British people are obsessed with the idea that Nazis might return to Germany – maybe they should look closer to home

And so, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, there are “real Nazis” in the German parliament. So said Germany’s foreign minister, Gabriel Sigmar, summing up the angst felt in Berlin at yesterday’s electoral breakthrough by far-right party, the AfD.

Sure enough, by winning more than 13 per cent of the vote in Germany’s federal elections, the AfD has sent shockwaves through the country. The party, which gained strength by opposing Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy, is likely to take around 90 parliamentary seats and will use its presence to demand an end to what its leaders have described as the “invasion of foreigners”.

Recent months have also seen figures within the AfD take an increasingly revisionist approach to Germany’s role in the Second World War. Its co-founder, Alexander Gauland, provoked controversy two weeks ago by saying that Germans had the right to be proud of the achievements of its soldiers in both world wars. No wonder the party’s emergence overnight as a parliamentary force is causing such unease to many in the country.

In Britain, distance ought to permit a slightly less anxious analysis. Existing divisions within its leadership and its support base are enough to suggest that the AfD may be rather less effective than it is noisy once its representatives actually take up their seats in the Bundestag. Frauke Petry, arguably the AfD’s most prominent figure, has already announced that she will sit as an independent, having become unsettled by the nationalistic attitude of some of her party colleagues.

Yet in addition to the more studious commentary, it is possible to detect a certain sense of glee here in the UK at Germany’s swing to the right.

In part, that stems from those who have themselves raised concerns about the impact of large-scale immigration. In this camp, a few will go so far as to express approval for the AfD as a whole. Most will take the “we-told-you-so” approach, arguing that the far-right’s breakthrough is not welcome per se but is the inevitable consequence of mainstream parties (aka “the establishment”) failing to respond to the legitimate concerns of ordinary people about migration. In this narrative, yesterday’s election result is Germany’s Brexit.

But there is something deeper too. For a start, there is the inherent pride many people in this country feel about our apparent ability to withstand the charms of political extremes. Our first-past-the-post electoral system has helped in that regard, but nonetheless there is some truth in the idea that would-be British tyrants are more likely to be laughed at than lauded.

We also, though, have a peculiarly intense and specific fascination with far-right politics in Germany, which emerges whenever a nationalist movement appears on the cusp of popular success there and which plainly ties into Britain’s ongoing obsession with the Second World War.

That fixation with an important moment from our past is evident in many things; from popular culture (think most recently of the film Dunkirk) and dumb football chants (“Two world wars and one world cup”), to our own modern political choices. The campaign to be extricated from the European Union absolutely tapped into the “Britain alone” mentality which became a necessity in 1940 and which has played a powerful role in the British psyche ever since.

Seeing hard-right nationalism reawakening in Germany provokes in those who are so minded a memory (whether real or inherited) of a time when Britain was the world’s protector against the threat of Nazi aggression. For a second or two it becomes possible to put to one side the fact that the UK’s economy is facing challenging times while Germany’s is in rude health, and instead presume once again the moral high ground we took in 1939 and have sought to hold over the Germans ever since.

The irony in this attitude should be painfully obvious: Germany, despite the recent rise of the AfD, has grown to be a European powerhouse in the last 70 years precisely by moving on from a difficult past; Britain, meanwhile, has frequently misstepped because we cannot bear to be parted from a glorious history that has long gone.

In four years’ time, the AfD may well have blown itself out; and we should certainly hope so. Germany, under Angela Merkel’s continued leadership, will almost certainly be playing its accustomed central role in a recalibrated EU and reaping the economic rewards.

As for Britain – with apologies to David Low – we may be doing not very well. Alone.