\n<\/p>\n
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 \u201cNever Again\u201d were written.<\/p>\n
JD Vance told reporters he had read about the Holocaust in books, but that its \u201cunspeakable evil\u201d was driven home by his trip to Dachau, where more than 30,000 people died at the hands of the Nazis. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I\u2019ll never forget, and I\u2019m grateful to have been able to see it up close in person,\u201d Mr. Vance said.<\/p>\n
But after Mr. Vance spoke in Munich the next day, Germany\u2019s leaders effectively questioned if he had understood what he had just seen.<\/p>\n
Eighty years after American soldiers liberated Dachau, top German officials this weekend all-but accused Mr. Vance \u2014 and by extension, President Trump \u2014 of boosting a political party that many Germans consider to be dangerously descended from Nazism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That party, called the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is sitting second in the polls for next Sunday\u2019s parliamentary elections, with about 20 percent of the public saying they support it. But no other German party is willing to govern with it. That\u2019s because the AfD has at times downplayed Hitler\u2019s atrocities. Some party members have reveled in Nazi slogans.<\/p>\n
German intelligence agencies have classified parts of the AfD as extremist. Members have been arrested in connection with multiple plots to overthrow the government. Some reportedly attended<\/a> last year a gathering that included discussions of deporting not only asylum seekers, but German citizens who immigrated to the country.<\/p>\n \u201cA commitment to \u2018never again\u2019 is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,\u201d Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in Munich on Saturday morning, as part of a lengthy rebuke of Mr. Vance.<\/p>\n \u201cThis \u2018never again\u2019 is the historical mission that Germany as a free democracy must and wants to continue to live up to every day,\u201d he said. \u201cNever again fascism, never again racism, never again war of aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Decades of German law and political practice have revolved around the belief that to prevent another Hitler from coming to power, the government must ban hate speech and shun political parties deemed extreme. The nation has an Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with intelligence tools to monitor extremists, and a constitutional court<\/a> that in rare cases can ban parties entirely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Vance, like another Trump administration official, Elon Musk, has parachuted into the country\u2019s parliamentary elections, criticizing that approach. Both men say it is time for Germans to stop policing speech and to start treating the country\u2019s hard-right flank as the avatars of disenfranchised voters who share Mr. Trump\u2019s opposition to large-scale immigration.<\/p>\n Mr. Musk has publicly endorsed the AfD, telling party members last month that Germans have \u201ctoo much of a focus on past guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n The Musk and Vance prescriptions add up to perhaps the most verboten message in mainstream German politics \u2014 made all the more surprising coming from the country that Germans have long thanked for putting an end to a deeply shameful period in their history.<\/p>\n A writer for Der Spiegel, a leading German newspaper, declared on Saturday morning that Mr. Vance had given the AfD a \u201cWahlkampfgeschenk\u201d<\/a> \u2014 German for \u201ccampaign gift.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Even before the speech, analysts at the Munich conference were warning that the administration\u2019s worldview would upend alliances on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have an American government that has different values, and a different vision of what the West should be,\u201d Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said in a panel discussion on Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In his speech, Mr. Vance called Europe\u2019s restrictions on speech a greater threat than military attack by Russia or China, comparing them to those imposed by the Cold War Soviet Union.<\/p>\n \u201cI look to Brussels,\u201d Mr. Vance said, \u201cwhere E.U. Commission commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they judge to be \u2018hateful content,\u2019 or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of \u2018combating misogyny.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Intentionally or not, Mr. Vance\u2019s speech landed in the midst of a pair of contentious political debates. Europe is currently struggling with questions of how to handle hard-right parties that have gained voter share. In some countries, like Austria and the Netherlands, those parties have joined federal governments. In others, like France and Germany, mainstream parties have blocked them \u2014 so far.<\/p>\n Even so, some lines are fuzzy: The leading candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, drew condemnation last month for pushing a set of migration restrictions<\/a> in Parliament that would need AfD votes to pass, a move long considered taboo. Mr. Merz defended the decision but said he would never allow the AfD to formally join a government with his Christian Democrats.<\/p>\n The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Germans\u2019 criticism of Mr. Vance.<\/p>\n