Anna Rathert, January 29, 2026, Strength – German and American

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/56, pp. 6715-6716. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The Greens lay before us today an interesting motion – not interesting because it offers solutions, but because it reveals their worldview. The text reads like a cry for help. You note that with President Trump, an administration has entered Washington which openly says: “America First”, and no longer manages an international Politik supposedly based on rules, but is again lead by interests. 

Behind that stands a democratic reality; the majority of the Americans have voted for this course. Who finds that unbearable, he needs to learn to deal with it, not to moralize. In your motion, you fear crises and conflicts are intensified when protection and support structures erode. The entire German Politik is fixated on an international protection and support system because it is not dared to stand up for our German fatherland which itself, from itself, can bring forth strength. It is still plainly here, and it is everywhere, even in this house: The old fear of a strong Germany. That is a fallacy [Denkfehler] in which Germany sickens. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): With you, there can be no talk of thought [Denken]!

Departure is taken from material substance in the form of nuclear power, strong industry and economic performance, and one is lost in a system of international organizations like, for example, the EU. Of course, one needs also to affirm protective, rules-based orders without which one fears not to be able to assert oneself against a stronger partner. These orders should guarantee against crises. Yet crises and conflicts do not escalate because somewhere an assistance fund is lacking, or one international resolution too few was issued. Crises escalate because strength is lacking, which is needed for a natural balance of power between states: Economic strength, technological and energy policy strength, a functioning infrastructure: Deutsche Bahn, electricity supply, deterrence and defense capability, and a resilient inner order which is supported socially and culturally. 

You say the Federal government may not continue to belittle itself and needs to self-consciously formulate and represent our interests and values. Ja, nothing would be better than that. We need finally to begin to formulate national German interests, and indeed such which makes us strong and independent; yet that does not go with the self-overestimate put forward here by you. You do not seriously want to explain to the Americans how democracy and economy work 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): It would be sufficient if you would grasp it!

when you here in this country observe the opposition, and are just about de-industrializing Germany. 

            Deborah Düring (Greens): We are, besides, no longer in the government!                                                 A little side note.

Your approach for negotiations as equals is completely wrong. For you are evident the motion’s achievements which, as it happens, are what just forced Germany to its knees: Verbote, de-industrialization by energy policy, supply chain law, over-regulation, the forest protection decree – all of which weaken performance and international commerce. 

Who wants to understand America needs to grasp a historic fact: The United States generally first originated and later became a world power because it has economically and militarily asserted itself. And precisely this ability to succeed [Durchsetzungsfähigkeit] they also expect from their counterparts. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): That is just an intellectual solar eclipse!

There is respect in Washington not for appeals, but for strength and self-responsibility. 

Germany on the other hand acts like a late-stage teenager: Making claims and preaching morality, yet little readiness to take up the responsibility for its own sovereignty. As equals  plainly means first build up one’s own strength, and then talk. 

            Vincenz Glaser (Linke): What is your strength? Contact with Russia?

Who only makes demands, and at the same time makes prescriptions, will not be taken seriously. 

And still one thing: If you really find so unbearable a relationship as that of Trump, as you here argue, then you would especially need to make Germany strong and independent, as you were in government responsibility. Yet that you did not do. That, the present Federal government also  does not do – and now you live stuck with the consequences. 

We as the Alternative für Deutschland stand for the antithesis: To again make Germany capable by use of nuclear power, to be reliable, and then negotiate, sovereign, as equals – not to lecture, but to achieve. That goes only with us, and thus our time is just beginning. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Hans Neuhoff, March 10, 2026, EU Defense Policy

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2026)03-10(2-0350-0000). 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The European Union loves crises. For crises are a wonderful means of carrying through extraordinary political measures. The typical hallmarks of the crisis rhetoric are, first, the existential threat: Climate death, Corona death, Russian death. Second, the time pressure: We must immediately act! Third, the asserted lack of alternative. And, fourth, the character of the measure itself: Strong state intervention, new laws, a common debts program and, before all, the centralization of political power. 

