You Were Like A Big Brother — A German Reflection On America’s Betrayal

-Essay-

BERLIN — There was something comforting about it, like the steady hum of an engine on a long road trip. America was in the driver’s seat, strong and admirable, the more easygoing, more grown-up version of ourselves. The big brother with broad shoulders, who could be loud at times but usually meant well, at least for us in the Western world.

Nothing could touch us. Until now. The protector had, almost overnight, turned into a bully.

Since 1945, generations of West Germans like me (and surely East Germans, too) have experienced what the second term of U.S. President Donald Trump, which got off to an even worse start than the first, is tearing down at breakneck speed: a deep sense of familial trust. For us, the United States was not just a partner we somehow ended up with, but a part of who we are. A core piece of our identity. Which is why it hurts so much to see the American leadership now turning its back on us so abruptly.

Many Germans feel this pain, but perhaps none more than those of us in our 40s. That is my generation. Many of us grew up with a deep admiration for America, too young to have witnessed the fierce debates of the Cold War or the protests over NATO’s Double Track Decision. We started school around the time the Berlin Wall fell and came of age in the 1990s, when the world’s last superpower seeped into every part of our lives: politically, socially and culturally.

Transatlantic grief

And like so many others now facing middle age, I find myself wondering in these days of transatlantic grief: What are we supposed to do with all these empty feelings? Is this really happening? And if it is, who or what could possibly fill the space left by the fallen big brother, if anyone at all?

Was America not what we thought it was, just a phantom giant we carried around in our hearts? Even those who never set foot in the U.S. could be overcome by a deep longing and love for all things American. Physical distance did nothing to stop that.

But for those of us who did make the journey, the first visit to that magical land we had only seen in films, photos and books felt like a dream come true. And so it was for me, too.

This was America at the peak of its influence.

It was the summer of 1993. I was 10 years old, and my uncle was spending a year teaching at a university in Indiana. For me, a fourth grader, it was the ultimate trip: Chicago, the Midwest, New York City. The Great Lakes, which looked like an ocean, the endless highways, and my uncle’s rumbling Oldsmobile.

But what really stayed with me was the sense of something huge and entirely new. Even my parents, right before my eyes, became like wide-eyed kids again, soaking it all in and coming alive in a way I had never seen.

The streets of Manhattan, which we had seen in countless films and television shows, the suburbs with their wide garages and green lawns, the diners with their red vinyl booths: It all felt instantly familiar. It was also, in a way, like visiting a relative who had made it big. Who lived in a house twice as large as the one we had back in Germany. Who spoke with a strange accent and showed us how life was meant to be lived.

Clinton, the good American

This was America at the peak of its influence The Soviet Union had just collapsed, and democratic capitalism, born in the USA, had won the day. And we were part of that victory. Our shared dream of progress and freedom was always embodied and defended by Washington, by the man in the White House. Because yes, it was always a man, and always would be. The 42nd president, in office since January 1993, was Bill Clinton, a man who always seemed to be smiling, a laid-back, sun-kissed leader who charmed us with his style. He was our president, too.

Clinton was the face of American self-confidence. A saxophone player in a suit, who promised that under his leadership, the Western world would become better, richer, more beautiful. And was it not true? By the end of the 1990s, peace in Europe was holding, the Balkans had calmed, and the Kosovo Albanians had been saved from genocide by NATO bombs launched on presidential orders and delivered by American jets.

Clinton, the good American. We hardly noticed the abuse of power, the Lewinsky scandal that nearly ended his presidency. We brushed it off as a personal lapse. One of the enduring images of his time in office: him standing between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, with peace seemingly within reach.

That moment joined the gallery of iconic photos of American presidents, many of them taken right in our own backyard, in Berlin: John F. Kennedy at Schöneberg Town Hall, Ronald Reagan by the Wall. Later, Barack Obama would take his place in that picture, too, smiling in front of the Victory Column.

 Forrest Gump, a fitting metaphor 

And we children of the ’90s found the perfect version of this righteous American hero on the big screen, in the blockbuster film of 1994: Forrest Gump. Sure, the American hero played by Tom Hanks may have been a bit slow. And yes, he fought in the unjust war in Vietnam. But deep down, he was a kind-hearted, innocent soul with the best of intentions. A war hero, a self-made millionaire, and in the end, a touching single father trying to keep his composure as his brilliant young son boarded the school bus. Wasn’t that a fitting metaphor for us, too? Set on the right course by America in 1949, with our future finally in view?

