Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reportedly observed that the purpose of the Alliance was to keep the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans down. A majority understand what is meant by keeping the Americans in and Russians out, but few grasp the full implications of keeping the Germans down. Lord Ismay was referring to using NATO as a tool for locking Germany into a military and political straitjacket which would impose limitations on the future direction of German foreign and domestic policy.  In the minds of post-WWII policy planners, this goal was as important as keeping the Russians from rolling their tanks across the whole of the Northern European Plain.

Germany had just fought two wars to establish hegemonic primacy over Europe, including the prized Eastern European borderlands within the Russian, and later Soviet, empire. The wars exhausted Germany, leaving it physically in ruins, politically divided, and spiritually scarred. After WWII, in many respects, it was the German people that took the lead in trying to ensure its neighbors that it was no longer a threat to European security. However, the victorious WWII allies that included the USSR, were not taking any chances. Germany remained politically divided between East and West. The western half became integrated into the NATO alliance, and the eastern half was absorbed into the Soviet Warsaw Pact. Firmly ensconced in NATO, former German nationalist ambitions seemed to be in check and West Germany seemed aligned with the vision of Western liberalism.

In the post-WWII period, a new generation of Germans reflected on their parents’ behavior in waging a war of annihilation against their Slavic neighbors and the Jews of Europe, and were repulsed and deeply ashamed. As a result, a pacifism took root in German society that had not existed before. German shame for the war and the Holocaust had repercussions decades later though, when Germany came to feel that they had no moral standing to keep refugees out of their country. Taking a stance against the dilution of the native German population with foreigners from alien cultures was too reminiscent of the Nazi ideology of building a nation from pure Aryan blood. As a result, massive waves of migrants from the Middle East and Africa were welcomed into Germany under Angela Merkel’s reign as German Chancellor. As one would expect, this caused social tension in German society, ushering in the ascendancy of the populous Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The German ruling party establishment has censored and ostracized the AfD, showing the extent to which they fear that the straitjacket may loosen.

German economic resurgence in the post-war period was remarkable by any standard. It was in part due to the natural industriousness of the German people, but it was also due to the post-WWII world economic order established at Bretton Woods that ensured Germany and other nations unencumbered access to resources and markets throughout the Western world. Germany, along with Japan, were early beneficiaries of the rise of modern Western liberal hegemony.

Although West Germany carried a portion of the burden of defending Europe from the Soviet bloc threat, the lion’s share of NATO’s cost fell on the shoulders of the United States. This freed Germany to provide its citizens with lavish social entitlements that the United States could not match because of the costly defense of not only Europe but the entire free world. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the Soviet Empire, Germany was reunited. Although the economic cost of integrating East Germany into West Germany was steep, the lessening of tensions with Russia allowed Germany to take a respite from the burdens of defending Europe during the Cold War. The peace dividend resulting from the end of the Cold War profoundly benefited Germany, more so than in the United States as it continued to sustain defense expenditure at a high level after the Cold War ended.

The reassertion of Russian military strength and Trump’s determination to make NATO allies pay their fair share has changed everything for Germany. It is faced for the first time in several generations of needing to decide between guns and butter. Lavish social benefits may need to be curtailed if Germany intends to resurrect its military prowess. Germany could finance a military buildup by mortgaging its future, like the U.S. has done. (U.S. debt-to-GNP stands at 122% compared with German debt-to-GNP of 63%). However, all the talk in Germany and the EU of continuing the war in Ukraine in the absence of U.S. participation, and the longer-term goal of building up German and EU military strength to substitute for a waning U.S. military presence, may be just talk and no action. It could very well be that Germans have constructed a straitjacket from which they will never be able to extricate themselves.

Image from Grok.