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 Gauland, June 6, 2025, A Tragedy in Israel

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/11, pp. 911-912. 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Helmut Schmidt, a German statesman whose stature is recalled with a certain nostalgia, 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): He unfortunately can no longer defend himself against you!

designated one decision as the most difficult of his political life. On September 5, 1977, RAF terrorists kidnapped the employers’ president Hanns Martin Schleyer and demanded of the Federal government the release of eleven imprisoned terrorists, otherwise Schleyer would need to die. Helmut Schmidt decided not to give in to the demands. He thus remained following the hijacking of the Landshut by Palestinian terrorists. The hostages on the Landshut could be freed, Hanns Martin Schleyer not. 

Helmut Schmidt acted as an actor in a tragedy. He knew whatever he did, he would be guilty. Yet his message was clear: One does not negotiate with terrorists. Terrorists are to be fought – with all means, ladies and gentlemen. 

Already by that time, German leftist extremists and Palestinian terrorists got along quite well. Their common enemy was and is the Western system. For them, Israel is a colonial state which should disappear from the map. In the DDR media, Israel seldom emerged without the epithet of “aggressor”. That as it happens the Linke now bring in this motion is suggestive of crocodile tears. Never could one with a better conscience be an anti-semite than presently. Never better understood are Islamist and leftist radicals than today [Nie konnte man mit besserem Gewissen Antisemit sein als derzeit. Nie verstanden sich islamische und linke Radikale besser als heute]. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): That says as it happens an AfD representative!

I want in no way to thereby say that all who criticize Israel’s proceedings in Gaza are anti-semites – um Gottes willen! I want only to thus say that there was never better times for the enemies of Jews to condemn Israel. 

In the German Bundestag, no formulation has been more frequently used than that of the German responsibility vis-à-vis the Jews and the Jewish state, which follows from the fact that in the name of Germany was attempted to make extinct the Jewish people. 

The National Socialists came horrifyingly far with that project.

           Ralf Stegner (SPD): “Vogelschiss”, what you then declared!

Today there are organizations in the Arab world which want to make extinct the Jewish state, thus continue Hitler’s work. At the head is the Hamas. Of their views, their members make no secret. They even publish the pictures of their acts of murder. The Hamas abuses civilians as defense shields. The Hamas takes the Palestinian people as a hostage. The Hamas has only one goal: The annihilation of Israel. 

Israel is a state under siege. May I therein remind you that in Israel live two million Arab Israelis, approximately 20 percent of the total population? Gaza was, however, free of Jews, and from Gaza have attacked those who would gladly have all Israel free of Jews. 

I can only here repeat what I in this place have often already said: It does not in my opinion pertain to us as Germans to condemn Israel when it defends itself against an aggressor who murders Jews and dreams of the extinction of the Jewish state. 

Germany in the years 2023 and 2024 alone transferred almost one billion euros to the Palestinians, as was produced by an inquiry of the FDP to the Federal government. From the EU in any case flows millions. From 2014 to 2020, UN organizations expended almost 4.5 billion dollars in the Gaza strip. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the aid supplied to the Palestinians between 1994 and 2020 was over 40 billion dollars. 

Gaza would have been able to become a blooming landscape. Instead of building schools and factories or founding businesses, the Hamas dug tunnels and built rockets – and on October 7, 2023, attacked Israel, massacred far over 1,000 civilians in bestial ways and put the pictures on  the internet. No one can persuade me that the Hamas has not justified a massive retaliation. I would quite well know how those who condemn Israel here in the hall, and primarily outside, would react had that been done to their children and family members. 

And I would also quite well know, ladies and gentlemen, how Israel should defend itself, without that also striking the innocent and civilians, those who were also struck by the bombing attacks of the Allies on Hamburg, Dresden, Cologne or Chemnitz. And yet we speak today rightly – and especially on the anniversary of the landing in Normandy – of liberation, and of that especially loudly by those who have brought in this motion. Henryk Broder has rightly put the question of the proportionality in such a war. 

There are in the Linke’s motion also naturally reasonable passages,

            Daniel Baldy (SPD): As opposed to your speech!

primarily in regards to the humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian assistance we of course support. Yet Israel cannot permit a two-state solution with the participation of the Hamas. Strictly speaking, Israel can no longer permit the existence of the Hamas [Israel kann streng genommen die Existenz der Hamas nicht länger zulassen]. That is the lesson from the history of the Gaza strip free of Jews. How long would it last until out of the Palestinian state rockets were again fired at Israel? 

Ladies and gentlemen, we in the West have forgotten in 80 years of peace what a tragedy is. We meanwhile designate every accident a tragedy. Yet the essence of tragedy lies in that the man who acts will be guilty. The conflict in a tragedy is insoluble. In Israel, a tragedy occurred. We should thank God that we are merely on-lookers, and need not redeem our lightly made promise that Israel’s security is part of our reason of state. Yet at least we should refrain from cheap condemnations in this situation. 

