“Germans are either at your throat or at your feet,” quipped old war-lover Winston Churchill.
Today, Germans are at our feet – an astounding 80 years after the end of the Second World War. Though mostly reunited, Germany remains an occupied nation, reduced to second-class status and afflicted with war guilt. Japan – also occupied – remains in a similar position.
The recent German federal elections brought the moderate, polite Christian Democratic Union to power, ousting the feeble, namby-pamby Socialists, whose primary goal was not to offend anyone. Many younger Germans, fed up with Germany’s subservient behaviour, voted for the new AfD, a moderately conservative party. However, AfD was blocked from coalition leadership after a chorus of howls from the press and political rivals branding it a neo-Nazi party. AfD’s leader is a big-boned woman whom German media claim is a lesbian who lives with a younger South Asian lady—hardly a reincarnation of the Third Reich.
The liberal German and US media continued to run reports on Auschwitz and other wartime atrocities. No one took the time to mention the Soviet concentration camps or the 27 million people killed by Stalin in the USSR. No one acknowledges that “Nazi” stands for “National Socialist.” The feeble US-dominated German press never mentions that the Second World War was started by France and Germany, nor how many times Chancellor Hitler attempted to make peace with London and Paris. Likewise, there is little discussion of how much German territory was detached between 1945 and 1948.
The most significant point is that Germany remains under US military occupation. This situation arose due to what was perceived as the Soviet threat in 1945 and beyond. General George S. Patton understood this well and argued that the US should have attacked the Soviet Union instead of Germany. He was killed soon after in a mysterious vehicle crash. Pavel Sudoplatov, a former KGB general, claimed in his revealing book Special Tasks that the Roosevelt administration had many high-level Soviet agents.
Today, of the 84,000 US troops in Europe, 39,000 are permanently based in Germany, 10,000 in Britain, 14,000 in Poland, and 13,000 in sunny Italy, with more in Turkey and the Baltic states. Many are air force personnel maintaining America’s control of the skies over Europe.
Of course, one must ask why, 80 years after the end of the Second World War, the US still maintains such large forces in Europe—not to mention Japan. The US claims it is defending against a possible Russian invasion. However, three years of war have demonstrated that Russia is no longer the military juggernaut it was in the post-war years when its forces numbered in the millions.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin is a convenient bogeyman. Claims that he intends to invade Western Europe are nonsense. He might attempt to reclaim the Baltic states. But US accusations that Putin seeks to annex parts of the world are rather rich, considering the US invasions of Panama, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Iraq, Somalia, and, most recently, Trump’s territorial claims on Canada and Greenland.
The key issue remains: how can a nation that has been occupied by a foreign army since 1945 be truly independent? When it was revealed that the US National Security Agency had tapped the mobile phone of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the only response from red-faced German officials was a little huffing and puffing.
Germans should resume acting like a strong and proud people instead of beaten dogs. Germany is the locomotive of Europe. For Europe to reclaim its key global role, Germany must lead the way—rather than waiting for email instructions from Washington.
And it’s high time to forget about the Second World War.
© Eric S. Margolis 2025
