Rewriting the past? Inside the AfD's history agenda

It's Berlin Briefing time, and today we take a close look at the latest attempt by a key leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany to rewrite historical facts on the Holocaust.

We ask whether the AfD can legitimately claim that denials of German responsibility for the Holocaust by one of its own are simply a glitch.

And we take a hard look at why this continuous stream of history denial is increasingly failing to draw a public response.

With me here is Melanie Amann, a prominent analyst on the AfD.

She's the digital editor of Germany's Funke Media Group, and she has her own Amann Unframed podcast.

And down the line is Jacob Scheraga, a man described by the German weekly Der Spiegel as Germany's Nazi alarm system, because he systematically tracks distortions of historical facts.

But first, let's take a look and a listen most of all to what Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the state of Thuringia and a key figure inside the Alternative for Germany just said.

To this day, I still cannot explain how this could have happened to us.

But I would like to point out that it did not happen in the name of Germans.

It happened under the conditions of a dictatorship, and a huge secret was made of it.

That explains nothing.

There were followers, no question about it, but this crime was not committed in the name of the German people.

And it, uh, the question he was answering to was about the Holocaust, and this was with Weltwoche, a podcast, um, by a Swiss broadcaster and newspaper.