\n<\/p>\n
On Thursday morning, an Afghan refugee deliberately plowed a car into a crowd in Munich, motivated by what the police called an \u201cIslamist orientation.\u201d A 2-year-old girl and her mother were killed, and nearly 40 others were injured.<\/p>\n
A day later \u2014 in a country where migration has been a major election issue \u2014 that attack<\/a> was no longer the biggest news story in town.<\/p>\n German news media, and much of the country\u2019s political leadership, immersed themselves to a larger degree <\/span>in a blizzard of foreign-policy pronouncements from the Trump administration as Western leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference.<\/p>\n The annual gathering, which ended on Sunday, left many Germans who attended fuming that the Trump team was trying to influence the vote in coming parliamentary elections <\/span>by publicly lecturing German politicians about blocking a far-right party from government. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n German leaders left Munich profoundly worried about the country\u2019s relationship with the United States as the Trump administration appeared to be icing Europe out of substantive discussions on a peace plan for Ukraine, at least for now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The onslaught of news from the conference vaulted Mr. Trump and his policies squarely into the center of Germany\u2019s final week of campaigning, diverting some of the attention from issues like the string of deadly attacks carried out by immigrants and refugees across the country over the last year.<\/p>\n The main article on the front page of Munich\u2019s largest newspaper, S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung, on Saturday featured a picture of Vice President JD Vance delivering a speech<\/a> criticizing Europeans that stunned attendees at the conference. \u201cUndiplomatic Announcement,\u201d read the headline.<\/p>\n In the speech, Mr. Vance urged German leaders to allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany to enter the federal government, without mentioning any of the reasons mainstream parties have shunned governing with it<\/a>, including that some of its members have been convicted of using Nazi slogans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung front page also included a picture from the attack site, but the accompanying article ran inside the paper. Other German news outlets were filled with stories on the fallout from Mr. Vance\u2019s appearance and other Trump administration moves in Munich.<\/p>\n The coverage signaled a clear shift: Until this weekend, the American president was a preoccupation of many Germans. But he hadn\u2019t really been an issue in the race for chancellor.<\/p>\n He is now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It is unclear what party, if any, might benefit from the new focus on Mr. Trump. His administration\u2019s actions gave platforms to several leading parties. Those include Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD, which received what German media called a \u201ccampaign gift\u201d from Mr. Vance in his Friday speech.<\/p>\n But they also include the incumbent Social Democrats and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who sit a distant third or fourth in the polls but suddenly had an opportunity to project diplomacy on a global and local stage. The same was true for the poll-leading Christian Democrats and their chancellor candidate, Friedrich Merz.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Both Mr. Merz and Mr. Scholz spent their time at the Munich conference publicly telling Mr. Trump and his team to stay out of German politics.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is an elephant in the room here, and the elephant is the trans-Atlantic relationship,\u201d Mr. Merz said on Saturday in response to a Munich panel moderator\u2019s question about plans for peace in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Germans respect America\u2019s elections, he said, \u201cand we expect the U.S. to do the same here.\u201d<\/p>\n The reaction was so strong because of Germany\u2019s \u201cdeep historical experiences with fascism,\u201d said Steven E. Sokol, president of the American Council on Germany, who attended the conference. \u201cVance was a shock to the system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But Mr. Sokol cautioned that \u201cit remains to be seen if the speech has an impact on the results of the upcoming election.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The German campaign has been relatively short, particularly by American standards. The early elections were called after the last governing coalition splintered in November. After a slow holiday start, the contest really roared to life only in January.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Until this weekend, candidates focused largely on migration and on Germany\u2019s stagnant economy<\/a>. The leading contenders for chancellor, including Mr. Merz and Mr. Scholz, have mostly sparred over government spending and borrowing, energy policy and how best to overhaul migration laws to manage the millions of asylum seekers who have entered Germany over the past decade.<\/p>\n The first big shake-up in the race<\/a> came last month, when an Afghan immigrant who was scheduled to be deported \u2014 and who the police said suffered from mental illness \u2014 used a knife to kill a toddler in a Bavarian park and a bystander who tried to intervene. The killings came not long after a Saudi immigrant who was working as a doctor in Germany killed six people at a Christas market<\/a> in Magdeburg by ramming his car into a crowd, and after other knife attacks last year.<\/p>\n Mr. Merz, breaking a decades-old taboo, quickly pushed a set of migration bills to a vote in Parliament, knowing they could pass only with votes from the AfD. Protests ensued across Germany against giving the AfD such an opening, but Mr. Merz emerged unscathed<\/a> in polls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Even before the shift in attention to Mr. Trump, the political race had stayed remarkably static. There is, however, potential for a dramatic swing in the final days. A third of Germans have told pollsters they could change their minds before Election Day \u2014 either switching parties or choosing not to vote at all.<\/p>\n The AfD sits in second place in polls with just over 20 percent support, well behind the Christian Democrats. It gained a few points of support in December, a trend that started before the Christmas market attack, but has largely flatlined in the new year. Recent polls<\/a> showed it roughly back to the vote share it had a year ago, notwithstanding the high-profile endorsement it recently got from Elon Musk, Mr. Trump\u2019s billionaire adviser.<\/p>\n It will take a few days for polls to take the first measure of effects from the latest attack in Munich and the outcry at the Munich conference. <\/p>\n Still, it was clear that the Trump news at the conference had spilled immediately into German politics. Top German political figures rewrote their speeches or panel remarks to include pointed rebuttal to Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump. The AfD\u2019s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, was alone in celebrating Mr. Vance\u2019s remarks and the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Before diving into his plans for expanded government borrowing and military spending, Mr. Scholz rebuked Mr. Vance for telling Europeans \u201cthere is no room for firewalls\u201d in their politics, a reference to mainstream parties shunning the AfD. \u201cWe will not accept outsiders intervening in our democracy,\u201d the chancellor said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He added, \u201cThat is not appropriate, especially not among friends and allies.\u201d<\/p>\n The candidate currently leading the race, Mr. Merz, used his panel appearance on Saturday to defend German restrictions on hate speech in pushing back against Mr. Vance, who said it was time for Europeans to stop policing speech. He also went out of his way to ding Mr. Trump\u2019s trade policies, including threats of new tariffs on Europe.<\/p>\n Mr. Merz tried to cast himself as a potential future counterweight to Mr. Trump in Europe, a message that seemed to be aimed as much at German voters as it was to the diplomats at the conference.<\/p>\n \u201cI fully agree with all those who are demanding more leadership from Germany,\u201d Mr. Merz said. \u201cAnd I am willing to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Steven Erlanger contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n