I'm in Munich right now and I've spent the last week and change in London and Athens. I've been sporting flannel and a Coleman's Creek hat most of the trip. I suspect that might be part of the reason why I've been asked half a dozen times whether or not I voted for Trump. When I confirm the reaction is never positive. I've never asked any foreigners in the US who they voted for in their home country, as frankly, I don't give a shit. It seems like everyone wants to talk about American politics. Waiters, shop owners, cabbies etc.
Today I took a tour of a castle and on the way the tour guide was talking about the suspicious death of Ludwig II. The tour guide asked the group if anyone could guess who his heir was and I blurted out "the Clintons." It went over like a fart in church. I get that socialism is en vogue here, but lighten up a little.
So much to unpack.
First off, what castle? The good ones aren't really near Munich nor would they really have much reason to mention Ludwig unless you were in Fussen (where I was stationed as Mountain Recon) or at one of his other castles. The 'suspicious death' is more of a tourist trap bullshit story than anything. He was killed. Long story short, the guy literally did nothing but spend money and build shit for himself for decades (sound familiar?) and as the crown was losing power to actual government at that time, reforms were agreed to as basically everyone in Germany was pissed at and sick of this guy. It was an easy fix; kill this guy and most of your bullshit programs and problems died with him. Something we could all probably learn from. In Minecraft.
The guy swam all of the time and magically 'died' in basically a pond of water for no reason? LOL It's not very suspicious but it's been told that way since before I was around. I asked once why and my Opa basically told me that tourists/people not from Germany are fucking stupid. Still makes sense.
Onto the political questions, which are a bit layered so bare with me.
Before the fall of the wall (which was the beginning of the end, and the catalyst of making Germany the weak shadow of itself that is now) Germany for the most part run by the equivalent of right leaning fiscally responsible leadership. Not quite your hard core conservatives, but not that far either. The CDU and Helmut Kohl basically ran the place for more or less decades. CDU loosely translated is pretty much the Catholic Republican Party, so that should give you an idea.
I still can't figure out which version happened. All I know is that Opa (literally a hard core conservative that thought even a lot of Americans were politically weak - he's right a lot BTW) was pissed as all could be when it came out that the agreement for the wall to come down and to 'unify' Germany was happening. Pretty much no one in West Germany wanted it outside of the 'rich elite' and the leadership of other European countries (see: people who don't want to/won't have to deal with this shit). And to this day I still can't figure out if we got bamboozled with bullshit and feels into doing this to be the 'better person' or if we were so proud of ourselves in a post WW2 era to where our economy was strong and we had 0 national debt, etc so why not 'help' these people? Either way, we all got fucked by tearing down a wall separating regular society from a horde of Soviet indoctrinated Euro-Mexicans that had zero money, next to no skills, little/no actual education and even though they lived under communism, still to some extent started being like a bunch of useless fat fucking New Yorkers and moving to your area and starting with the 'back in NY we had this' bullshit. From communism. Seriously. This is the level of fucking dumb faggot you let into our country?
So...where does this bring us to in answering your question? To the slow decay or morals and infiltration of socialism and feels in the mid/late 1990s of course!
From here things slowly started to change, much like how they did in the US in the 2010s. We didn't end up with LBGTWTFBBQROFL whatever and Karens and feels over facts and government telling you to hold its beer when you said this couldn't possibly get worse all at the same time, right? Nope. It takes time to erode. And that's what happened. Long story short, 'feels' and social euro weeniism took over. This further eroded into the German equivalent of a RHINO in Merkel, and we all know how fucking communist she trended over the years.
The aspect you're seeing from this while there is pretty simple. Not sure if you're watching TV over there (or speak German) but the news, and I mean legit 110% of it, is what CNN whishes it could be. There is no news. It's a station that gives you a chain of events in the way they want you to see it, and then tells you why this is good/bad and why you think it should also be good/bad in a way that if you don't agree, you are the problem and you are racist or dumb or a nazi or whatever. Remember...Hitler also liked being warm in the winter, Nazi!
