Officially, the United States of America declared it was not at war with Germany through a joint resolution of Congress Oct. 19, 1951. And yet, here we are in 2024, 79 years after the end of the Second World war and the United States still has 35,068 active duty military personnel in Germany and over 40 military installations.
The corresponding number of active duty Russian troops in Germany, the country that succeeded the Soviet Union, and the one that did more than any other to defeat Germany, is zero.
In fact America never signed a peace treaty with Germany to end the war. There are surrender documents of individual German armies, but none with the civil government that employed them. By contrast, when Japan surrendered to the United States, the document was signed first by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu.
In Germany, after Hitler’s death, a new government was formed headed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reichspräsident and Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, as first minister. This administration, called the Flensburg Government, because of the town it was in near the Danish border, lasted for three weeks.
Wikipedia tells us what happened next:
Upon the capitulation of all German forces on 8 May, the administration headed by Dönitz and Krosigk ceased to meaningfully function as a national government. For about two weeks after the surrender, it was for most practical purposes ignored by the Western Allies as well as neutral states and Japan. In the absence of direct military intervention within Flensburg itself, the ministry there continued to regularly meet and conduct what business it could. Finally, due to factors including pressure from the Soviet Union, on 23 May British troops arrested the entire cabinet as prisoners of war and thus effectively dissolved the last surviving legal remnants of the Nazi regime. This dissolution was formalized by the four Allied Powers on 5 June 1945, who at that time formed the Allied Control Council to co-ordinate the civil administration of Allied-occupied Germany.[2]
So is that clear? Instead of negotiating with the German government, the British arrested it and made its members, Prisoners of War.
The western Allies maintained that a functioning German state had already ceased to exist, and that consequently the surrender of the German military had effected the complete termination of Nazi Germany.
How very convenient. Dönitz was imprisoned for ten years and then went on to live to the age of 89, the actual head of the German government, ignored by the Americans, the history books and the public. He eventually relinquished his role and wrote two books defending himself, but legal principles be damned, the Allies had other plans.
The Allied Control Council then got to work to both write out a new constitution—called “Basic Law” to avoid calling it a Constitution— and a new alliance to pin the country firmly in the Western camp, and to garrison it with troops to make sure it stayed there.
The Basic Law said, under the provisions of Article 146, a proper constitution must be “freely adopted by the German people,” but curiously, it was never submitted to a popular vote, neither in 1949, nor in 1990 when the country was reunified. There are several other oddities. The article which would allow other parts of the former German state to rejoin the Motherland was revoked when East Germany joined, and there’s this:
Where the Basic Law refers to the territory under the jurisdiction of the German state, it refers to it as the “federal territory,’ so avoiding any inference of there being a constitutionally defined ‘German national territory.’
The NATO relationship is equally as mysterious as the Basic Law. Wikipedia again:
In May 1955, West Germany joined NATO, which was one of the conditions agreed to as part of the end of the country’s occupation by France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In other words, in order to end the Allied occupation, Germany had to enter an alliance which allowed Allied forces to continue to occupy bases, airfields and training grounds around the country. The Germans had to sign of course, but what choice did they have?
So, lets review the way America has treated Germany.
- First it arrests its remaining government and puts members in jail.
- Then it declares there is no government to deal with and to sign a peace treaty with.
- It forms an administration and writes a constitution, but doesn’t call it one. No general vote by Germans is held, then or now.
- As a condition of withdrawing control over the country, it insists Germany join an anti-Soviet alliance. And, as part of that membership, Germany has to agree to the stationing of (mostly) American troops on its territory.
- Finally, to agree to reunification, Germany has to agree to no further re-acquisitions of former German territory (or Austria).
Finally, we come to the present day. Germany in 2022 controlled 10 percent of the U.S. car market with sales of 768,000 units, worth $3.82 Billion. This percentage was increasing as consumers appreciated German quality and value. One reason for this success was German access to cheap Russian gas through the Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
If that source of energy could be cut off, German costs would go up, prices would rise, and German sales in America would decline. Sabotaging a competitor’s infrastructure was outrageous of course, but what was Germany going to do about it?
In a Substack article, the American reporter, Seymour Hersh, alleged that the September 26, 2022, sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which carried natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, was carried out by the U.S. in a top-secret CIA operation ordered by President Joe Biden, with collaboration from Norway.
Subsequent admissions by European officials have tended to substantiate this claim and it’s certainly believed by Russia. If any peacetime action, by any state, was more strategic than this, I can’t think what it might be. Certainly the pipeline bombing had a bigger effect on Germany than 9/11 had on the United States.
Yes, I think the two countries are still at war, certainly America is with Germany. I wonder when Germany will realize it’s in the wrong alliance with the wrong country and needs to do something about it.
If anyone in Germany wonders what independence looks like, I have some suggestions. First get out of the NATO alliance. Second, ask the United States to remove all its troops from the country. Third demand reparations for the Nord Stream bombing. Fourth, rewrite a constitution for Germany, and Finally, hold a national referendum to approve it. Just saying.