I am grateful.

  

[trans: tem]

Alexander Gauland, March 18, 2025, Merz, CDU and Germany

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27761-24462. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

In the course of this debate, on the previous Thursday as well as today, much which is correct and also false has been said. A new assessment by me is therefore not needed. Allow me then to make a couple of personal remarks. 

Herr Merz and I were for many years in the same party. I went, because I could no longer bear the destruction by Angela Merkel of the CDU as a conservative-liberal, bürgerliche alternative to the left-green mainstream. Herr Merz was a victim of her will to power. 

I grant, ladies and gentlemen, that I therefore expected much of his return to politics: A different economic and social policy, a reversal of false developments, like the illegal mass immigration to the exit from atomic power and the combustion engine. 

            Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU/CSU): That is coming! All comes!

My idea – you call it a vision – was that Germany receives a Politik of reason and judgment, thus a middle-right Politik, like many people in this country wish it as evidenced by the election results. 

            Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU/CSU): Yet you have only a hostile goal!

Instead, Herr Merz, you’ve erected a firewall, which today and in the future makes you prisoners of left-green social alterations. So as to get into the Chancellor’s Office, you have sacrificed everything that was still conservative or bürgerlich in the CDU, and your voters to whom you gave your word on the debt brake, you have betrayed with billions of euros at the pump. Seldom, ladies and gentlemen, has bügerlicher decency been so quickly replaced by political cynicism. 

Herr Merz, that you do not listen to me is fully clear. Yet you would have been able to listen to Andreas Rödder, the earlier chairman of your basic values commission, who in the Welt am Sonntag wrote precisely the same in the album of the CDU. 

You will, Herr Merz, apparently become Chancellor with a Politik like we have experienced in recent years. And this Politik will exactly so fail as that of the subsiding Ampel. Not even your transatlantic allies in Washington support your dubious efforts to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s answers. Such a change of times [Zeitenwende], dear Herr Merz, will only be with us, not with the failures of yesterday. 

And if in recent years I ever again had doubt in my own party, today I am proud and glad to have stood with others as godparent to it in the year 2013. For since this week is it clear: The Merz CDU is the continuation of the Merkel CDU – a further so, Herr Merz, in Germany’s downfall, for which you in the future need to answer. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Gauland, July 4, 2024, NATO, Russia and Ukraine

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/181, pp. 23422-23423. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Yes, NATO is a success story. It has bestowed peace and security on its members for 75 years. And yes, we need NATO still today. With the Gorch Fock, Germany’s trade and seaways are not secured. Germany is not in the position to defend itself. NATO guarantees us protection and security. 

This should nevertheless not prevent us from putting a couple of questions. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact had offered the possibility involving an all-European security system with Russia. The opportunity was wasted. 

            Sara Nanni (Greens): By whom, then?

Instead – and honesty is in order to state this – we sought to drive Russia in a weak phase out of Mitteleuropa. That might have been a geostrategic aim of the U.S.A. – it did not serve European peace. 

Ladies and gentlemen, in this house it is fairly senseless to recall that in the reunification negotiations declarations had been delivered – I name now only one – like that of the British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, which maintained – cite:

“There was no plan in NATO to admit in any form the countries of eastern and middle Europe into NATO.” 

I could continue the list with James Baker and with our former Foreign Minister Genscher – I know, the CDU contests this and ever again was heard, all of that is not right. 

            Joe Weingarten (SPD): You can stop! The remittance from Moscow comes!

Therefore I have also used this citation. 

I of course also know that the Warsaw Pact then still existed and corresponding developments lay in the future. Yet the question needs be allowed whether it would not have been smarter to include Russia in the changes taking place. 

President Bärbel Bas: Herr Dr. Gauland, do you allow an interim question or                            an interim remark?

No, I do not now allow that. 

The present war in the Ukraine has a long, previous history, and which also – and not in the least measure – has to do with the eastern expansion of the alliance. It is therefore important in this moment to recall: NATO is a European Atlantic alliance of defense. The Ukraine is not a part of NATO, just as little as, for that matter, Taiwan. 

            Joe Weingarten (SPD): Er tut mal für sein Geld!

NATO is thus not responsible for the integrity [Unversehrheit] of non-member states nor does it have duties to fulfill in the Indo-Pacific area. And, ladies and gentlemen, it is also no ideological bulwark of democrats against autocrats. 