I witnessed this firsthand when Trump was running. My Oma, who has long since retired and hangs out at home with the TV on basically the entire day, would call me, super concerned about the new American Hitler that might actually get elected and how could anyone like him? He wants to go to war with everyone, he'll cut economic ties with Germany, he'll only enrich himself, his kids are going to benefit greatly, he's only going to screw everyone over for himself, he's racist, hates and hits women and we don't think he's all there mentally.
On a side note - Oma, you literally just described Joe Biden to a T, 5 years ahead of time.
They are told what to think. They are also in basically a 'newer' generation of being shamed and cancelled when you don't agree with the groupthink.
Hence your problem stems from 2 sides; 1, they are told all of this 24/7 and its all delivered as true bullshit being true. For example, their own government being so incompetent in regards to shutting down all of their self producing energy streams (nuclear, coal, etc) and putting all of their eggs in the Russia basket was somehow 'explained' as the entire energy crisis from the Ukraine war, greatly effecting Germany, isn't because we were all a bunch of dumb shits. Oh no. It was because of Trump colluding with Russia. You get the idea.
Trump to them is a curiosity. The shit they've been told about him, it's so fucking nuts that they don't even know WTF to believe anymore. The closest I can compare it to was back when tabloids/people have a 24/7 infatuation with what crazy shit Britney Spears was doing. If you're a 'Trump voter' you are also a curiosity because of 1 of 500 stereotypes that are placed with it like that you either still own slaves on a plantation back in Georgia, or you have 838909887 firearms and somehow haven't killed everyone with 20 miles of you, or you don't think climate change is real, or you ride around on a steer all day wearing a cowboy hat.
Secondly, your average Germany 35 and under right now, is a total liberal feels weenie. Any attempt to fight these people and....instantly Nazi. They are all super concerned with how others see them and that they are using the correct 'script'. Think of them as southern Cali liberals when talking to each other and how fucking gay and sanctimonious they sound. That's your average German now.
Which brings me to the story of the last time I was in Germany (which I don't recognize at all anymore, and I'm sure they would probably try me for war crimes at this point), a few months before the Trump election. 2 very telling things happened within this 24 hours that explained so much to me.
My mom (Trump voter), myself and my aunt (CDU voter) go to a bar in the larger city we're near. The Provence of Germany we are is one of the Provinces that is currently voting in sort of a mid-term type election for German government. So there was this group of 3 people from the CDU (remember, right wing German republicans) that were at the bar kind of casually making sure people voted and/or doing some kind of stealth exit polling. One comes over to talk to us and my mother tells him that she is a US citizen now and that so am I. The guys' eyes light up. Americans! Yet Germans who are from here and are now Americans. Even better! So the other 2 quickly come over.
With a smile on all 3 of their faces, and I remember this like it happened 10 mins ago because my mom and I still make fun of this guy to this day, the main guy (remember, right wing German republican party) asks us what we think about Clinton and Trump, because Clinton is such a well spoken, respected and accomplished statesperson; how could people actually vote for Trump and its troubling that anyone even takes him seriously.
We both told him we're voting for Trump. He thought we were literally fucking with him.
Second thing was that during this election, a new party had formed called the AFD (Alternative for Germany). It was a party that basically wanted to give German people a new alternative from the usual bullshit. They ran on Germans first. No debt. No immigration. Build our economy. Stop sending other places money. Stop interfering in other countries' bullshit. Basically, if you're not German, fuck off.
They won the largest amount of seats not only for a 'new' party, but for any party in a single election, in I think history. The news and all of the groupthink instantly panicked. We were going to round up gays and jews and put them in cattle cars. We're going to do every Nazi thing again because that party is 100% Nazis, etc. The news made it sound like everyone was about to be murdered in their sleep. People were crying. It was glorious.
BTW, you totally have the 'oh look, its an American' look. And EVERYONE there speaks English. We just like to watch you bumble around at the bus/train station asking for help from anyone that speaks English, know that we all do, and then not say anything.