Today, Germany is king of Europe. Ever since Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Britain, said in 1995, “You have not anchored Germany to Europe; You have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, unified Germany,” Germany has further tightened its hold on the levers of European power.

Since 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, uniting East and West Germany, the country has enjoyed a meteoric rise on the international stage. Today, its army and navy are deployed around the globe. Increasingly, the world is crying out for German leadership, and Germany is responding by once more flexing its muscles.

But those muscles are connected to an increasingly restless heart. In a strange paradox, while facing ongoing international and European success, Germans are more pessimistic than any other Europeans. Though the skies are bright for Germany’s future prospects, a pale of gloom hovers over the country today. Increasingly, as Deutsche Welle put it in a September 17 report, Germany sees the glass half empty.

The main complaint? Germans are tiring of democracy.

A report released by the German Statistics Office indicates only 38 percent of eastern Germans think democracy is good for Germany, down from 49 percent in 2000.

Increasingly, though, it is not only economically depressed eastern Germans who have become disaffected with democracy. Even the affluent Germans from the former West are losing faith in the democratic tradition. In 2000, 80 percent of western Germans thought democracy was good for the country. By 2005, that number had slid to 71 percent.

The West would be naive to think that democracy is a German tradition. It is not. A survey of German history illuminates the fact that, except for its present period of democracy, Germans have preferred a strong-man government.

As Michael Demiashkevich writes in The National Mind: English, French, German, “Believing in the existence of two German souls … we are convinced one of these is ‘totalitarianism.’”

Three times in the last 150 years, a totalitarian government has ruled the country. Germany, Europe, the world and history bear the mark of each episode. As journalist William Cook put it, when walking through a quaint town in the border region of Germany and Poland, “you can trace all the upheavals of the last century, from the Kaiser to Hitler, from East German Communism to the West German Bundesrepublik.”

An interesting question to consider is, if Germany had won World War ii, would its form of government have somehow changed from totalitarian to democratic? The answer from history is no. Democracy has always been imposed upon Germany from without. While Americans prefer a citizen government, Germans favor the rule of a strong man. Even today, a chancellor dominates their democracy.

Historically, unlike other countries, anytime Germany has become disaffected with its current situation, it has become very dangerous. As author Luigi Barzini wrote in The Europeans, “It is when they [Germans] are disconcerted and fretful that they can be most dangerous.”

Germany follows a cycle of history: Starting with what we see today, there is the phase when Germans become restless and fretful. They become unhappy with the current order. They perceive instability, disorder or threats to the nation, and yearn for stability and order. Usually, this period is short, such as the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). Demiashkevich wrote, “[A]crimonious discussions and dissensions among the multiple political parties of the 14-year parliamentary period of German political history, 1919-1933, had fatigued and frightened the average German, bewildered by artifices of political finessing, party bargaining and party intrigues. The nation was seized by a longing for the rule of one man, a moral—not an intellectual—superman ….”

Though today we see the same wrangling and disputing among political parties leading to a desire for change of democracy to something else, the memories of the atrocities of World War ii have until now mitigated the desire to change to another form of government. Simply put, Germans have been wary of themselves.

But with constant change in Berlin and no strong leader in sight, and with a fast-rising danger from Islamist extremists, Germans are beginning to get past this mental hang-up.

In the next phase of the national cycle, once disaffection has taken firm hold, as it has today, Germans begin to look for a savior. When the modern nation of Germany was founded in 1871, that savior was Bismarck. Hitler was another. After the war, Adenaeur was another. Each was sought and embraced by a public desperate for a strong man to right the German ship and make all the disorder go away.

Today, with discontent and chaos bubbling and boiling in Berlin, the German nation, by its disaffection with democracy, is showing a lack of confidence in its politicians to solve the problems. The spreading disaffection with democracy shows a German nation opening up to the idea of such a strong man.

Historically, once a strong man rises on the scene, Germany has a habit of providing him with absolute power. There are characteristics the German people look for in their leaders. Germans have preferred a strong leader like Bismarck or Hitler who dominates the domestic scene and who commands attention on the international stage. A man who can demonstrate German prestige and power traditionally is well received in Germany.

Also, this man has a European vision. While Bismarck sought to protect a newly unified Germany, he certainly had a pan-European vision. Without doubt, Hitler had a pan-European vision. Germany has always been at the heart of Europe. Prior to the Age of Enlightenment and the rise of the nation-state, Germany was the protector of the “Christian” (Catholic) faith, and the dominant power in Europe. Some of the greatest rulers in European history have been Germans: Ferdinand ii, Charlemagne and Frederick ii.

Another quality Germans appear to want in their leader is cunning. Bismarck was a master of balancing Europe. By cunning, Hitler gained large tracts of Europe without firing a gun. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, “It’s not for nothing that the Germans [die Deutsche] are called the ‘tiusche’ people, the ‘Tausche’ (deceptive) people ….” Today, that kind of German leader has yet to rise—but one might be poised. When he arrives, the next, and second-to-last, phase of the national cycle will begin. Once Germans install a strong man, they become fiercely loyal to that man and his vision.

In World War ii, the world witnessed ordinary Germans commit unspeakable crimes against their neighbors and Jews. However, when Adenaeur took the reigns of control after the war, Germans rallied to his vision for the country. In what many remarked was a miracle, Germany rose from the ashes of the war to great power within a decade. It is this apparent contradiction within the German soul, being willing to shift its loyalties from one man to the next, from one vision to the next, from good to evil, that perplexes and frightens Europe. What Germany is today is not what Germany will be tomorrow. Germany is a chameleon.

Once Germany has a strong man at the helm, Germany enters a stage of stability, ambition and fearlessness. A sense of national destiny sets in. During this stage, Germany is most dangerous and cunning. In history, this stage can be compared to the Hitler years of 1933-1939 when symptoms of German belligerency were at their highest.

The final stage, then, is marked by war preparations and war itself, as Germany tries to bring Europe and the world under its heel. The last stage of this cycle is defeat at the hands of enemies, after which, at some point, the cycle begins again.

After Germany was defeated in World War ii, it was forced to adopt democracy. But that is not the German way! Forced into a democratic straitjacket, it immediately went to work applying an imperialist policy within Europe: By cunning, Germany has maneuvered its way to the top of the European Union. At its heart, Germany’s imperialist policy is an expansionist policy, which means Germany must dominate. And today, as former Prime Minister Thatcher said, Europe is anchored to Germany.

That is why, as Barzini wrote, “It is therefore once again essential for everybody, the French, the British, the Italians, the other Europeans, as well as the Americans and the Soviets, to keep an eye across the Rhine and the Alps and the Elbe in order to figure out, as our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, the ancient Romans, and remote ancestors had to do, who the Germans are, who they think they are, what they are doing, and where they will go next …” (op. cit.).

Should we be surprised at Germany’s disaffection with democracy? Actually that trend aligns perfectly with its history and national cycle.

We can know where Germany is going next. Facing mounting international instability and growing dissatisfaction with the current disorder at home, Germany is ripe for the rise of another strong man.