It’s been 80 years since World War II ended in Europe. The US has been providing security for the western half of Europe and later its eastern half. But Trump is questioning that defense.
By Christoph HASSELBACH
On May 8, 1945, the Wehrmacht (Nazi German Army) capitulated. World War II, which began on September 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, ended in Europe; in Asia it continued for several months until the capitulation of Japan. A few days earlier, Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in the “Führerbunker” (Führer bunker) in Berlin. The toll of the war’s atrocities cast a shadow over everything: around 60 million dead worldwide, six million Jews murdered by the National Socialists, entire parts of Europe destroyed, millions of people missing or expelled. With the capitulation of National Socialist Germany in 1945, a bipolar order was established in Europe that lasted almost 40 years. During the war, the Western Allies – the USA, Great Britain and France – still collaborated with the Soviet Union, to jointly achieve victory.
But after the end of the war, tensions arose: The Western powers were pro-democracy, seeking a loose alliance with the defeated states, while the Soviet Union imposed a communist system on all the countries it had conquered during its military intervention. In 1947, US President Harry Truman declared what later became known as the Truman Doctrine. The US now aimed to “support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or external pressures.” The aim was to prevent the expansion of the Soviet Union. Europe was divided into a Soviet-dominated eastern half and a western half under American domination.
RELIABILITY TO US DEFENSE
Germany became the flashpoint of this conflict: A border was quickly established between the country and Berlin. It was the time of the Cold War. The mutual demonstration of strength between the two nuclear military blocs, NATO under the leadership of the USA and the Warsaw Pact under the leadership of the Soviets, prevented open war. However, the world was on the verge of nuclear war several times. The Federal Republic of Germany, the western part of divided Germany until 1990, was under the protection of the USA as part of NATO. This continued even after the end of the East-West confrontation in 1989/90, the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For years, it seemed that the entire continent, including Russia, would develop peacefully and democratically. More and more countries that had once belonged to the Soviet Union joined NATO. Even independent Ukraine was promised that it could one day join NATO.
TRUMP CHANGES DIRECTION
But the illusions ended with the Russian intervention in Ukraine in February 2022. One of the principles of the current order, that borders can only be changed peacefully, no longer applies. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is questioning NATO protection. “If they (other NATO countries) don’t pay, I won’t protect them,” Trump said explicitly in March 2025.
“We are at the cusp of a historical turning point, similar to the political turning points of the 20th century, especially those of 1945 and 1989/91,” historian Norbert Frei from the University of Jena writes for DW. “The transatlantic order, which was founded mainly by the US after World War II and from which Germany benefited to a great extent – first in the context of Western European unification, and then with the end of the East-West conflict and the integration of Eastern Europe, is disintegrating before our eyes.” His colleague, the Potsdam historian Manfred Görtemaker, tells DW that the Trump presidency has shown that “Europeans, referring to the Americans, have neglected their own defense.” Trump has dispelled an illusion. Republican Trump is not the first president to demand more defense spending from Europeans. In 2016, Democrat Barack Obama declared: “Europe has sometimes been too complacent about its defense.”
But Trump goes much further. In the war in Ukraine, he has already practically sided with Russia. Ukraine, he says, should neither regain all of its territory nor join NATO in the event of peace. This is good news for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The entire Euro-Atlantic security system is disintegrating before our eyes,” Putin said last year.
MERZ WANTS “INDEPENDENCE” FROM WASHINGTON
Some in Germany are hoping for a post-Trump era and a return to the old transatlantic order. Is this realistic? Norbert Frei is skeptical: “How much of a Trump partnership will remain is currently impossible to say,” the expert notes – and even less so whether anything can be rebuilt after that.” His advice to the federal government is: “Since the time of Konrad Adenauer’s policies, Germany has been unconditionally anchored in the Western connection in Europe. And Germany must now do everything possible so that the European Union can, in an extreme case, even without the USA, be able to resist politically, economically and militarily.”
This is also the view of the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said immediately after the parliamentary elections that Europe should become independent of America in security policy.
This is an idea that Manfred Görtemaker draws attention to: “Independence from the US is a complete illusion.” A European path of its own would not work, “because the demonstration of nuclear power must continue to be guaranteed by the Americans. So a return to close cooperation between the US and Europe on the basis of a new calculation of realpolitik makes sense.” He emphasizes that he very much hopes that Merz, as Chancellor, will travel to Washington as soon as possible and “that this cooperation, which has worked very well in the past, will continue.”
More Europe as a replacement for a US that, 80 years after the war, can no longer be relied upon? Or a new stance shoulder to shoulder with the US? This is a question that Germany’s new government will have to answer. (DW)