We should always keep in view – and for this too is honesty in order – that the world’s largest democracy, India, does not share our viewpoint on the Ukraine conflict. In the world of Ranke’s Die Grossen Mächte, NATO is insurance coverage for Germany, and it is very good for that. It should not be an ideological spearhead in a fight against Russia, if we want to live in a peaceful world. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Gauland, February 22, 2024, Russia, Munich and Realpolitik

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/154, p. 19630. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

“War is a mere continuation of politics with other means” [„Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln“]. Everyone knows this sentence of Clausewitz. In traditional international law, a war therefore ends with a political result, a conclusion of peace. If however one party to a war excludes the other from the civilized world with a judgement of unworthiness [Unwerturteil], a conclusion of peace becomes impossible. 

Since 1648, as the peace treaty of Münster and Osnabrück ended the ideological war between protestants and catholics, the rule applies that all subject to international law are alike in the sense of a like ability to speak. Even in the times of the Cold War, there were talks between both sides. The expression that one is not allowed to let the line of communication to rupture,  belonged until recently to the standard vocabulary of German foreign policy. 

            Kurt Abraham (CDU/CSU): Who then has broken the line? 

Why, ladies and gentlemen, does this no longer apply to Russia?

            Kurt Abraham (CDU/CSU): Because the Russians have broken the line! 

It was a political failure that Russian representatives were uninvited at the Munich Security Conference, a conference the motto of which is “Peace through Dialogue“ – not through weapons deliveries. 

Realpolitik, ladies and gentlemen, is the art of the possible. The possible is often not to be had without painful compromise. Values-led foreign policy on the other hand, as we lately manage it, does not know the lesser evil. When values-led foreign policy leads to that communication and negotiations stop, or are simply just not undertaken, it needs to be replaced by Realpolitik. And when the values-led foreign policy leads to that the war will then be continued when the war aims are not achieved, it needs to be replaced by Realpolitik. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the central distinction between Realpolitik and that which we meanwhile have come to know as “values-led foreign policy“. 

Marianne Schieder (SPD): It is a lie when you assert that there were no talks. You know that! 

Values societies feel themselves obligated to fight against unworthiness [Unwert]. With a representative of unworthiness, values societies conduct no negotiations. The opponent of war becomes an absolute enemy. His interests are criminal. 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): That is called war crimes! 

The enemy must be annihilated. That unfortunately leads, with a known consistency, to that the war escalates. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is your vocabulary, not ours!

Ladies and gentlemen, Putin conducts a war which can be held to be unjust and wrong, 

            Agnes-Marie Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): “can be held”! 

or needs be. So as to end it, however, nothing is served by assuming his criteria; but on the contrary, by again recalling Münster and Osnabrück and by overcoming the Western inability of speech [Sprachlosigkeit]. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, for that is required a Metternich at the Vienna Congress or a Kissinger in Peking, instead of a presenter of war. It’s too bad that no one in Munich wanted to undertake that role. Therefore, we will also have no peace if we so continue. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, October 12, 2023, Israel and Hamas

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/128, pp. 15903-15904. 

Frau President. Herr Ambassador. Ladies and gentlemen. 

When it is about Israel, the hour of well-meaning lip-service begins. The German Chancellor has today repeated the most famous of all. It stems from Herr Scholz’s predecessor in office and runs: The defense of Israel is a German reason of state. – As articulated by Frau Merkel: German tax money also flowed to anti-semitic NGOs and aid functions, and the security of Jews in German streets the German government could not guarantee. It has unfortunately remained so until today. 

Now there are new announcements. Declarations of solidarity neither help the Israelis nor make the slightest impression on terrorists and their supporters. This barbaric attack, with almost exclusively civilian victims, needs to be radically answered. Terror needs to be struck at its life’s nerve: At the money. That a portion of these rockets, a portion of these weapons used by Hamas, were paid for where possible with German tax money is an unbelievable scandal. If the so-called reason of state should be more than a fine phrase, the German payments to Palestinian organizations need to immediately stop, ladies and gentlemen. That applies to all these payments. 

The Foreign Minister has assured no terror will be financed with German money. 

            Susanne Menge (Greens): ”Vogelschiss” of history! You should start                                    with yourself!

Pardon, Frau Baerbock: The proposition that money flows exclusively to humanitarian projects is at best naïve. Hamas controls Gaza. As surely as a portion of German development aid arrives at a motor park of an African dictator, just as surely a portion of this so-called aid money also lands at Hamas. That, ladies and gentlemen, needs to change. 

For with this money, the Palestinians are not aided, but their leaders who make life for them in  Gaza a hell and ever again plunge them into senseless wars. The Hamas butchers and child murderers are not victims. Hamas is an organization which was founded for one, single purpose: To kill Jews. Its leaders have ever again quite unashamedly declared this. The attack on Israel is no revolt of the oppressed, but of gruesome fanatics. 