The EU has thus used all crises since 2008 so as to drive forward the statehood of the Union: The finance and banking crisis, the climate crisis, the refugee crisis, and the Corona crisis. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022 was a propitious opportunity to summon up the next crisis: The security crisis and defense emergency. Under the banner of the European security, the next great integration step will be prepared: An internal market for armaments, a common procurement, ever closer military integration. This is sold to us as pragmatic efficiency measure, as a technological necessity, as a rational step. 

In truth, it is a matter of something quite other: A political project. Since as soon as defense industries and military planning are interwoven with one another, dependencies arise which are scarcely to be rescinded. Then integration will no more be decided politically, it will be structurally compelled. With other words: An ostensible threatening situation is used so as to more closely and irreversibly interlock the member states one with another. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the Alternative für Deutschland expressly supports the goal of Europe’s strategic autonomy. The acquisition of the required military capabilities is however a fundamental decision, not a crisis project. The planned measures for the erection of an internal defense market will therefore not be supported by the ESN delegation. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Gauland, January 30, 2026, Konrad Adenauer

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/57, pp. 6871-6872. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Herr Spahn, I believe it is not right to make use of Adenauer so as to place a party, which represents the conservative ideas which Adenauer represented, so to say, right away offsides. 

            Pascal Reddig (CDU/CSU): That is really just not so!

I grant you are, yes, right in many things – not in regards us, but in regards Adenauer. 

Germany has brought forth only a few important statesmen. In the Kaiserreich, it was undoubtedly Bismarck. In the Weimar Republic Stresemann, and in the early Federal Republic of course Konrad Adenauer. There, you are right. For the late Federal Republic, Brandt and Kohl still deserve the epithet. Helmut Schmidt lacked the circumstances. 

Yet what now makes an important statesman? The historian would say that he wisely analyzed the situation of his country and on the basis of this analysis successfully recognized and carried out the interests of the country. And that applies to Konrad Adenauer in especial measure. He managed, Herr Spahn, a Politik of national interests as Germany’s situation of that time made necessary. 

            Boris Mijatovic (Greens): Aha!

Hitler ruined to a maximum Germany’s power and reputation in the world and Adenauer stood before the duty to reconstruct both for the free part of Germany. He did that, in that he consistently united western Germany with the leading powers of one camp, and even against resistance offered much military assistance. That was, ten years after Germany’s unconditional surrender, daring and full of risk and for the eastern Germans, at least in the short and middle view, without profit. For that reason, to this day the way between the blocs is preferred by many as an alternative, as it so emerged in outline in the 1952 Stalin note. 

            Paula Piechotta (Greens): That is historisch!

I think those who so argue, misunderstand the deep fall of our country – in terms of power politics and morality – in distinction to the Weimar Republic which could still achieve the Politik of balance and also act correspondingly. 

Hitler completely destroyed the moral capital which is necessary for a successful foreign policy. And Adenauer first needed to rebuild it. Here, we will also likely be agreed. He did that with skill and perseverance to which also belong the settlement with and the aid for Israel. Certainly in Israel’s case, moral attentiveness and a wise German Politik of interests contributed much to rebuilding Germany’s reputation in the world; besides being one of the prerequisites of Willy Brandt’s later Ostpolitik which, without Adenauer, of course would not have worked. That Adenauer, in regards every rejection of Soviet Russia, as he Kölnisch called it, could act pragmatically, quite without ideology, the German prisoners of war were brought back in 1955. A high point of his career and also a high point for many people in this country. 

Ever again has been made a theme, primarily by leftists, that it was the reactionary Adenauer era in which old Nazis were allowed to again make careers. That remains, so far as something of it is right and is not merely due to a leftist antibürgerlichen reflex, 

            Paula Piechotta (Greens): Those are facts, Herr Gauland!

an impermissible involvement of his name with social conditions on which he once casually commented: If no clean water is at hand, the dirty needs be taken. – Or, you’ve already cited it: People need be taken as they are, there is of course nothing other. In this question he was even agreed with his great competitor, Kurt Schumacher. In fact, the people needed to once again become accustomed to democracy and a market economy. 

