How Angela Merkel broke Germany

Angela Merkel, who last month published her memoirs on her 16 years as German chancellor, was a great tactician. But she was dead wrong on many of the strategic questions hurled at Germany during her time in charge. Merkel is the architect of a Germany that’s again the sick man of Europe, now in a second year with a shrinking economy and surging parties on the far-right and far-left.

Merkel doesn’t do mea culpas and this has annoyed some reviewers of her book. Those who hoped for admission of failures misunderstand Merkel. She’s a physicist, who disassembles problems before making, what she sees, as fact-based decisions. Her manner of deflecting mistakes is always the same: based on the information at the time my decision was correct.

Merkel left behind no signature achievement. She wasn’t a Helmut Kohl with German reunification or Willy Brandt whose Ostpolitik normalised ties with the East Bloc.