Germany’s fractious coalition falls apart—and how!

EARLY IN THE morning of November 6th, as Europe digested the result of America’s presidential election, three senior figures in Germany’s government were huddling for crisis talks in Berlin. But Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, Robert Habeck, the vice-chancellor, and Christian Lindner, the finance minister, were not sketching a response to Donald Trump’s promised tariffs, or working out how Germany might compensate for a loss of American support to Ukraine. Instead, they were deciding whether to blow up their fraying coalition.