'It feels like a betrayal.' The unravelling of transatlantic ties to US has shocked Germany [View all]

‘It feels like a betrayal.’ Germany’s painful estrangement from the US
The unravelling of transatlantic ties has shocked a country that had an emotional attachment to the relationship



Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, German attitudes towards America have flipped from broadly positive to overwhelmingly negative. A December survey by the Pew Research Center and Körber Foundation found that just 27 per cent of Germans judged relations with the US as “good”, down from three-quarters the previous year.

Last month, a Forsa poll conducted after Trump threatened to seize Greenland found that 71 per cent of Germans now viewed the US as an adversary rather than a partner. A majority of AfD sympathisers agreed.

For Röttgen, Washington’s recent hostility towards its European allies — including efforts to “sell European security” to Russia through a 28-point ceasefire proposal — amounts to a second Zeitenwende, or historical turning point, after Russia’s 2022 invasion.

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Even in Germany’s most American city, Kaiserslautern in Rheinland-Palatinate, doubts are creeping up. Home to some 50,000 US service members, civilians and their families posted to the sprawling Ramstein air base — the largest outside the US — the city has long revolved around transatlanticism.