Germany is poised to pass the mark of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 this week, a sombre milestone that several of its neighbours crossed months ago but which Western Europe’s most populous nation had hoped to avoid.

Discipline, a robust health-care system and the rollout of multiple vaccines — one of them homegrown — were meant to stave off a winter surge of the kind that hit Germany last year.

In practice, Germans faced a confusing array of pandemic rules, lax enforcement and a national election — followed by a drawn-out government transition during which senior politicians dangled the prospect of further