Postcard from Berlin

For such a young country — younger than the United States in its modern form — Germany has left an enormous imprint on the world.

It started two world wars. It committed atrocities so vast they still defy comprehension. And for 40 years, it sat at the center of the Cold War, divided between two hostile systems and two different visions of the future.

That history is everywhere in Berlin.

It’s in the Reichstag, where we climbed into the glass dome that now sits above the German parliament — a deliberate symbol of transparency after a century of catastrophe.

It’s in the remaining slabs of the Berlin Wall, still standing as a reminder of how quickly a country can be split in two.

It’s in the Jewish Museum, where the architecture itself seems designed to unsettle you.

And it’s most powerfully felt at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a vast field of concrete slabs that becomes more haunting the longer you walk through it.

Berlin is not a city that lets you look away. 

And now Germany is once again confronting its past.

With Russia’s war in Ukraine and growing doubts about whether the United States can still be counted on as a reliable ally, Germany is rearming itself. Quietly, reluctantly, but unmistakably.

Most Germans do not know when another war in Europe might come. But many now seem to believe it will come.

That was the most striking part of the visit: how much of Germany’s past suddenly felt relevant again.

And not just because of Europe.

But because so much of what we saw — the nationalism, the propaganda, the cult of power, the dehumanization of enemies, the steady erosion of democratic norms — echoed the increasingly fascist strains in our own politics back home.

Berlin is a fascinating city — but it’s also a warning.