ABSTRACT
German-American military relations have changed more suddenly and more dramatically than every other element of the relationship. German-American military cooperation had a very clear and sharply definable purpose: to defend West German and West European territory against a possible Soviet attack, and to make that defense so powerful and persuasive that no attack would ever come. The German-American military partnership established the great high arch of the transatlantic alliance, an arch that reached from one pedestal in the heardand of the United States to another in the Federal Republic. Germany's military security and political freedom were based for forty-five years on its association with the United States, with American nuclear weapons, and with the global reach of US power. Germany also provided a base for the further projection of that power.
