Hello, my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics.

And I'm delighted to say this week we're joined by Chris Clark, the best-selling historian of Germany,

author of The Sleepwalkers, a very widely read book about the origins of the First World War

whose many fans, I believe, include Angela Merkel, who got her cabinet to read it.

I'm looking at Chris to see whether he's going to nod.

And we're going to be talking about Germany and about Mrs. Merkel's trip to see President Trump among other things.

We've also got Helen Thompson, Chris Bickerton with us. We have too many Chris's,

so we'll have to work out a way of distinguishing between them. You'll probably be able to tell the difference.

Chris Bickerton, an article last week in the New York Times about Angela Merkel.

Because this is mainstream American journalism, they very helpfully gave a headline

in which tells you what's in the article so you don't have to read it. But still think people should read it.

I'm probably going to paraphrase it, but I think the headline was roughly,

will Angela Merkel save the West? Don't count on it.

Something like that, yeah.

And if that wasn't enough, we will, at the end of this podcast, also talk about India and Modi's triumph.

Germany first. Chris.

A couple of months ago we talked about Mrs. May's trip to Washington,

so now it's Mrs. Merkel, goes to Washington.

And one of the challenges for all European politicians, I guess, is to judge

have the rules of the game changed or not.

Are they going to Washington in order to, as far as possible, establish some kind of continuous relationship

that fits into their previous view of America and the rest of the world,

...