That it finds public support on German streets, that in Germany is recited: “Hamas, Hamas, Juden ins Gas” is unbearable. How many of these festivals and appeals for Judenmord have there been in Germany? And what police and juridical measures are there opposed to it? I hope, Herr Chancellor, that your announcements today change that. 

Ladies and gentlemen, with this is meant not only Israel, with this we have meant the entire Western world. Israel, that is the West in an environment in which the West is rejected and fought. When we place ourselves on the side of Israel, we also defend our way [Art] of living and thinking against a politicized Islam. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a quite definite German reason of state. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, June 16, 2023, European Defense Architecture

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/110, p. 13436.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

From Germany should never again a war proceed: This is the lesson of our history. With the power politics as seen in Yugoslavia and in the German weapons deliveries to the Ukraine, this objective was and is nevertheless irreconcilable.

Over eastern Germany presently take place the largest NATO air maneuvers since 1945, a calculated affront and an edifying example. Defense against air attacks on Rostock is practiced  only a few minutes flight distant from the Baltic Sea where the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines could have been prevented. Instead of that, many here applauded.

This leads us directly to the security architecture of our country and of Europe. We are tightly bound as a part of the NATO American interests policy, many times a little too tightly. Since 1990, over 250 military operations have been conducted with U.S. participation. From others is it gathered to designate this as “war”.

The migration flows from the Near East and North Africa are proximately connected with the U.S. interventions. Failures in Afghanistan, in Iraq and Libya, as well as the financing of color revolutions in Russia’s vicinity, make the U.S.A. a not always unproblematic partner.

For us it is in any case time to reconsider alternatives in Europe, not unconditionally in the EU but in a Europe of sovereign nations as we imagine it, as our party has imagined it: Initially in parallel to NATO, later, if possible, as a sovereign defense architecture which comes to its own decisions, yet – and this is the problem – also can and must carry through.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): Just like before 1945! It certainly worked out                            super!

The Minsk agreement certainly was good: It could have been and needed to be carried through,

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): That should have been said to Putin!

even if the U.S.A.’s diverging geopolitical interests, as surely in regards the eastern expansion of NATO, do not unconditionally agree with an all-European security interest.

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): You now become not even mediocre, Herr Gauland!

Ladies and gentlemen, a contribution to the security of Germany is first for once the definition of German interests to be secured in each instance. A rules-based, values-driven foreign policy is plainly too little for that, plainly an ideologically-driven phrase, like so much of what you put out as policy.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Alexander Gauland, February 9, 2023, Peace in the Ukraine

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/85, pp. 10104-10105.

Frau President, Ladies and gentlemen.

I do not imagine to be able to convince you with our motion [Drucksache 20/5551] of the necessity of a peace initiative.

            Ulrich Lechte (SPD): Nonsense!

In that regard, you adhere much too much to a purely military thinking. Yet you will need to substantiate to people why ever more and ever more powerful weapons shall pave the way to peace. Instead of diplomacy, the Leopard should settle it. Today it is combat panzers, tomorrow combat aircraft; it is already discussed. And the day after tomorrow, perhaps NATO soldiers on Ukrainian soil.

“There are to be no red lines” is emphasized from Kiev. Of course the Ukraine has an interest in drawing us into this war. Our chief diplomat occupies herself with having one party indicted before a special tribunal, instead of day and night seeking ways out of the crisis and possibilities for an armistice. Yet “without a political-strategic overall concept, weapons deliveries are pure militarism”. This estimate originates from a former Chancellor’s military policy advisor, Vad. From there, the American Chief of Staff Milley proceeds to that a victory of the Ukraine is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way.

Yet an action corresponding to this insight is counter to the Western supposition that Putin wants to obliterate the Ukraine and thus no compromise is possible.

            Ulrich Lechte (SPD): He said it!

In serious discussions, ladies and gentlemen, this supposition has never been examined.

            Anikó Glogowski-Merten (FDP): He himself said it!

And Russia’s security interests vis-à-vis NATO are considered in the West as only having been advanced, without submitting them to a test by means of discussions. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time that we finally do that, instead of sliding on a steep plane ever more violently in the direction of a European war, or indeed into an atomic confrontation of which the UN Secretary-General himself has meanwhile warned.

Our motion offers a way.

            Daniel Baldy (SPD): It says nothing!

More and better is always possible, only the direction must agree: Away from a victory of one and a defeat of the other side; away from military logic. This war is to be won by no one. Only when we finally accept that and work for a peaceful solution does peace have chance.

            Erhard Grundl (Greens): Says Radio Moscow!

Without the insight that a military solution was not to be achieved, even the Thirty Years War would never have come to an end.

            Daniel Baldy (SPD): Was that also a Vogelschiss?

Hopefully, for us, it does not last so long.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]