Since February 24, many Germans have been correcting their image of Russia.
The shock of Putin's attack on Ukraine is simply too great to stubbornly cling to old errors.
What happens much less is a correction of the image of America.
Eckhart Lohse
Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.
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Since the Second World War, Germany's fate has been largely determined by the two nuclear powers, America and Russia.
The inhabitants of the Federal Republic could not have lived in freedom without the military protection of the Americans.
That has been forgotten too often.
The way in which large parts of the Greens and SPD in particular treat America has long been reminiscent of the behavior of children who feel so sure of the love and care of their parents that they believe they can meet them with harsh criticism and even rejection at will, without fear of repercussions.
This is what caused the horror of former President Donald Trump's threats to no longer keep NATO's security promises to be so great in Germany.
And the fear of being re-elected.
We don't have it that way with guns
Unlike in the case of Russia, which Germans visit less than America, although it is much closer, they tend to be arrogant towards Americans.
Too much fast food, too big cars and then fracking gas.
However, that has never prevented the Germans from imitating the Big Mac or building and tax incentives for SUVs.
Who knows: In view of the imminent need caused by the abandonment of Russian gas, resistance to fracking could even decrease.
A commission set up by the then federal government in 2016 came to the conclusion last year that the risks of fracking were manageable, as reported by the FAS.
In one area, however, the Germans have largely refrained from imitating American behavior.
By the guns.
As for personal life, it's a blessing, as evidenced by the excesses of gun use in everyday American life.
But especially in the past three decades, since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Federal Republic has increasingly dispensed with armaments for the defense of its own country and its European neighbors that would have corresponded to the size and economic power of the country.
This happened with the deep awareness that America would take care of itself if the (always ignored) emergency should occur.
This awareness could easily be combined with outrage at American militarism.
Without America we would be lost
Never before has this attitude threatened to fall on the Germans' feet as it does now.
In the Balkan wars in the 1990s it became clear that Germany could only fly with or follow and without the Americans nothing would have happened.
The same also applied to the Afghanistan mission, in which the Bundeswehr played an important role for many years.
But the literally existential dependency on the military forces of the United States through Moscow's war of aggression against Ukraine has become completely clear.
Should that expand into NATO territory, Germany would be doomed without America and her weapons.
There is a certain logic to the fact that this becomes so clear when Germany is led by a red-green government (with an FDP partner).
It was the political left that in the last century mixed up the image of the peace-loving German with running up against American militarism.
In a first turning point, a red-green federal government had to correct this picture at the end of the 1990s.
But no sooner had then-Chancellor Schröder promised Washington "unrestricted solidarity" after the September 11 attacks than he used anti-Americanism in the election campaign when he took Washington's criticism of the Iraq war to the extreme.
Recourse to the "bomb terror"
Ralf Fücks, one of the clever analysts among the Greens, described this duplicity in an interview with the “Stern” in the spring.
He recalled how his party protested against the stationing of American medium-range nuclear missiles in Germany in the 1980s.
There was a wing that showed solidarity with the dissidents and civil rights movements in Eastern Europe and advocated disarmament in West and East.
"But the majority presented the American nuclear missiles as the real danger, not the Russian ones."
You shouldn't "lie anything in your pocket".
According to Fücks, the relationship between Germans and America was “always deeply ambivalent”.
The fascination for modernity is paired with "deep-seated antipathy".
Fücks, born in 1951, remembered conversations from his childhood at family gatherings.
It was always about the American "bombing terror" in World War II.
This narrative continued into the protests against NATO's action in the Kosovo war.
The current turning point, the second after that of the last century, must not only correct our view of our own country and of Russia.
It must also finally put an end to the bigoted mixture of anti-Americanism caked with its own supposed love of peace and snuggling under the military security roof that Washington offers.