Yes, he was a bourgeois through and through as he showed in his passionate rejection of Hitlerism. Yet like most fathers and mothers of the Basic Law, he depended on an ethnic-cultural term for the people, and from his historical experience he mistrusted the Germans’ ability for political judgment. And, ladies and gentlemen, if I myself look at many of the debates in this country or in this parliament, he was in that thoroughly right. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Jungbluth, February 11, 2026, Slovakia

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2026)02-11(3-0290-0000). 

Frau President. 

With a change of the constitution, the Slovaks have rebuilt the unrestricted primacy of national law ahead of EU law. That is a victory for the national identity of the Slovak people and the sovereignty of the country. Yet when the Slovaks protect their own people, they will of course be requited by the EU by means of a treaty violation procedure. Brussels wants to annex to itself ever more rights and thus further undermine the sovereignty of the member states. In that regard, the EU emblazoned on the flag the motto “United in Diversity”. Yet real diversity means confirming and defending the distinctive cultures, peoples, identities in Europe. The woke agenda counteracts precisely these goals. We should therefore be grateful to the Slovaks that they defend themselves against this attack from Brussels. 

 

[trans: tem]

Markus Frohnmaier, January 29, 2026, Germany, Ukraine, Nordstream

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/56, pp. 6745-6746. 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Chancellor Merz speaks of an age of “Great Power Politics”. The truth is: The power Politik was never gone. That, we see in the Ukraine, in Venezuela, in Greenland. New is not the reality of the power Politik. New is a persistent, chronic weakness of Germany which encounters an increasingly multipolar world in which the interests are again openly carried out. In such a world, Germany then is only capable of acting when it combines its powers, sets priorities, and finally learns to stand up for itself. 

Before all is the CDU responsible, through decades of government failures, for almost all major political mistaken decisions which have made our country vulnerable. The completely wrong mass migration, a threat to security since 2015, the anti-economic [Wirtschaftfeindliche] withdrawal from nuclear and coal energy which drove us to dependency on gas imports and de-industrialized Germany, with dramatic consequences for welfare, public finances and sozial peace. Germany cannot afford to give away its resources to the Ukraine while we here at home are vulnerable. 

Our capitol city Berlin has just experienced how vulnerable critical infrastructure is, and can be quickly omitted by sabotage. Tens of thousands of households, following a leftist extremist attack, sat in darkness and in cold. Diesel generators were lacking, diesel generators which were in the Ukraine. 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): Oh nee! 

            Kay Gottschalk (AfD): Listen!

Germany shall pay in the next ten years for the reconstruction of the Ukraine with sums which lie beyond any serious ability to plan. 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): Ja, serious!

The CDU combines that with the formula: “So long it is necessary”. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a blank check, and blank checks are in the Politik always the beginning of the end of any control. 

Every cent of the so far around 1,000 billion euros of the Ukraine aid is debt-financed – financed with debts which in the form of principal and interest cost will afflict all future Federal budget charges. 

            Stefan Keuter (AfD): The next generations!

Debts are tomorrow’s taxes, ladies and gentlemen. We forfeit the future of our children for a country the hand of which is outstretched for our money, and to thank us apparently blows up our own German infrastructure. 

            Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU): That is shabby!

Shabby is that you of the CDU permit such a thing. Shabby is that to this day you have not sought to clarify the Nordstream explosion, Herr colleague of the CDU. 

            Thomas Rachel (CDU/CSU): Shabby is that you still haven’t said a word                                         for the civilian population in the Ukraine which is attacked daily from                                      Russia!

What do we want to actually have happen? 

First: Corruption and lack of transparency. A corruption scandal again shakes the Ukraine up to the highest circles, with effects on the energy and defense infrastructure. When a state is at war, and at the same time billions seep away, then that is not only morally unbearable but is also extremely dangerous for security policy. Since money, weapons and material do not simply disappear. They again emerge elsewhere, in dark channels, in black markets, in criminal networks. 

            Stefan Keuter (AfD): Darknets! 

            Robin Wagener (CDU/CSU): Those are the things with which you are familiar.

