”When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.’ – Lin Yutang
Mathew D. Rose is an Investigative Journalist specialised in Organised Political Crime in Germany and an editor of BRAVE NEW EUROPE
Photo: Friedrich Merz’s Facebook Page
Most Germans never wanted Friedrich Merz as their leader, but in Germany these days one becomes chancellor by default. The Social Democrat Olaf Scholz was only elected German head of state in 2021 because his opponents from the Christian Democrats and Greens fell on their swords in a series of political own goals. Merz won in 2025, albeit with a surprisingly low number of votes (the second lowest in his party’s history). Like Scholz before him, Merz could not lose as the then disastrous “traffic signal coalition” of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals had become anathema to most Germans. These parties that had received over 50 percent of votes cast in the previous election of 2021 obtained barely 30% in 2025. One could have put a monkey in a suit as Christian Democrat candidate for chancellor and he would have won. Apparently Merz sufficed. Interestingly Merz’s support in polls before the election was always much lower than those supporting his party.
Friedrich Merz is not a complicated figure. He is an opportunist, has no moral compass, is unscrupulous, and not terribly intelligent. He is the incarnation of sub-mediocrity. But then, so is the rest of Germany’s political class.
Merz was born in 1955 in West Germany, just ten years after the collapse of their Nazi regime. There having been no real denazification, Merz was socialised in a German society still very much steeped in its Nazi past. Most Nazis had returned to political and economic prominence. Behind closed doors Nazism and its values were alive and well in West Germany. One of his grandfathers was an fanatical Nazi (Merz saw him as a political roll model). His father fought in the Nazi Wehrmacht.
Being an opportunist, Merz joined the Christian Democratic Party when he was eighteen and still attending school. The party paid for his law degree studies via its fictionally independent foundation that is financed with taxpayers money. He became an acolyte of the very far-right (fascist) Christian Democrat politician Wolfgang Schäuble and appeared to be on the way to a successful German political career when in 1999 the then leader of the Christian Democrats, Helmut Kohl, had to resign due to corruption and Merz’s lodestar Schäuble was caught illicitly accepting at least one envelope stuffed with cash.
Following the meltdown of his party, Merz, in one of his many overestimations of his own qualities, assumed he should lead the Christian Democrats and become the next German chancellor. Besides a coterie of corrupt far right colleagues in the party, no one else did. Instead Angela Merkel was selected. Merz’s political career was for the time being on ice. He disappeared into the financial network that is the holding pattern reserved for politicians who may one day prove useful for corporate interests. Among others, Merz was employed by Black Rock, doing god knows what.
Following the retirement of Merkel in 2021 Merz saw his chance, but the authoritarian liberals of the Christian Democrats, politically bankrupt as they were, feared a political setback by moving conspicuously to the far-right. So Merz was given important posts in the party, but kept from power. After the election debacle of 2021 the authoritarian liberal wing of the party had lost all credibility. The field was left open to Merz and his ilk.
As I wrote above, Merz’s political values are those of the West-German far right of post-Nazi Germany. He sincerely believes that not only do the Germans desire a return to these values, but that it would save German society from its decline into communist decadence and wokeness. In the heart of his heart he dreams that one day, like the Führer he will be driven in an open car through Brandenburg Gate up the boulevard Unter den Linden, cheered by hundreds of thousands of true Germans for saving his nation. Thus he cannot comprehend why most Germans dislike him.
There is no doubt that Merz would like to join in a coalition with the equally far-right AfD, something long taboo in the German legacy political class. Nonetheless he has been preparing for this by moving his Christian Democrats ever further to the far right. For the time the authoritarian liberal wing of his party is blocking this, hoping that AfD voters will eventually become enlightened and defect to the Christian Democrats. This may well change in September of this year, which I shall explain further down.
Merz’s chancellorship has been defined by opportunism even before he took office. After winning the election by promising not to increase the state deficit, he used the votes of three far-right parties, his Christian Democrats, the Greens, and Social Democrats, in the lame duck Bundestag, to pass amendments to the German constitution that enabled unprecedented borrowing: 500 billion euros. These are to be invested mainly in the military, but also for civil infrastructure and climate protection over the next few years. There was a lot of pother, but most Germans never expected much more from Merz than lies.
