For such a younger nation — youthful than the USA in its fashionable type — Germany has left an infinite imprint on the world.
It began two world wars. It dedicated atrocities so huge they nonetheless defy comprehension. And for 40 years, it sat on the middle of the Chilly Battle, divided between two hostile techniques and two completely different visions of the longer term.
That historical past is in every single place in Berlin.
It’s within the Reichstag, the place we climbed into the glass dome that now sits above the German parliament — a deliberate image of transparency after a century of disaster.
It’s within the remaining slabs of the Berlin Wall, nonetheless standing as a reminder of how rapidly a rustic will be break up in two.
It’s within the Jewish Museum, the place the structure itself appears designed to unsettle you.
And it’s most powerfully felt on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, an enormous subject of concrete slabs that turns into extra haunting the longer you stroll by it.
Berlin will not be a metropolis that permits you to look away.
And now Germany is as soon as once more confronting its previous.
With Russia’s battle in Ukraine and rising doubts about whether or not the USA can nonetheless be counted on as a dependable ally, Germany is rearming itself. Quietly, reluctantly, however unmistakably.
Most Germans have no idea when one other battle in Europe may come. However many now appear to imagine it should come.
That was essentially the most putting a part of the go to: how a lot of Germany’s previous all of the sudden felt related once more.
And never simply due to Europe.
However as a result of a lot of what we noticed — the nationalism, the propaganda, the cult of energy, the dehumanization of enemies, the regular erosion of democratic norms — echoed the more and more fascist strains in our personal politics again dwelling.
Berlin is a captivating metropolis — however it’s additionally a warning.
