ASK some Germans how people should react to terrorism and most would probably agree with the historian Herfried Münkler that the best attitude is heroische Gelassenheit: heroic calmness. Let other countries declare wars on terrorism and near-permanent states of emergency, they say; Germany’s dark history has taught it not to over-react. Sceptics used to reply that talk was cheap coming from Germany, which had been spared major incidents of the sort that have struck America, France, Turkey and other countries. That changed in the space of one week this month, when Germany suffered four very different attacks.
First, on July 18th, an Afghan refugee stabbed and axed four passengers on a train and another on a platform. Four days later a German teenager of Iranian descent went on a rampage in a shopping centre in Munich, injuring more than 30 people and killing nine before shooting himself. Two days after that, a Syrian refugee hacked a pregnant woman to death with a machete—“relationship troubles”, the police said. Elsewhere that night another Syrian refugee tried to enter a concert with a backpack of explosives. When he was barred, he...Continue reading
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