[Skybird]

Yes. Destroying any sense of national identity, or fundament for it, so that Germany never could become a strong central state again. This was a design goal demanded by the Americans for the surrogate constitution of the post-war West German federal republic: to have a strong federal structure so that the states could always play foul on the national government, and so the two sides prevent each other to form a strong nationality - and nationalism - again: chancelory and minister presidents are set up against each other, not together with each other. At least that was the idea. Not even many Germans know why the constitution and the federal structure of the German state is what it is.

But its true, the basic structure was enforced by America, with the goal to keep the new German state weak, both in administration, and psyche.

I wonder if later this was regretted on Americna side.

However, there have been serious clashes between German and American administrations in the past before, Merkle and Trump are not a first, not at all.

Lyndon B. Johnson demanded Ludwig Erhard to send German combat troops to Vietnam, which made the Germans furious opponents of the American position in Vietnam and really flipped their switches to the anti-US position, Johnson found the safest way to bring the Germans up against him, it ended with a grumbling "compromise" of a single German hospital ship getting sent instead of troops.

Nixon never trusted Brand with his Eastern diplomacy, both men had utmost antipathy for each other.

With Carter and Schmidt they say it was even worse, Carter hated Schmidt's arrogance, and Schmidt, a fighting war veteran, disliked Carter's weakness and lack of determination - first the German resisted the American plan to build the neutron bomb, and when Schmidt finally gave up diplomatic resistence to it, Carter changed his mind and made Schmidt facing an utmost unpleasant situation with his opposition in Germany, later Schmidt had to fight against the Americans again to convince them to station Pershing-2s and Cruise Missiles in Germany in reply to the Sovjet stationing of SS-20s: while the German population hated the idea and strictly opposed it, Schmidt took it very queer that he had to fight against his own people and the Americans as well, although this time the American govenment complied. - I was at highschool at that time, so it was the first of these pplitical events that I actually witnessed first hand and have memories of - and we live din West-Berlin at that time, where anti-American dmeonstraitons were especially intense and lead to many clashes between students and police in the streets. It was the time when the Greens and the so-called Alternative Liste - militant squatters, communists and anarchists - formed up, especially in Berlin. Both groups later became one party.

And then there was Bush junior and Schroeder, Bush said the German promised him that Germany would be with him in Iraq if only the war would be clean, short and determined, while Schroeder always denied that claim by Bush and indeed already on his return from his visit in Germany and since then for always strictly opposed the Iraq war.