Since the election polls show Merz’s party losing support, while that of his competitors on the far right, the AfD, has risen, at times surpassing the Christian Democrats. Europe’s leaders may be unpopular, but Germany’s Merz is currently losing support fastest. According to a new YouGov poll, only 23% of Germans view Merz favourably whilst the large majority, 71%, view him unfavourably.
The fact that Merz is supporting three lost wars wars of aggression, in Ukraine, Iran, and Palestine is not helping. Germans may fanatically hate Muslims and Russians, but they do not like a loser, especially as they are conscious of the financial burden they are bearing for Merz’s follies.
In a recent state election in Baden-Württemberg, once a stronghold of the Christian Democrats, and despite polling showing the Christian Democrats would win handily, they lost to the Greens. This had a lot to do with Merz and his leadership or lack of it. This has cast a further shadow over his chancellorship.
The problem is that Merz’s mindset dates from the cold war, especially the 1970s. This was a time when West Germany was unified against the Soviet Union, where a woman’s place was at home (Merz voted against the law criminalising rape within marriage in 1997), and Nazi values of sacrifice for the fatherland had been whitewashed and were portrayed as consensus. With his belligerent reversion to German militarism Merz hopes to reignite this German spirit.
This is why Merz’s and his government’s narratives consist of nostrums from that era: ‘We must tighten our belts.’ ‘We must be honest and endure unreasonable demands.’ ‘We must make sacrifices.’, ‘We must all do military service.’ ‘We must become fit for war.’ ‘We must be prepared to die for Germany.’
Merz’s main political mobilisation policy has been German militarism, using the threat of an invasion from Russia. One must understand that the Germans have had a visceral hate of the Slavs for a thousand years now. The Nazi German army’s war of extermination on the East Front, similar to the wars of Israel today, bore no relationship to the conventional war on the West Front. The number of Jews massacred by the German during World War II pales in comparison to the 20 million Soviet civilians the Germans massacred.
Having raised the fear of an invasion Russia, as ridiculous as it may be, Merz has offered the answer: creating the largest army in Europe This he hopes will also solve the economic slump of the German economy. With massive expenditures on rearmament he is placing his bets on military Keynesiansm – financing this with credit.
It is a forlorn hope. The German economy has not grown since 2019. Merz has no idea how to change this and his massive deficits are having little effect. There was never any doubt that Merz would follow his party’s neo-liberal doctrine of transferring wealth from the less well off to the wealthy via austerity and tax-breaks. That’s it. Neo-liberalism on steroids in a class war led by the rentier class against those who work. Otherwise Merz’s government seems to have absolutely no idea of how to bring the German economy out of its crisis as the newest figures document.
German industrial production in January 2026 was down 1.2% on the same month a year earlier. In the same month new orders in German manufacturing fell 11.1% on the previous month. For a mercantile economy like Germany’s the decline in the trade surplus by 20 percent in 2025 is a disaster. Deindustrialisation in Germany continues unabated, while the German car industry, once the mainstay and pride of Germany, has seen the profits of Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Porsche plummet in 2025. Over on hundred thousand jobs have been shed by the car industry in recent years and is increasing rapidly. Merz seems to believe that Germany’s industrial recovery can be summed up as “Tanks instead of cars”.
The decline of the German economy has been driven by self-destructive underinvestment and austerity over years. Policies that Merz is continuing. This is having real effects on German society. Incomes in Germany have risen significantly more slowly than consumer prices since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. While inflation stood at 21.8 per cent between 2020 and 2025, incomes rose by just over 11 per cent during the same period. Bankruptcies among German companies is at a high level, destroying more jobs, which explains Germany’s rising unemployment rate.
While Germany is still trying to come to terms with Trump’s tariffs, it could be very hard hit by skyrocketing energy prices due to the Israeli/US unprovoked war of aggression against Iran. Merz and his party had been crucial in slowing the transition to renewable energy that might have eased this newest energy shock. Now they are stuck buying expensive fossil fuels from the USA.
