BERLIN — The German far right wants to defend the homeland. It just can’t say how — or against whom.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition is moving to overhaul Germany’s defense posture in response to the threat posed by Russia under Vladimir Putin and worry about the U.S. commitment to European security under Donald Trump. That’s pushing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the country’s second-largest party, to try and stake out a clear position of its own. 

But the effort is splitting the nationalists, with its eastern pro-Russia wing in conflict with western pro-NATO traditionalists, just as the party hopes to gain credibility for an eventual push to take power, while dismaying Germany’s allies.

“A party on the right stands for the strength of the state,” Rüdiger Lucassen, an AfD lawmaker and spokesperson for defense policy, told POLITICO. “The armed forces are one of the essential pillars of that. Not just to fight wars, but to ensure the country can remain sovereign.”

Internal AfD divisions on how to approach a “sovereign” defense policy have become what Luccassen calls a “fundamental topic.” That split surfaced during the ongoing debate in Germany over whether the government’s military-service reform should rely on volunteers or bring back the draft — at one time a key AfD position.

“We were always in favor of bringing back conscription for all young men in this country,” AfD defense lawmaker Hannes Gnauck told POLITICO. “Since it was suspended in 2011, the Bundeswehr has lost not just personnel, but its connection to society,” a refrain the party long used to present a united front on military policy.

But when Merz’s coalition became mired in its own dispute over the draft, the AfD suddenly had to spell out what it would do differently. And behind closed doors, that unity cracked.

Disputes plague policies

In recent weeks, a bloc of AfD lawmakers from eastern Germany — led by Stefan Möller, a key figure in a faction pushing for a softer line toward Russia — moved to halt any talk of reviving the draft.

That took form in a written motion which circulated within the party’s parliamentary group. In the document, MPs accused the government of “misusing the Bundeswehr,” claiming “no young man would see reason to risk his life for Merz.”

Signed by 24 of its 151 lawmakers, the proposal urged the AfD not to propose any initiative on conscription “until the war in Ukraine has ended and Germany has adopted a neutral, deescalatory stance.” It was a clear signal from the ex-communist east: they wanted nothing to do with a draft that could be tied to NATO or Ukraine.

“That hesitation doesn’t help us,” Lucassen said, who represents what he calls the “silent majority” of unconditionally pro-conscription lawmakers and who has even called for Germany to acquire nuclear weapons. “It makes us look divided at the very moment when voters expect clarity from us.”

The fight exposed a deeper confusion over the party’s defense policy: It can’t decide whether Germany should strengthen itself alongside its allies, or stand apart from them.

That policy line becomes even blurrier when the discussion turns to NATO.

According to its latest electoral program, the party insists Germany should remain in the alliance “until an independent and capable European military alliance has been established.” It’s a promise with a caveat: NATO, in the AfD’s view, is only a stopgap. What should follow, however, is unclear.

Party co-Chair Tino Chrupalla, a leading voice of the AfD’s eastern bloc, hinted at that vagueness in an interview with German broadsheet Welt late last year, suggesting that the country should eventually “found a new security structure in Europe.”

“Before a withdrawal [from the EU], a new founding must be clearly agreed upon,” he said. “The same applies to NATO.” 

At the same time, he described the alliance as “no longer a purely defensive one” — and argued that any future European framework should “respect the interests of all countries, including Russia.”

That rhetoric stands in stark contrast to his party’s own defense spokespeople.

Lucassen insists “no [European] armed force alone can defend a country” and stresses the need for alliances, while Gnauck, a former Bundeswehr soldier, calls NATO “the most purpose-driven alliance we currently have.” 

Clashing voices on Russia

That divide over Russia resurfaced in late September, when the party’s two co-chairs were pressed about reports of drones crossing into Polish airspace before some were shot down by NATO aircraft.

Chrupalla, speaking at a Bundestag press conference, dismissed the incident as “propaganda,” even joking that some of the Russian drones were “made of Styrofoam and plywood.” 

To him, Europe’s mistake wasn’t being too soft on Moscow, it was being too hard. “Europe should finally sit down and talk with Russia,” he said.

Standing beside him, his co-chair Alice Weidel took the opposite view. Russia, she warned, could be “testing NATO’s air-defense systems” and risked provoking “further escalation.” She called on Moscow to “deescalate” and said Germany had “seen too little movement from Putin so far.”

According to Lucassen, who hails from the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the rift runs deeper than policy lines. For AfD members from the party’s strongholds in the former East Germany, a puppet state of the Soviet Union, their view of Russia and NATO is colored by a broader dissatisfaction with German unification.

“In the eastern German states,” Lucassen said, “there’s a whole generation that finished school around the time of reunification. Many still feel they aren’t fully included — that everything from the east is dismissed. That creates a kind of resentment, which plays out in debates like NATO or the Bundeswehr.” 

That history has shaped how the AfD views strength and sovereignty. Where the party’s western lawmakers see deterrence and defense as part of sovereignty, its larger eastern faction sees them as symptoms of submission — to Washington, to Brussels and to Berlin. 

Such ambiguity impacts the AfD’s ability to turn its growing support into concrete policy.  Many in the east, Lucassen said, “see their regional success as a mandate to set the tone for the whole party. And that’s a hurdle if we ever want to be seen as ready for government.”

The same rifts that animate its debates over NATO and Moscow reappear whenever the party tries to craft proposals on defense. Each faction pulls in its own direction, leaving the AfD talking about sovereignty without ever defining what it means in practice.

That policy split within the party isn’t just a domestic issue. Germany’s neighbors are watching — and worrying about what a shift in Berlin’s political compass could mean for Europe’s security order.

“Looking at history, a situation where Germany would link its economic power with military might has always raised fears,” said Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski. “A key issue is the political lean of German voters in the future and how deeply Germany will be rooted in the EU and NATO. Germany’s military expansion would be different if it were not tied to European policies.”

Gnauck, one of the AfD’s younger defense lawmakers, acknowledged that tension directly. “It’s good that we can still debate openly as a large party,” he said, “but when we move toward government, the voter needs to know where we stand. We can’t say one thing before the election and another after.”

For a party that wraps itself in the language of national pride, that contradiction may prove to be its Achilles’ heel. Or as Lucassen put it: “If we ever want to be seen as ready for government, we can’t let a few loud voices decide the course for the whole party.”

Pauline von Pezold and Jan Cienski contributed to this report.