Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in November 2024, German public news service Deutsche Welle published an article with the headline “Trump’s election victory is a nightmare for Germany”.
A few hours later, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, announced that its tripartite political coalition had collapsed. Disagreements over how to help strengthen the weak German economy were a major factor, but Scholz mentioned that the US election result also fueled the dissolution of the coalition.
A month later, Scholz lost a vote of confidence, ending the government he had led since 2021. Germany will have to federal elections on February 23, 2025.
Germany is considered one of the most powerful countries in the United States. closest allies in Western Europe, establishing partnerships in everything from economic trade to military defense.
But that could change with Trump returning to power. Like Angela Merkel, former long-serving German chancellor, said in November 2024the upcoming Trump presidency “is a challenge for the world, especially for multilateralism.” Indeed, Trump’s American approach to international affairs goes against multilateralismwhich is the idea that different countries working together helps everyone involved.
As someone who does research German-American relations In the 20th century, I share the concerns of German politicians that the new Trump administration poses a serious threat to relations.
German concerns include Trump’s potential launch of a trade war induced by tariffsas well as the possibility that the president-elect will withdraw financial and military support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Both scenarios would further harm the weak German economy – especially since, following the United States and the European Union, Germany is the third largest donor in Ukraine and would be forced to shoulder an even greater share of that financial support if the United States stopped giving money to Ukraine.
German politicians too stay stunned by Trump’s particular political style, even though he has already been president.
Merkel wrote in her message Memories 2024 “Liberty: Memoirs 1954-2021” that when she first met Trump in 2017, she acted like she was having a conversation with “someone completely normal.” But Merkel quickly realized that Trump was not like other American politicians. She observed that Trump seemed to think that all countries were in competition and that the success of one meant the failure of the other.
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A lasting alliance
This was not the kind of American president Merkel and other Germans were accustomed to. Merkel was born in 1954, when Germany was divided into two countries: communist, Soviet-aligned East Germany, where Merkel grew up, and capitalist West Germany, made up of three sectors Western countries controlled by France, the United States and the United States. United Kingdom at the end of World War II and aligned with the United States
The United States adopted West Germany as an important ally shortly after the war. This alliance helped the United States ensure that Germany, which not long ago was an enemy of the United States during World War II, would never again become a threat to world peace.
West Germany also served as an important front line in Europe as the United States fought through the Cold War with the Soviet Union beginning in 1947.
West Germany, meanwhile, enjoyed the power of having an American überpartner during the Cold War, especially since West Germany prospered economically during most of the conflict. East Germany’s economy, in contrast, was relatively weak throughout the Cold War.
Perhaps the most visible symbol of Germany’s division was the Berlin Wall, a 150 km long partition that ran through Berlin. East German authorities built the wall in 1961 in order to prevent East Germans from fleeing to West Germany.
It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, symbolizing the imminent end of the Cold War that year and opening the possibility of German unification, that Merkel entered politics.
Germany and United States unified
As a politician in the 1990s, Merkel witnessed how President George HW Bush convinced France and the United Kingdom to put aside their fears of new German domination of Europe and to allow their former enemy from World War II to unify and gain full sovereignty.
The four major Allied powers of World War II in Europe – the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and France – had initially denied Germany the right to sovereignty after the war’s end.
But in 1990, the four Allies signed the Treaty two plus four – an international agreement that allowed Germany to unify into a fully sovereign state in October 1990.
Immediately afterwards, Bush welcomed the transatlantic alliance between the United States and Germany. The US president highlighted the two countries’ “common love of freedom” and expressed his hope that they would become “partners in leadership.”
Bush’s words marked a significant shift in Germany’s international expectations and the need for it to become a more influential political and military player in world politics. However, this is a turnaround that many Germans have not necessarily appreciated. The Germans were reluctant to take on the powerful leadership role that the United States expected of the country.
At the time, there was a widespread belief in Germany that military restraint had finally made their country a stable and prosperous country, after two devastating wars.
In fact, in almost every global crisis since 1990 – since the war in Bosnia in 1992 to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Germany was reluctant to take the lead. Germany instead prefers to play a secondary role in the management of international conflicts, mainly thanks to its membership in the military coalition of NATO and the United Nations.
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Germany’s international position today
After Russia launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Germany’s approach to international conflicts changed dramatically and it eventually assumed the leadership role envisioned by Bush in 1990. In a historic speech from February 27, 2022, Scholz called the attack “Zeitenwende”meaning “a pivotal time” in German, and announced a significant increase in military spending.
The United States and other Western allies welcomed the change.
While NATO members had already agreed invest a minimum of 2% of their gross domestic product in defense spending in 2006Germany – like other European countries – has failed to respect this commitment for many years.
It was only in February 2024 that Germany finally met its 2% spending target for the first time in the wake of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
This is not just the result of this conflict.
Pressure from US presidents, particularly Trump, also played a major role. Trump’s continued threat throughout his first presidency to “pay your bills or we leave NATO» had apparently paid off.
It will be up to the new German government to remind Trump of the history of German-American relations and the many benefits of the transatlantic alliance between the two powers since 1945.