Merz has also burdened his nation with his bellicose claim that Germany would lead European support for Ukraine as the US increasingly abandons the war it provoked. According to the German government that war has already cost Germany 39 billion euros in financial support and military support of around 55 billion euros. This new effort will not only mean a major financial expense, but the further depletion of Germany’s exhausted arsenal. While Merz hectors the Germans with his risible claim of an imminent Russian invasion, he does not mention that the nation is not capable of militarily defending itself, having sent much of its weaponry to Ukraine.
Merz’s decision to make Germany Europe’s dominant military power has mobilised a further segment of German society against him: the youth. As his government has prepared the ground for a return to mandatory military service, young German men have taken to the streets in protest. Their slogan is “Merz, you can lick my balls”, which has now been criminalised, as has been the case for “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” for the anti-Israeli-genocide movement. In fact Merz has little tolerance for any criticism. A German pensioner had referred to the Chancellor as ‘Pinocchio’ in a Facebook post. It is not becoming to speak of the man who is going to make Germany great again in this manner. Immediately the state attorney charged the pensioner with defamation. The case caused further opprobrium against Merz, who claimed he was not involved. The charge was quickly dropped as once again Merz appeared ridiculous.
With regard to the war of aggression by Israel and the US against Iran, Merz has again demonstrated as so often that he is out of his depth. Within the first week he endorsed the war, called for peace, warned against escalation, affirmed Germany’s support for Israel, and expressed concern over the war’s impact on energy prices and a flood of immigrants. Currently Merz is trying to extricate himself from the rubbish he said in that first week as Trump demands Germany join his war. Still, at the heart of his policy are statements like “Israel is a victim of unjust attacks like Ukraine” or “Iran is the centre of international terrorism, and this centre must be shut down.” One need not wonder that Merz, who insists that Iran began the war, sat in the Oval Office silently bobbing is head in assent like a nodding doll as Trump denigrated Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez for not supporting Trump’s criminal war. Spain’s Deputy prime minister. Yolanda Díaz, accused Merz of behaving like a “vassal” to Trump: “What Europe needs today is leadership, not vassals who pay homage to Trump”. The Germans have a saying with which they describe their national character: “Kiss up to those in power, and kick down the underlings” (“Nach oben buckeln und nach unten treten”). Merz is an outstanding example of this.
With the war in Ukraine lost and German fanaticism waning for the conflict, Merz’s is clinging to supporting Israel’s genocide and war crimes in Palestine and Western Asia, something still very popular among Germans. So there have been less photo shoots with Zelensky and more with war criminals from the Zionist state, including with Netanyahu during Merz’s state visit to Israel in December of the past year. At the reopening of a Synagogue in Munich, Merz appeared deeply moved. Tears welled up in the CDU leader’s eyes as he recalled the terrors of the holocaust. If he had had drama coaching or managed this feat on his own, we shall probably never know. Empathy is neither a quality of Merz or the German people as we are seeing in the massacres by the Israelis and USA in Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon. It is worth mentioning that Germany provides one third of Israel’s military supplies.
Photo: Screen Grab
No lies, no dramatic performances, no sabre rattling is going to save Merz. As if things were not bad enough, in September of this year there will be elections in two states that were part of former East Germany: Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The former has been ruled by the Christian Democrats in one form or another since 2002. In the upcoming elections according to the polls the AfD will win massively in both. The temptation will be great for Merz to finally realise his longed-for coalition with the AfD at the state level to get his party into government and the emoluments that come with it. He may well use the excuse that these regional parties are not as far-right as the national AfD. This will however open the door to a coalition with the AfD in Bundestag.
So Friedrich Merz is leading Germany further down the doom spiral. This however is not the real reason Germans dislike him so intensely. His predecessor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz did much the same. For most Germans Scholz was simply a bumbling idiot. They were resigned to that. What incenses Germans is that in Merz they see themselves reflected: the same opportunism, lack of a moral compass, the unscrupulousness, and not being terribly intelligent; the incarnation of sub-mediocrity.
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