Germany's politics are divided and its economy is stagnant. However, it sees a potential for a new chancellor to guide Europe's reaction to America's transformation.
The task facing Germany's next chancellor has come into sharper focus in the closing days of the country's shortened election campaign. For the nation and all of Europe, it seems much more existential than nearly anyone had first thought.
A day after last November's U.S. presidential election, Germany's coalition government fell apart. Consequently, a vote scheduled for this September has been rescheduled for Sunday. German officials soon realized that this meant that the majority of their campaign would take place in the first few months of President Trump's second term.
They were anxious from the beginning. However, they were far from ready.
In just a few short weeks, the new Trump team has sided with an aggressive, expansionist regime in Moscow that is currently breathing down Europe's neck and excluded Ukraine and Europe from talks to end the war with Russia. Additionally, it threatened to remove the troops that had defended Germany for many years.
Voting by Germans will now play a crucial role in how Europe reacts to Mr. Trump's new global order, and the effects will be seen well beyond their boundaries.
Friedrich Merz, the front-runner for chancellor, said Friday after speaking at an arena rally in the western town of Oberhausen that Mr. Trump's administration involves "not just another change of government," but a "complete redrawing of the world map."
The prime minister of Greece, a nation that notably clashed with the Germans as it was recovering from a financial crisis ten years ago, may have put the election's stakes more plainly than anybody else. Another conservative, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, spoke to Mr. Merz via a taped message played to 4,000 people at the event in Oberhausen. He urged Mr. Merz to create a comparable recovery by reminding the audience of Greece's recovery from its economic difficulties.
Mr. Mitsotakis remarked, "Dear Friedrich, you must be the leader of Germany and Europe."
While promising to fill a leadership void on the continent and internationally, Mr. Merz and other contenders, like as Olaf Scholz, the current center-left chancellor, have warned of strained or even terminated ties with the United States.
This past week, Mr. Merz publicly questioned if NATO would survive and whether the United States would continue to be a democracy or transition into totalitarianism. Germany and Europe need to be ready to go it alone without Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Scholz.
What any of the contenders can do to address it is the question.
Both domestic and international issues have hurt Germany. The nation's industrial business model, which depends on exports, is flawed. Its economy is no bigger now than it was five years ago, and on a number of important indicators of economic health, it is lagging behind the rest of Europe and other affluent countries.
Immigration, regulations, government spending, and the mounds of paperwork Germans have to deal with on a daily basis are all hot topics in its domestic politics.
Another issue facing Germany is that members of the Trump administration, such as Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk, have joined the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, a hard-right political party that takes pride in its Nazi slogans and is shunned by all of the nation's major parties.
It is anticipated that its probable second-place result on Sunday will intensify the feeling of political division and possible paralysis in Germany.
Angela Merkel, Mr. Merz's longtime party opponent, was the last German chancellor to be seen as a European leader. She achieved this, in part, by collaborating with President Barack Obama. The opposite may be required right now.
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