Trump's decision to pull troops out of Germany is a symbol of tension with Europe
- This is part one of a series on the American president’s impact around the world. Return to Telegraph.co.uk on Tuesday morning for part two, on how Trump’s tweets have torn up centuries of polite diplomacy
Every town tells a story. The first sight that greets you in Grafenwöhr, an out-of-the-way place in the forests of Bavaria, close to the Czech border, is the giant stars-and-stripes flying outside a used car dealership that specialises in American models.
A picture of Uncle Sam scowls from the window. Across the street, an American tank stands guard over the Nato training ground.
Grafenwöhr is really two towns. There is the German town, with its cobbled market square and its 15th century town hall. And there is the American town where the Hallowe’en decorations are already in place, a vast sprawl of suburbia transplanted from the US, complete with front yards and pick-up trucks, and a street called Elvis Presley Strasse.
The German town is a sleepy place of 6,700 inhabitants, but more than 30,000 Americans live here, a legacy of the Cold War. Grafenwöhr is part of Garrison Bavaria, the largest American military base outside the US.
But they are about to start leaving. Under plans drawn up at the orders of Donald Trump, the US military is preparing to withdraw a third of the 36,000 troops it currently has stationed in Germany. It is not just about cutting costs or “bringing our people home”, as Mr Trump has long pledged to do. Almost half will be transferred to other European countries such as Poland and Belgium.
The first sight that greets you in Grafenwoehr is the stars and stripes
Credit: Christian Jungeblodt
It is about sending a message to Germany, which Mr Trump accuses of spending too little on its own military and freeloading on the US for its defence. And it is a sign of a changing world order. American troops have been here since the end of the Second World War.
There can be few towns anywhere in the world that celebrate their own military defeat so openly. To many modern Germans, the defeat of the Nazis was a sort of liberation.
An entire room of the museum is given over to the night Elvis Presley gave a free concert at Micky’s Bar in the town. Presley took part in several exercises in Grafenwöhr, but you could be forgiven for thinking he was the town’s most famous son.
The American withdrawal will be an economic disaster for Grafenwöhr. Details of which bases troops will be moved from have yet to be finalised, but the town is expected to be one of those that bear the brunt.
It’s not just the military personnel. There are around 12,000 US soldiers stationed in Grafenwöhr, but most of the rest of the town’s 30,000 American residents work as civilian support staff at the base. For every soldier who leaves, civilian staff will go too.
Trump’s troops
“It’s not just about the money,” says Johannes Heindl, who runs a stall selling German gingerbread hearts and American popcorn in the weekly town market, and helps organise the annual German-American Folk Festival inside the base. “These are our friends who are leaving.”
“Trump already screwed up the relationship,” says George Tatten, an American who liked Germany so much he stayed on after 20 years stationed here as a soldier. “He’s just doing this because he wants to punish Merkel.”
The story of Grafenwöhr is how a relationship that began in the fires of war and occupation became a genuine friendship.
But the withdrawal is the story of another, more troubled relationship. When Mr Trump became president, American journalists rolled into Kallstadt, a small town on the other side of Germany where his paternal grandparents came from. When they tried to interview his relatives, they got a cold reception. “You can’t choose your relatives,” one told the New York Times.
Trump is surrounded by the US troops at the U.S. Yokota Air Base, on the outskirts of Tokyo in 2017
Credit: AP
The feeling appears to be mutual. Mr Trump has refused all attempts to lure him to the town. He has an almost visceral loathing of his German heritage, according to well-informed sources.
His relationship with Angela Merkel has been rocky from the start. There was the fraught meeting in Washington where he ignored her offer to shake hands. Perhaps it was because she was so close to his predecessor, Barack Obama. At any rate, according to diplomatic sources in Berlin Mrs Merkel decided early in his presidency there was no point in attempting to cultivate a personal relationship with Mr Trump, so set was he against her.
Mr Trump’s central complaint is that Germany is not paying enough towards the cost of its own defence. He says Germany has failed to meet Nato’s longstanding target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence; Mrs Merkel says the figure is a long-term goal which Germany is moving towards.
Ask the people in Grafenwöhr market what they think of Mr Trump, and you get a curt answer. “I think he needs psychiatric help,” says one man who does not give his name.
But ask them about the substance of his complaints against Germany and you get a different response.
“If we agreed to two per cent we should pay it,” says Mr Heindl at the gingerbread stall. “Germany can’t defend itself without the US. We don’t have enough working aircraft for our pilots to train. We have six submarines, and most of them don’t work. Our politicians have ruined our military. They’re more interested in exporting weapons around the world than in arming our own troops.”
And they agree with another of the Trump administration’s complaints, over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline Germany is building with Russia. “It’s not right making all these business deals with Putin and expecting the Americans to defend us,” says another man.
But Grafenwöhr is a very particular snapshot of German opinion. Opinion polls suggest the wider German public is largely unconcerned at the troop withdrawals, and that if Mr Trump was oping to shock Germany into changing course, he will be disappointed.
Joahnnes Heindl runs the annual German-American Folk Festival
Credit: Christian Jungeblodt for the Telegraph
A poll for Yougov found 47 per cent of Germans were in favour of reducing the number of American troops on their soil, and 21 per cent expressed no opinion.
Only 32 per cent were against any reduction in the US military presence, while a quarter of those surveyed said they would support a complete withdrawal of all American troops from Germany.
In part, that is to do with differing perceptions of why the US troops are here. “They’re there to protect Germany, right?” Mr Trump has said. “And Germany is supposed to pay for it. Germany’s not paying for it. We don’t want to be the suckers any more.”
But many Germans don’t believe the Americans are here to protect them. One of the units the US is planning to move is its Africa Command, which is currently based in Stuttgart but is clearly not concerned with Germany’s defence.
US Air Force troops stationed at Ramstein air base in the west of Germany are also expected to be affected. Ramstein has been used to evacuate American casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan to the nearby Landstuhl Medical Center, the largest American military hospital outside the US.
The US military airport at Grafenwoehr
Credit: Christian Jungeblodt
Long a rallying call for Germans who oppose the US military presence, Ramstein is also reported to be a major command centre for controversial US drone strikes in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.
All of which has served to fuel a perception among many in Germany that the US presence is less about defending them than projecting American power.
The US did not choose Grafenwöhr by chance. The town lies just 25 miles from the Czech border. Until 1989, it was part of the Iron Curtain. It was also one of the main points at which the Soviets were expected to cross in the event of an invasion — the motorways in Czechoslovakia, as it then was, were designed to double as Soviet landing strips.
A waxwork of Elvis Presley in the Grafenwoehr museum
Credit: Christian Jungeblodt
The expected front lines of the future have long moved away from Grafenwöhr. Mrs Merkel has been at pains to tell anyone who’ll listen that her close ally Mr Obama warned her the US would have to start moving its strategic focus away from Europe long before Mr Trump’s election. The difference is that Mr Trump has made it personal.
Mrs Merkel has sought to respond by calling for Europe to fill the gap. “The times when we could rely on others are past,” she told the European parliament. “We have to look at the vision of one day creating a real, true European army.”
But a European army remains a distant vision for now, and the German army is so cash-strapped its soldiers had to use broomsticks instead of guns at a Nato exercise a few years ago.
In Grafenwöhr, Edgar Knobloch, the town’s mayor, tries to stay optimistic. “Nothing’s decided yet,” he says. “We don’t know where the withdrawals will be. We might not be affected.”
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