The German Wehrmacht surrendered on May 8, 1945. This marked the end of World War Two in Europe, which had begun on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland; in Asia, it continued for a few more months until Japan’s surrender.Germany’s Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler had committed suicide a few days earlier in the “Führer” Bunker in Berlin.The horror of the War surpassed all previous wars before it: around 60 million died worldwide, six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, large parts of Europe were destroyed, and millions of people were missing or displaced.With the fall of National Socialist Germany in 1945, a new, bipolar order emerged in Europe and beyond, which lasted for a good 40 years. During the War, the Western Allies — the US, UK, and France — worked together with the Soviet Union to defeat the Nazis.But tensions emerged even before the end of the war: The Western powers stood for democracy and aimed for a free alliance with the defeated states, while the Soviet Union, on the other hand, subjected all the countries it occupied during its military campaign to a communist system.In 1947, US President Harry Truman announced what was later called the Truman Doctrine. The US committed itself to supporting “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”The aim was to stop the expansion of the Soviet Union. Europe was divided into a Soviet-dominated eastern half and an American-dominated western half.

Protection from the US could be trusted

Germany became the focal point of this conflict: a border soon ran through the middle of the country and through Berlin. It was the era of the Cold War. The mutual deterrence between the two nuclear military blocs of NATO under the leadership of the US and the Warsaw Pact under Soviet rule ensured that nuclear war did not break out. However, the world came close on several occasions.In the western part of Germany (the country remained divided until 1990) the Federal Republic of Germany was protected by the US as part of NATO.This remained the case even after the end of the East-West confrontation in 1989/90, German reunification, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For a few years, it looked as if the entire continent, including Russia, would develop peacefully and democratically. Countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union joined NATO.

Trump switches sides

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the illusion has been shattered. One of the principles of the previous order, that national borders may only be changed peacefully, ceased to apply.Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has been calling NATO’s security arrangements into question. “If they (other NATO countries) don’t pay, I won’t defend them,” Trump said once again in March.“We are in the midst of a historical upheaval, comparable to the major political turning points in the 20th century, especially those of 1945 and 1989/91,” historian Norbert Frei from the University of Jena told DW. “The transatlantic order established after the Second World War, largely by the US, from which Germany benefited greatly — first in the context of Western European unification, but then also after the end of the East-West conflict and the integration of Eastern Europe — is disintegrating before our very eyes.“His colleague, Potsdam historian Manfred Görtemaker, told DW that Trump’s presidency has shown “that the Europeans have neglected their own self-defense while looking to the Americans.” Donald Trump was not the first US president to demand that Europeans spend more on their own defense. Back in 2016, Barack Obama said: “Europe has sometimes been too complacent in its defense.”But Trump has taken things much further. In the Ukraine War, he is now effectively siding with Russia. In the event of a peace agreement, Ukraine would neither get all of its territory back nor be able to join NATO. This is good news for Russian President Vladimir Putin.“The entire Euro-Atlantic security system is crumbling before our eyes,” Putin said last year.

Friedrich Merz wants ‘independence’ from Washington

Some in Germany are hoping that after Trump there will be a return to the old transatlantic order. Is that realistic? Norbert Frei is skeptical: “At present, it’s hard to say how much will be left after the Trump presidency — and it’s even harder to say whether anything can be reconstructed afterwards.”His advice for the German government? “Ever since Konrad Adenauer introduced an unconditional commitment to the West, Germany has been firmly anchored in Europe. And Germany should now do everything it can to ensure that the European Union can survive politically, economically, and militarily, if necessary, even without the US.”Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz agrees. Immediately after the Bundestag elections, he said that Europe must develop its own security policy independent of America.This is an idea that Manfred Görtemaker cautions against: “Independence from the US is a complete illusion.” The Europeans will not be able to go their own way, “because it is the Americans who will have to continue to guarantee nuclear deterrence. So it makes the most sense to return to close cooperation between the US and Europe based on a new realpolitik calculus.”