Second: Demands without end. It is always the same process – more weapons, more money, more guaranties, more appeals. Yet where actually is the clear accounting, what happened with the donated benefits? 

Third: We as Germans can no longer afford this. While our local governments are at limit, while families and Mittelstand note every month how expensive everything has become, while the Bundeswehr cannot even secure it own basic equipment, we shall play the role of long-term paymaster in a foreign conflict thanks to the CDU Politik. 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): Thank Putin!

Ladies and gentlemen, there needs finally be an end to that! 

            Thomas Rachel (CDU/CSU): For that, the Russian Putin is responsible.

            What do you then say to a war of aggression counter to international law?

            What do you say to Russia’s aggressive war counter to international law? 

Listen for once! You are elected as a representative of the German people, and not as a member of the Ukrainian Rada! This, the CDU’s Politik needs finally to understand. 

            Thomas Rachel (CDU/CSU): That is,  ja, embarrassing!

Fourth, and this is the point which altered everything: How do we deal with the apparent  Ukrainian attack on our infrastructure, on the sovereignty of Germany? The Federal Court of Justice in its ruling of December 10, 2025, on the Nordstream sabotage, proceeded on the basis that the attacks on the Nordstream pipelines resulted from a “highly likely […] foreign state order”. It was accepted that the act was initiated and controlled by a foreign state. The defense of the Ukrainian suspects wanted to attain immunity for these, in which – listen well, dear colleagues of the CDU – it is argued the act is a part of the war between the Ukraine and Russia. 

            Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU): Who gave the order?

Everything, really everything indicates that this attack was ordered with knowledge of the Ukrainian government. The Federal government cannot simply so continue as if this was not acknowledged. I today quite clearly demand of you: Finally examine this! 

            Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU): Yes, yes! For months!

Billions of German tax money were invested in this infrastructure project, and you did not attempt to manage a clarification. That is harmful for Germany and our citizens. 

We therefore want that now an investigative and tracking staff for the clarification of corruption, money laundering, arms trafficking, and finance of terrorism be established [Drucksache 21/3839]. We also want that complete transparency be established vis-à-vis Bundestag and public by a website following the model of the American Ukraine oversight structures. One matter needs finally be clarified: Who expends the taxpayers’ money, he has no right to non-transparency. 

            Claudia Roth (Green): The AfD says that!

That, the CDU needs finally learn and understand, ladies and gentlemen. 

We say today quite clearly: No more weapons deliveries, no additional armaments. Yes, humanitarian aid is possible. But all that effects a prolongation of the war, we no longer want. 

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens):  Putin has written that for you, or?

We want that German tax money finally remains here in Germany, and does not flow to whichever oligarchs. We want to take care that this money benefits our schools, our streets, our German infrastructure, our citizens – something which these gentlemen have long since forgotten. For that, we were elected to make Politik for German citizens – and not for the Ukraine! 

            Thomas Rachel (CSU/CSU): We make Politik for all peoples. That is the distinction. 

 

[trans: tem]

Petr Bystron, February 11, 2026, State of Law in the U.S.A.

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2026)02-11(3-0213-0000). 

Frau President. Dear colleagues. 

We shall here discuss the Socialists’ motion on the state of law in the U.S.A. – thus, what a mockery! As it happens, this European Parliament this week rejected a discussion on what the European Commission has broken in the last ten years. Namely, the Commission for ten years has censored legitimate political opinions and facts, and at the same time also paid the media for defaming critics of the EU. We receive this information, as it happens, from Washington, from the U.S.A.; there, it was worked on, in contrast to here. Here, the discussion was rejected, and it was preferred to speak in plenary session on a two-years old Draghi report, or on the acceptance of Andorra and San Marino – ja, that is important to us.   

You are disturbed that Trump finally proves that you for years have lied: Remigration is possible, deportations are possible. We require in Europe exactly so an ICE. We need to act effectively and deport the criminal foreigners. And on that account, you here have instigated this discussion and have leftist extremists like Salis here speak at the podium. That is a mockery of democracy. 

 

[trans: tem]