Abort, abort!

More chaos inside the Bundestag

Dear Reader,

After comparing the current state of German politics to a free bar where the next punch could be swung from any angle in my last newsletter, the opening scene of Das Boot popped into my head. Green-eared war reporter Leutnant Werner arrives at the German naval base in La Rochelle late in the evening ahead of an assignment to write a propaganda piece on life inside a U-Boot. His excitement for the “thrilling mission” that lies ahead is soon punctured by a scene of debauchery, where sailors who have already given up on their own lives drown their despair in plundered French wine before they head to sea again.

One officer sardonically tells him about a submarine that never made it back to harbour: “Not a man nor a mouse survived – thrilling, don’t you think?” An inebriated war hero gives a slurred speech in which he praises “our wonderful, abstinent and wifeless Führer” for his “expertise in naval affairs.”