Germany stands on the brink of a political earthquake as a hard-Right nationalist party looks set to take control of a regional parliament for the first time since the end of Nazi rule eight decades ago.Last night an official exit poll showed that 44.5 per cent of voters in the sprawling eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt backed the xenophobic and anti-migration party Alternative for Germany (AfD).The projected victory set alarm bells ringing in Berlin and Brussels as the AfD has pledged to 'protect the homeland' by deporting all illegal migrants, shutting the border, banning LGBTQ rainbow flags in state schools and halting the construction of new wind farms.Its leader in the state, 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund, also wants to reform the public broadcasters, end compulsory school attendance and rewrite school history books, which focus too much for his liking on the crimes of the Third Reich.The AfD feeds on a sense of nostalgia for communist East Germany in Saxony-Anhalt and simmering resentment over the wealth gap between it and the former West Germany decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.The prospect of a hard-Right state drew thousands of the AfD's opponents to a rally on Saturday in Magdeburg, the regional capital, with banners saying 'Life is better without Nazis'.