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.