How Germany's Right-Wing Tabloid Learned to Love Refugees

Every year, the newshounds of Germany guiltily anticipate the Sommerloch, or "summer hole." The country goes on holiday, the news cycle begins to moss over, and the conservative national tabloid Bild Zeitung can be counted on to seek strange stories to fill its pages: a bloodthirsty snapping turtle, a man who slashes the linings of above-ground swimming pools, a student who floods his town with sewage. Such items garner enormous headlines alongside the typical Bild fodder of car crashes, celebrity gossip, and photographs of naked women. In May, when Bild asked "Are These Eva Braun's Underpants?" in a headline, one German reader tweeted with relish: "The Sommerloch has begun."

Real news soon crashed in. First, Greece threatened to leave the European Union, risking a continent-wide economic crisis. Then hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees from the Middle East and Africa started showing up at Germany's border. The influx quickly escalated into Western Europe's biggest humanitarian crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The emergency fueled nationalist fervor across the continent and strained the bonds of European unity. Germany, however, has had no influential nationalist party since World War II. It has had Bild Zeitung.