Totally worth watching. Yes, you'll have to read subtitles. But it's the speech we've been waiting to hear from our top elected official and haven't heard yet and are never going to hear. So you'll have to listen to it in German. It'll make you wish we had a chancellor of our own. Or at the very least a president.

Justin Davidson at New York Magazine writes:

Angela Merkel doesn’t do drama and she doesn’t give speeches on TV. So the mere fact that the German chancellor faced the camera across a desk and spoke to the nation Wednesday evening made the gravity of the situation clear. “Es ist ernst,” she said—“This is serious”—and those three bland words had more power than a hellfire sermon.... She laid bare not just the test we all face but also the solace that leadership can provide. Without accusations, boasts, hedges, obfuscations, dubious claims, or apocalyptic metaphors she did what a leader is supposed to do: explain the gravity of the situation and promise that the government’s help would flow to everyone who needed it.

Watching Merkel thank "those who sit at supermarket cash registers or restock shelves" made me tear up.