Germany who use language when discussing race
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 3:41 am
The elder statesman of the European left, the former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, yesterday poured petrol on the flames of Germany's impassioned immigration debate when he declared that there were far too many foreigners in his country and that they could not be assimilated because his compatriots were "racist deep down".
They had let themselves get "stuck with" a multicultural society because of their feelings of guilt over Hitler and the Nazis, he said.
Mr Schmidt's extraordinary comments were published as phone number list Germany's president, Johannes Rau, was agonising about whether to sign into law an immigration bill passed last week amid uproar in parliament. Race is now set to be a central issue in the forthcoming general election contest between chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his challenger from the hard right, Edmund Stoiber.
Mr Stoiber yesterday appealed to his followers to move beyond the heated debate over the constitutionality of the new law and concentrate on what he called the nub of the matter. In characteristically inflammatory style, he defined this as "how much and what sort of immigration Germany can put up with".
As Mr Schmidt showed, though, it is not only mainstream conservative politicians inthat elsewhere in Europe would prompt uproar, if not legal action. In a book to be published on Monday, Mr Schmidt, the Social Democrat chancellor from 1974 to 1982, says: "For idealistic motives, born of the experience of the Third Reich, we have taken in far too many foreigners".
They had let themselves get "stuck with" a multicultural society because of their feelings of guilt over Hitler and the Nazis, he said.
Mr Schmidt's extraordinary comments were published as phone number list Germany's president, Johannes Rau, was agonising about whether to sign into law an immigration bill passed last week amid uproar in parliament. Race is now set to be a central issue in the forthcoming general election contest between chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his challenger from the hard right, Edmund Stoiber.
Mr Stoiber yesterday appealed to his followers to move beyond the heated debate over the constitutionality of the new law and concentrate on what he called the nub of the matter. In characteristically inflammatory style, he defined this as "how much and what sort of immigration Germany can put up with".
As Mr Schmidt showed, though, it is not only mainstream conservative politicians inthat elsewhere in Europe would prompt uproar, if not legal action. In a book to be published on Monday, Mr Schmidt, the Social Democrat chancellor from 1974 to 1982, says: "For idealistic motives, born of the experience of the Third Reich, we have taken in far too many foreigners".