Even the intellectual left could not, and perhaps did not want to, fully escape America’s pull.

In the spring of 1945, American tanks rolled into my grandmother’s village in the Palatinate region. They gave her chocolate and cigarettes for her father, as she would always tell us, an early sign of the generosity America would show us again and again in the years that followed. A gesture of trust, offered when Germany was in ruins. We did not get the Morgenthau Plan, which would have turned Germany into a bleak farming backwater. No, we got care packages, candy from the sky, and the Marshall Plan. We got credit.

And even the generation of 1968 protesters, so often critical of the United States, still listened to The Doors, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. They took their cue from the American anti-war protests. Even their rebellion was an American one. Sure, some segments of society leaned toward pacifism, and that sometimes came with anti-Americanism, but it never dominated public opinion. Even the intellectual left could not, and perhaps did not want to, fully escape America’s pull: not in lifestyle, not in pop culture, not even in the brands we wore or the music we played.

Each generation’s American TV moment

Of course, there were blemishes in that otherwise picture-perfect story, even in Grandma’s tale of chocolate and cigarettes. Like the time an American GI chased her sister around the kitchen table with a knife in hand. But that incident was brushed aside in our family lore. A commanding officer stormed in and put an end to the ordeal before anything worse could happen. Just a strange anecdote.

What really stuck with me were the stories of American tanks cresting the hills in peace. Every person in my family had their American moment. For my mother, it was the moon landing — the whole family huddled around a black and white television in the middle of the night. For my father, it was getting up at 3 a.m. with his father to watch Muhammad Ali’s boxing matches.

But for me, my American moment came on Sept. 11, 2001. That same year, I turned 18. And that was the day our image of America began to fracture. Everyone remembers where they were when the twin towers fell. I had just gotten home from school, checking sports scores on teletext, while the afternoon news in the background was already covering the first plane. Soon, the whole family had gathered in front of the television. CNN ran nonstop, well into the night.

It felt unreal, like something ripped from a bad Hollywood movie, a catastrophe scripted by filmmaker Roland Emmerich. And yet, slowly, it became clear that this was no movie. “America under attack,” the headlines flashed again and again across the screen.

The invincible big brother had been brought to his knees right in front of our eyes. It hit us hard. How could something like this happen? And what would come next?

Our patron saint

Our patron saint was now fighting back, wild and furious, against an almost intangible enemy. Two invasions followed, first Afghanistan, then Iraq. And with every passing year of these unholy wars, what once seemed straightforward became more tangled. The second Gulf War, in early 1991 — I was in second grade then — lasted just 47 days.

To us, it was like a video game, the green and black aerial footage flickering across the morning news. My father watched, completely absorbed, his sympathies divided. A villain was driven out. Some older classmates had mixed feelings and joined anti-war protests. But at its core, that war still fit the script.

Later, my teenage friends and I cheered for films like Saving Private Ryan and Independence Day. Good Americans always saved something or someone, a soldier from death, the Earth from aliens. In the end, they always managed to come out on top.

Was this still our America? We were no longer sure.

But this bloodier and increasingly endless so-called War on Terror of the 2000s soon left many of us in our early 20s completely bewildered. What was it all for? With an estimated 200,000 civilian deaths in Iraq alone, America began to show a side we had never seen before, or never wanted to. “Collateral damage” became a term tossed around during those years, a way to gloss over death. Was this still our America? We were no longer sure.

But just like with U.S. President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the loudest criticism of America came from within America itself. We watched Michael Moore’s films, the loudest voice of the Bush era, backed Democratic candidates without hesitation, and lost ourselves in what-ifs.

What if Al Gore had actually won the 2000 presidential election instead of George W. Bush? The America of men like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of waterboarding in Guantanamo and the grotesque torture photos from Abu Ghraib, could only be a temporary detour, something our side would soon correct.

Family drama

But Obama never closed the prison at Guantanamo either. And whistleblower Edward Snowden fled to Russia before Obama could act. Did we notice? Of course we did, but we chose to ignore it.

