Five to Six Months. How Germany Grinds Itself Down.

Oil prices are an abstraction. What people do is concrete. I sat down and thought honestly through the next five to six months in Germany — no media bingo, no talk-show routines. This is my view. Uncomfortable, but this is how I see it.

Up front, for the record: this text was written with AI assistance. The perspective, the arguments and the judgements are mine — worked through, checked and owned. The tools involved: Claude Opus 4.7 as the core for research and writing, MARTIN as my personal observer instance, Z-Image Turbo for the image generation.

Phase 1 — May/June: Still in denial

Most people do nothing at first. Germany learned its lesson in 2022: “it’ll blow over.” Fuel prices get grumbled about, shared on Facebook, and then everyone drives on. Heating-oil orders get put off in the hope of things improving — a classic mistake plenty of people already made in 2022.

What you’ll see:

• Packed hardware stores for space heaters, wood stoves, pellets (just like 2022)
• Plug-in solar balcony units sold out again
• First panic buying of staple foods with every headline
• Talk shows with the same experts

Phase 2 — July/August: The split becomes visible

Now Germany splits into at least four groups:

The wealthy (~15%). They barely notice. Filling up costs more, that’s it. Heat pump keeps running. Maybe some worry about portfolio values.

The solid middle class (~35%). The first signs of irritation. Holidays get trimmed or cancelled. Driving gets planned more rationally. Heating in winter handled more carefully. No existential fear, but resentment — “once again we’re paying for a crisis that isn’t ours.”

The precarious middle class (~35%). This is where it starts to hurt. Loans, utility back-payments, kids, a car you need for the commute. This group starts doing the math: does the car have to go? Can we cover the heating bill? Despair among those who already burned through their reserves in 2022/23. This is where the real political dynamite sits.

The poor, those on welfare, pensioners (~15%). Existentially threatened. Food banks get overrun again. Social counselling services explode. Debts to the municipal utilities. Power cut-offs rise.

What people will actually do

Pragmatically:

• A surge of demands on employers for home office (commuting costs)
• Job changes to workplaces closer to home, even at a lower salary
• Second-job hunting in the precarious middle class
• The used-car market flips: old combustion cars lose value, small EVs and hybrids gain
• Carpools, growth in public transport
• Flat-swap ads (smaller, less to heat)
• Firewood theft rises again, just like 2022
• Second-hand boom, repair instead of replace
• Vegetable gardening explodes (the self-sufficiency hype is back)

Socially:

• Neighbourly help increases — but so do neighbourly disputes (who heats how much)
• Families move in together, grandparents in with the kids
• Separations get postponed (“we can’t split up, it’s too expensive”)
• At the same time: separations rise, because the pressure tears relationships apart

Politically — this is the important part

The question isn’t WHETHER it has a political effect, but HOW. Three currents:

To the right. The AfD profits in the usual way. The narrative: “a war we’re not fighting, a bill we’re paying.” With five or six months of crisis and tangible cuts, expect AfD poll numbers of 28–35%. The BSW cannibalises part of that.

To the left (weaker). “Windfall tax now,” “expropriate the corporations.” The Left and the BSW gain ground, but not as strongly as the AfD — the Left lacks credible leadership figures.

Political disillusionment, resignation. The biggest bloc. Non-voters grow, trust in institutions keeps falling.

Protests. Yes, but different from 2022. No longer the naive “Monday strolls.” This time more mixed: farmers with hauliers with tradespeople with pensioners. Blockades of motorways and city centres are likely. Berlin gets nervous.

The mental level — everyone underestimates this

Germany is coming out of:

• Covid (trust in the state and the media torn apart)
• The war in Ukraine and the 2022 energy crisis
• The 2023 inflation
• The 2024/25 economic slump
• Government chaos

Now: a Middle East war with direct economic consequences. The psychological reserve is used up. That means:

• Burnout rates keep climbing
• Child and adolescent psychiatry — already overrun — gets worse
• “Doomscrolling” becomes a national sport
• At the same time: exhaustion-driven numbness. Many switch off, stop following the news, escape into Netflix, games, drugs, religion, esotericism
• The “out of the system” movement grows: tiny houses, the flight to the countryside, emigration enquiries

Google searches for “emigrate” will hit record highs again. Few will actually do it — it’s a symbolic act of powerlessness.

What Germany will NOT do — but should

• Talk honestly about its own dependency
• Have a grown-up conversation about war economy and resilience
• Accept that prosperity won’t come back the way it was

Instead: people will hope that “the state does something” and “the next government does it better.” The bitter truth: the state can subsidise, but it can’t conjure reality away. That’s slowly dawning on people, and that’s the real explosive.

The honest forecast

After five or six months:

• A noticeable part of Germany is poorer, more tired, more cynical
• The social centre is thinner
• Politically: the right stronger, the centre weaker, resignation greater
• No revolution. No collapses. But a creeping loss of trust, prosperity and cohesion that won’t come back

Germany in 2026 won’t collapse. It will keep grinding itself down.

“A shock unites. Erosion corrodes.”

And that exactly — this un-spectacular, grinding quality — is far more dangerous than a brief shock.

With MARTIN and my observer’s perspective I probably see this more clearly than most: People won’t wake up. They’ll settle in. And that is the real problem.

Tools for this article: Claude Opus 4.7 (core) · MARTIN · Z-Image Turbo