‘I’m in Germany the week before the election and one thing shocked me’

As they pass bowls of sauerkraut or crispy potatoes across the dinner table the Storch family doesn’t mention politics.

Holding back thoughts and feelings comes a little easier for people living on the edge of the Baltic Sea in East Germany. Many in this region lived through the Communist era when there was a constant fear of being spied on by the Stasi.

But the current silence on politics is not because people are scared about who is listening; it is because they are worried about what they might say to each other.

The family is divided, some are keen supporters of Far Right party Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] others are vehemently opposed.

“I know I can't talk about it with my family,” daughter Francezca tells me. “They don’t bring it up because they know how I feel. I work with migrants and I’ve got a sister living abroad.”

Francezca is concerned that the AfD is appealling are to both older relatives at her dinner table and young people at the local school, who she discovered voted 70% for the Far Right party at a mock election.

But avoiding difficult conversations at home is completely understandable, given the fractious intensity of the German election campaign.

Of far greater concern is the historical habit the nation itself has to avoid dealing with things that are difficult.

Laws on free speech are stricter than in many other Western nations, and mainstream channels are at pains to exclude any groups that might be considered extreme.

There is a good reason for this. The country felt that, after committing some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, it needed to take measures to stop organisations like the Nazis from ever returning to power.

And you can understand why banning people shouting slogans about Adolf Hitler or doing salutes associated with his hateful regime would be outlawed.

The problem is that as the memories start to fade and those who lived through the horror of Nazis are no longer around to tell their stories it becomes harder to explain the reasons for the wider restrictions. The limits on speech and blocks on radical positions has created a curiosity, especially amongst youngsters, about extreme groups.

In Britain we’ve often had the perception – maybe because of that iconic episode of Fawlty Towers – that Germans don’t like to “mention the war.”

But stepping off the plane into the freezing East German air to cover today's election I was shocked to discover the opposite was true. As the vote approached, the people of Saxony, which I first visited, were quick to use the word Nazi.

The trouble is that there was a disagreement on how it should be applied.

Many felt the Far Right party Alternative für Deutschland were ‘Nazis’ or “a threat to democracy”.

Even if there is validity to those fears it begs the question: what does that mean if the party performs as the polls suggest and secures a quarter of the Bundestag seats? Are the millions who vote for them also Nazis?

Supporters of the AfD I spoke to certainly didn’t see themselves that way. In fact, most of them were seriously offended by the suggestion they would be associated with Adolf Hitler.

We’re not talking about shaven-headed racists with steel cap boots, these were regular young people, women, even migrants.

There were two reasons why they chose to vote for the AfD. Firstly, they felt their concerns were not being addressed by mainstream parties, and secondly, the Far Right group was speaking to them directly through online media channels.

Germany, like many other countries in the last few years, is discovering that one of the most important modern political battlegrounds is now the internet. Visibility is no longer about thousands of flyers or prime-time TV slots; you need to produce content that people see on their social media feeds and engage with.

One of the main reasons the AfD gained such traction so quickly is that it was excluded from mainstream channels and, therefore, forced to invest in social media.

As a consequence they have the advantage in an environment where none of Germany’s previous rules can be applied.

Things cannot be banned or avoided and, in fact, taking this approach with the AfD has actually had the opposite effect: the more they were excluded, the bigger the curiosity gap became for the voters.

The stakes in this transformation are not low. If Germany does not find a new way to deal with its horrific Nazi legacy the consequences will affect Europe and the world.