CDU doesn't need to secretly work with AfD. Many of CDU's members and its current administration have similar opinion of non-ethnically-Germanic residents with AfD. Merz has shown that he is willing to work with AfD before the election on those areas.

Being incompetent and shortsighted is enough. Being blinded with the idea that Germans will keep electing them and choosing them for power feeds their incompetence. They want extreme powers now. They don't think the extreme powers they give to the various organizations will be used against democratic society. This is just the repeat of Weimar republic.

Meanwhile they are filling Germans with hate against minorities and benefactors of the social system which legitimizes AfD. They also keep doing nothing (which is their core-competence really). They fix no parts of the broken system. This legitimizes AfD even more.

There isn’t much difference between our current Chancellor and a AfD member of Parlament.