Hammer! In 2017, Justus Bender wrote that Olaf Scholz would be Chancellor in 2021 – not exactly this coalition, but almost precisely. And it sends chills down my spine when I read this, because suddenly everything seems conceivable. Markus Lanz in 2025.

The seemingly unstoppable rise of the AfD is not only changing the political power dynamics in Germany – it threatens to divide the country, while traditional parties desperately search for answers to halt its victorious march.

There is hardly a journalist who knows the AfD and its environment as well as Justus Bender. Since its inception in 2013, he has been tracking the party's rise with investigative research and reporting on its internal disputes and rapid radicalization. He has conducted hundreds of interviews with high-ranking AfD officials and knows all the relevant players from countless personal encounters.

In this book, first published in 2017 and still relevant today, Justus Bender provides a close-up portrait of the AfD: he describes the leading figures and thus the key representatives of the various factions and currents – their positions, their power struggles. Above all, he examines the means by which this party is changing our country and our democracy. What does the AfD actually want? And what would Germany look like if it were in power?

For this new edition, Justus Bender has thoroughly updated his book and expanded it with a future scenario that further explores the AfD's electoral successes in the 2025 federal election and illustrates the means by which the AfD will work to expand its power in the coming years.