; Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary; and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state.

New forms of nationalism have arisen in a country that had thought itself permanently inoculated against the atavistic forces that propelled Hitler to power nearly a century ago and left Germany divided for 40 years. All it took was a potent combination of mass immigration, net zero and no growth to sweep aside the taboos that had surrounded the politics of ideology, religion and race. For the first time since 1945, Germany has a party on the far-Right, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is both large enough and extreme enough to pose a real threat to the post-war Western order.

As Germans prepare to cast their ballots in a Europe riven by war, memories of dictators and death camps are stirring again. The AfD may dismiss the duty to keep the demagogues out as a “guilt cult”, imposed by the Allies on a defeated nation, but for the majority of Germans any harking back to the Nazi or Communist eras is a nightmare. Yet the old parties and business elites are seen to have failed, leaving a nation whose identity is built on material success to ask itself where it all went wrong.