It's too late... the scene is already set up for the next big war.

We're in a situation where the hate between both sides is very close to the surface, no one is trying to hide it anymore.

All that's needed now is one excuse... as it happened so many times before, for centuries... one small thing - an important figure murder, a bomb that lands on the wrong side of the border (accidentally?)... the destruction of NordStream, which I thought would be enough to start a full scale conflict with Russia, but for some reason hasn't yet (though it remains to be seen). It's very clear that what we're seeing today looks exactly like what we saw just before other large wars: a mostly regional conflict that serves as a proxy conflict between the bigger players causes the hostile rethoric on both sides to grow more and more, until the population not only supports a conflict, but demands it. Whether or not the news are telling the truth (which anyone who was there in previous situations like this, including Iraq not so long ago, knows is full of lies and uncontested half-truths from both sides) doesn't even matter anymore. It's a matter of time, you can be sure of that.

Sorry but from the perspective of Central Europe, the times when Russian and Germany are friendly, have been the most dreadful. We barely avoided it this time.

So, those times were worse than WW1, WW2? Interesting perspextive, that...

Interestingly, WW2 was one of these times.

Barbarossa might have a word with you... And the Holocaust only got really going after that. So how again were Germany and Russia friendly during WW2?

> So how again were Germany and Russia friendly during WW2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary...

Germany and the USSR (there was no independent Russia at that time) were not friendly in 1939. The Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact because they knew Germany planned to invade the USSR at some point, and they wanted to buy time.

It was a scurrilous, unprincipled deal (much like Poland's deal with Germany to divide up Czechoslovakia a year earlier), but the Soviets didn't make it because they were friends with Germany. They had actually preferred to sign an alliance with France, in order to protect Czechoslovakia, but that had failed due to a lack of willingness from France and a refusal by Poland to allow Soviet troops to cross Poland to reach Czechoslovakia (for some reasons that were understandable, given that the USSR and Poland had recently fought a war, and also because Poland itself wanted a piece of Czechoslovakia).

On the other hand:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Blue

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad

Just some friendly highlights. Feel free too look up all the others.

But times when Germany/predecessors and Russia hand been allied haven't exactly been peaceful either. History is the worst foreign policy advisor of them all.

Exactly. You can't safely drive forward by just looking in the rearview mirror.

The last time nowadays Russia and nowadays Germany were allies was at the end of the Napoleanic Wars and during Bismarcks, IMHO ingenious, coalition policy between the large European powers. Back then we talk about actual Emperors. After Bismarck, things deteriorated to WW1, followed by WW2, in between both, the USSR ans Nazi-Germany were short term allies for military build up and at the end to split Poland. After that, both sides were totally not allies. And after that we had the Cold War, which had Eastern Europe under Communist rule but without any active wars. Those were fought in Korea and Vietnam, withkut German participation.