This week, Germany featured in the headlines of news bulletins around the world as a far-right political party convincingly won a regional election in the eastern state of Thuringia. This is the first time this has happened since the 1930s and it is the same state in which the original Nazis also experienced their first electoral success. The breakthrough party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), also narrowly lost a second regional election in the neighbouring state of Saxony to the Christian Democratic Party (CDU). In February of this year, Germany saw a series of pro-democracy, anti-fascist marches as a reaction…