Recent assaults spark national debate over Germany’s increasingly raw political climate, with some seeing echoes of its dark history.

One politician ruthlessly beaten while hanging campaign posters. Another assaulted in a public library. Yet another, pushed and spat on by suspects who were part of a group of people allegedly calling out “Heil Hitler.”

A string of violent attacks on politicians in Germany — including a brutal assault on a member of the European Parliament in Dresden — has shaken many and sparked a national debate over the increasingly raw political climate in the country, with some drawing comparisons to the kind of political violence that accompanied the rise of the Nazis.

Recent attacks on politicians are “reminiscent of the darkest chapter in German history,” said Hendrik Wüst, the conservative premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, in an interview on German public television.