Election results

Trump's rude awakening for Germany

A few hours after US President-elect Donald Trump took to the stage to make his acceptance speech, as evening fell in Berlin, small candles were quietly lit and carefully placed in front of aged, stone doorsteps and along the darkening pavements.

Berliners were marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht (when Jewish people and their businesses were violently attacked in 1938).

It was barely noted amid the febrile howl of international reaction to the US election. Neither was the 27th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which shares the same date.

But both events - and all that they represent of this country's past - explain, partially at least, why Germans were so repulsed by Donald Trump's election rhetoric and why so few (4% by one poll's reckoning) wanted him in the White House.