My generation still clung to the idea of the good American — and sometimes you could find one in real life, too. Like when I was an exchange student in Philadelphia in the mid-2000s, where I met Americans motivated by a genuine desire to do good — not just at home but abroad as well. That version of American engagement is now under serious threat.

Support for the UN Refugee Agency, previously funded at 20% by the United States, has been suspended for now. America has pulled out of the World Health Organization. USAID’s development programs have been slashed. Trump’s people claimed most of the projects no longer served America’s national interest, or worse, worked against it.

But the American Way was never supposed to be a one-way street.

But the American Way was never supposed to be a one-way street. Sure, America often took what it wanted, sometimes by force, but it also gave a lot. Protection, medicine, food, cheap credit, rebuilding efforts, democratic leadership around the globe: Who would understand that better than us Germans?

Our big brother knew he had power. But now, narrow-mindedness has crept into the White House, along with a cold-blooded doctrine of strength versus weakness. If you want something now, you will have to pay. What used to be quiet, dependable protection has morphed, when it suits them, into public humiliation. And by the way: Have you ever even said thank you?

The ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by Trump and his Vice President, JD Vance, in the Oval Office, and the breakdown of the transatlantic family it exposed, played out like a family drama. They sat in armchairs and on couches, shouting blame back and forth in front of the fireplace.

Were we blind?

The taboo has been broken, and trust in the United States as a partner has crumbled. Only 16% of Germans still say they trust America. For comparison, 10% say the same of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Should we have been paying more attention all along? Could we have seen this coming? Were we blind to everything America was thinking and doing, not only in Trump’s first term but in the years after 9/11, too?

Forrest Gump is dead. A good American is hard to find. But maybe that kind of thinking is just American sentimentalism. We fans of the USA could always find something troubling and anti-democratic in its ideas and actions, and sometimes we did. A self-centered attitude verging on ignorance, a fascination with violence that made our skin crawl, especially since we had sworn off weapons after 1945 and carried our own legacy of guilt. I have never felt more out of place in the United States than I did at a shooting range in California with American friends.

And now I get it. There is no good or bad America. There never was.

And now I get it. There is no good or bad America. There never was. And still, in conversations with others from my generation, I sense how the disappointment and anger linger. We are angry about the choices made by people we have never met, angry at the Democrats for failing to put forward a decent candidate. We, the upright Germans, did not even have the right to vote. And honestly, can we be so sure, given the recent success of populists and extremists in Germany, that we would have voted any differently than our big brother?

We stare in disbelief at the recklessness of those partly responsible for our security and feel as though we are trapped in a particularly grim episode of the animated series “South Park.” But more than anything, we are let down by our own hopes: hopes that, seen through German eyes, had always wanted to find the good in a country that, at heart, has remained a mystery to us. Now there is an America in charge that is willing to pay dearly for promises of freedom, all while trying to dismantle democracy.

A broken promise

So now what? We need, urgently and sincerely, to turn things around. To finally grow up, as French President Emmanuel Macron recently said on television. It sounded nice, but rang hollow. The family metaphor no longer holds. The next insult from Washington is already popping up in our news feeds, the next crude act of disrespect toward us Europeans. And it is our own long-standing, attention-hungry lifeline across the Atlantic that Donald Trump is now using for his own gain.

This feels like a breakup. So how are we supposed to cut ties, and then begin the badly needed process of reinvention? Our democracy, which (bitter irony) once made America possible, is now at risk, too.

Part of the answer lies far back at the beginning of this whole story, in the original American promise. What the authors of the Declaration of Independence set out to do on July 4, 1776, should sound familiar to us. They wanted to shake off British rule, to stop being a colony, to stand on their own feet.

Liberty, equality, self-determination: These are the promises America made. And even now, millions of people are still willing to risk their lives for them. That is the power of the Fourth of July. Ukrainians do not want to be absorbed into the Russian world, to become a colony. They are fighting for us, too. And did Zelensky not show, right there in the Oval Office, the kind of courage and moral clarity we are all longing for? He may not be a saint, but he stood his ground. Not an American, but a true European.

As for me, more than 30 years after my first visit to the United States, I now wonder under what circumstances the next one might happen, if it happens at all. At a time when German tourists are reportedly being held for deportation and phones are searched at the border, will America find its way back to itself? I really don’t know. But one thing is certain: That inner bond I once had with my big brother is gone. It doesn’t feel like family no more.