They probably won’t but Germans should pay close attention to a recent news item out of Russia: The Levada polling institute – long internationally acknowledged as serious and dependable – has published the result of a recent survey. It shows that Germany is now considered peak hostile by ordinary Russians: 55% of them name Germany as the country most unfriendly toward Russia.

Five years ago, that figure stood at 40%. That was no small number either, but two things stand out now: First, the rapid increase in Germany’s un-favorability rating and, second, the fact that Berlin has managed to take over the top position in this dismal ranking: For 20 years it was securely held by the US, which still came in at a whopping 76% as recently as last year.

But now, clearly responding to Trump’s new, comparatively more rational course toward Moscow, “only” 40% of Russians see the US as the most unfriendly state. To paraphrase an old Soviet motto: Berlin has caught up with and overtaken America.

Many Germans, especially in the political, mainstream media, and conformist ’expert’ elites will either completely ignore or dismiss this shift. Others will even be foolish enough to feel pleased: What better evidence that the new German bellicism has left an impression?

For a historian – or really anyone with a memory – the Levada finding should be alarming. To see why, we need a broader context. The thing about Germany is that, sooner or later, the question of war or peace – at least in Europe or even the world – depends on it, whatever usually unoriginal ideas its elites get worked up about at any given time.

Maybe that special combustibility is due to a deep mismatch between Germany’s resources and location, on one side, and its geopolitical environment, on the other, as Henry Kissinger used to quip. Perhaps the explanation is less forgiving and has to do with a failing political culture shaped by persistent habits of shortsightedness and misguided ambitions.

In any case, in about 1945, after the second global war caused by Berlin in much less than half a century, everyone who mattered – not the Germans anymore at that point – seemed to understand that one large Germany can be, let’s say, awkward for the rest of the world. Two seemed about right, especially when both were under firm control, from Washington and Moscow, respectively.

The........

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