FRONTLINE Investigates ‘The Rise of Germany’s New Right’ in New Documentary

The Rise of Germany’s New Right

Watch the documentary at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App starting Nov. 4, 2025, at 7/6c, or on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c. It will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.

 

Support for nationalist, anti-immigrant parties has surged across Europe in recent years — including in Germany, where far-right leaders have risen to the brink of power for the first time since World War II.

Why has their brand of hardline nationalist politics swelled in popularity, and what have been the roles of Russia and the U.S.?

FRONTLINE explores those questions in The Rise of Germany’s New Right, a 90-minute documentary premiering Tuesday, Nov. 4 on PBS and online.

The investigation is the latest documentary from director and correspondent Evan Williams, who has been covering the far right in Europe for over a decade, including in 2024’s Germany’s Enemy Within and 2021’s Germany’s Neo-Nazis & the Far Right.

Now, Williams examines the recent political ascendance of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party — reporting on how it has campaigned in part by distributing tens of thousands of flyers designed to resemble plane tickets for deportation; how it has targeted younger voters using AI videos that play on fears about immigrants and crime; and how it has won vocal support from influential figures including Elon Musk and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance.

“Now we are the party of the future,” AfD politician Maximilian Krah tells FRONTLINE.

Drawing on interviews with numerous AfD politicians, German intelligence service officials, political scientists, and journalists, The Rise of Germany’s New Right examines how and why the country reached this moment, and what it says about broader trends across Europe.

As the film details, after World War II, Germany set out to reckon with its grim history, in part by banning Nazi symbols and slogans and criminalizing Holocaust denial. A political “firewall” was also established, with mainstream parties vowing not to work with far-right parties to govern.

There was a consensus that “we mustn’t forget the crimes,” Kai Arzheimer, a political scientist at University of Mainz in Germany, tells FRONTLINE. “And that we need to educate future generations so that this memory lives on, not as a memory of shame, but as a reminder that we have a responsible role to play in the world, that we need to protect liberal democracy and fundamental human rights.”

The documentary details how, decades later, members of the AfD have pushed back against this “remembrance culture,” become the second largest party in Germany’s parliament, and are calling for the dismantling of the “firewall,” arguing it has no place in a democracy.

“We are ready to take on government responsibility, and I can only urgently advise the old parties, the cartel parties, not to try to play for mathematical majorities to again prevent the AfD from coming to power,” says Björn Höcke, an AfD politician who was once convicted of knowingly using a banned Nazi slogan and is now seen as a core member of the national leadership.

The documentary also probes allegations that Russia boosted the AfD through what one journalist calls “disinformation warfare” — with researchers finding that more than 10 percent of social media posts about the AfD in the runup to the 2024 European Parliament elections came from an army of fake accounts.

“Right now, it is done to undermine unity for Ukraine,” political scientist Armida van Rij, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, tells FRONTLINE. “But the longer term goal is to just cause chaos and disorder in Europe more broadly.”

The Rise of Germany’s New Right goes on to investigate the ongoing controversy over how the AfD is classified and monitored in the country. After Germany was hit by a wave of far-right terror attacks in 2019 and 2020, German intelligence officials classified the AfD as a “suspected extremist” threat and began monitoring it. The AfD denies provoking violence. Two months after the party’s recent electoral gains, German intelligence upgraded its classification to a “proven right-wing extremist” organization, a move the Trump administration condemned. The AfD has appealed, and the classification has reverted to “suspected extremist threat” while the German courts review the case.

“Above all, freedom of expression is something that we no longer have in Germany,” Höcke says, adding that “the United States of America will usher in a new era of freedom of expression,” and the resulting “wind of change is now coming from the United States to Europe.”

German officials have defended the government’s stance.

“The New Right, the AfD, is explicitly acting against our principles of the federal constitution,” Stephan Kramer, domestic intelligence chief in the German state of Thuringia, says in the documentary. He later says, “What the federal agency of domestic intelligence stated was clearly based on evidence and on facts that were put together, and this is not about putting someone irresponsibly out of a democratic process. This is about protecting our constitutional rights in a legal state, with legal evidence, which can be challenged in front of court.”

The Rise of Germany’s New Right will be available to watch at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App starting Nov. 4, 2025, at 7/6c. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c and will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Subscribe to FRONTLINE’s newsletter to get updates on events, podcast episodes and more related to The Rise of Germany’s New Right.

 

Credits | The Rise of Germany’s New Right is a FRONTLINE Production with Mongoose Pictures in association with Evan Williams Productions. The correspondent, reporter, producer and director is Evan Williams. The producer is Hannah Congdon. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

About FRONTLINE | FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won an Academy Award® as well as every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 110 Emmy Awards and 34 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.

 

Press Contact | FRONTLINE | frontlinemedia@wgbh.org