BERLIN — These are heady times for Europe’s far right.

Illegal immigration is spiking, the economy is anemic and the war in Ukraine has kept the conspiracy mill churning at capacity. Those developments have vaulted the parties to new heights — and in some countries into government — fueling fears in some quarters of a tectonic rightward shift in Europe’s political landscape. Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are already in power, while France’s National Rally is only 1 percentage point from being the country’s top party in the polls.

It’s tempting to dismiss this as a seen-this-movie-before moment. Europe’s most successful far-right parties, whether in the Netherlands, Austria or Scandinavia have a long history of electoral success followed by internal division and spectacular implosion.

Yet there’s a fundamental difference this time around that should give anyone who cares about Europe’s political stability pause: Germany’s at the center of the storm.

It’s one thing for Finland or Belgium (the Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang party heads the polls) to veer onto a far-right rail. When it begins to happen in Germany, however, it’s time to start plotting an escape route.

Over the past year, support for the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has nearly doubled to more than 20 percent in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, a record.

The party is now in second place, just five percentage points behind the center-right Christian Democrats. Over the summer, the AfD has also succeeded in widening its lead over the Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.

Much of AfD’s recent popularity can be attributed to persistent infighting and disarray in Scholz’s coalition with the Greens and liberal Free Democrats. Alliance members have been at odds (and at times at one another’s throats) over everything from climate policy to child welfare subsidies since they took office in late 2021.

That said, the primary driver of the AfD’s success is the same issue that has defined far-right parties across Europe for a generation: migration.

A dramatic surge in illegal immigration has accompanied the AfD’s rise, fueling concerns among many in the country that the governing class has completely lost control of Germany’s borders. German police have arrested about 43,000 migrants seeking to enter German illegally so far this year — an increase of more than 50 percent over the same period last year. It’s a safe assumption that many more make it through. The rise, first reported by German daily Bild, was particularly strong on Germany’s border with Poland, where crossings were up more than 140 percent.

“We’ve lost control over illegal migration,” Michael St?bgen, the interior of Germanys’ eastern Brandenburg state said last week.

At the same time, Germany has seen a marked rise in violent crime, which rose more than 20 percent last year. Many Germans see a connection between the rising crime levels and migration. According to police statistics, foreigners, who make up about 16 percent of Germany’s population of 83 million, accounted for about one-third of all crime suspects registered in 2022.

Delegates in voting boots during the European Election Assembly at the AfD’s federal party congress