Soldiers at Christmas Markets: Is This Germany’s Security Future?

From France to Germany, armed security is reshaping public life. What soldiers at Christmas markets say about terrorism and the future of Europe.

Christmas markets have become high security locations. Photo by cmophoto.net on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

Across Europe, Christmas markets have become symbols not just of tradition, but of how states respond to the threat of Islamist terrorism. Mulled wine, fairy lights and wooden chalets now sit alongside bollards, barriers and armed patrols. What was once seasonal kitsch has become a frontline of public security policy.

Is it too fatalistic to say that, if you want to see Germany’s future, all you need to do is look across the Rhine?

Despite spiralling levels of debt, the French government still can’t pass a budget through its fragmented and deeply divided parliament. Stuck in a state of paralysis, France burns through prime ministers like dry matches, and its president has been a lame duck for well over a year.

If Germany can’t push through the types of reforms that will cut its spending bill, a similar future surely awaits it, too.

But France provides a cautionary example in other ways. Last weekend, I drove with my family to visit a Christmas market in the small town of Wissembourg, which lies on the French side of the border in Alsace. The market was small — it only contained a couple of dozen stalls outside the impressive Gothic church and inside an adjacent courtyard. Nonetheless, it was guarded by eight soldiers carrying large machine guns.

Whether we were watching a medieval battle enactment or perusing gaudy baubles, these soldiers were constantly somewhere in eyeshot, standing guard or patrolling through the crowds. Coming from Germany, where the deployment of soldiers inside the country is severely restricted by the constitution, it was shocking to see heavily armed troops marching through a leafy, parochial town.

How is a normal citizen to interpret such a scene other than to think that there is a civil war — or at least the potential for one — unfolding in the country?

France’s Security State — A Warning from Across the Rhine