Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome back to Conversations.

I'm very pleased to be joined again by Ann Applebaum, the very distinguished author

of many important books, articles in the Atlantic you need to be reading, and to keep up with

what's going on in Ukraine, in Europe, and the U.S. and the world. I guess your two most recent

books are the most recent was this year, last year on autocracy Inc and before that what

2020 I think the twilight of democracy is that what it was called yeah that's that is what it

was called twilight two upbeat titles which unfortunately capture the moment I'm afraid so

anyway and thanks so much for joining me today.

Happy to join you from Warsaw.

Okay, you'll have to tell us what's happening in Warsaw, actually.

Let's begin with Europe. We want to get the anniversary, obviously, of the third anniversary of the all-out invasion of Ukraine. We want to talk about that summit. You've been there,

and you know so much about it. But let's begin with Europe and the German elections right next door, more or less, to Warsaw yesterday.

What does it mean? What does it mean for Germany? What does it mean for Europe? What conclusions do you draw?

So there are a couple interesting things about the German elections. I mean, as you

listeners probably know by now, the Christian Democrats were the largest party. They won a plurality of

votes. This is a center-right party. This was Angela Merkel's party. Historically, they emerge from

Christians who, after the Second World War, believed that there was a more

moral way to do politics. A long time ago for a book that I wrote, you know, 10 or so years ago,

I interviewed some very old men who were part of that movement. So that just places them in history. The new leader,

the new chancellor of Germany will be Friedrich Mertz, who has been in and out of politics. He was a

businessman. Merkel didn't like him. He came back. The interesting thing about Mertz is that he's

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