Germany is becoming more anti-American: nearly half of Germans want all United States troops to leave their country according to a July 11 survey by Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) and YouGov. The survey showed that 42 percent of Germans no longer want U.S. military assistance; only 37 percent said they want U.S. soldiers to stay.

More specifically, 67 percent of the far-left Die Linke party, 55 percent of the Alternative für Deutschland, and 35 percent of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (cdu) agreed that U.S. soldiers should leave.

The U.S. and Germany have had several decades of military cooperation. It was the U.S. that secured West Germany throughout the Cold War.

Though the survey did not ask Germans why they wanted American troops removed, recent events involving U.S. President Donald Trump may give some insight.

During the nato summit on July 11, Mr. Trump made comments about Germany being controlled by Russia, which received a quick rebuttal from German Chancellor Merkel, who said, “I have experienced myself how a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. I am very happy that today we are united in freedom, the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions. That is very good, especially for people in Eastern Germany.”

Mr. Trump also accused the German government of not providing a strong enough military for the country, to which Ms. Merkel responded: “Germany is the second-largest provider of troops, the largest part of our military capacity is offered to nato and [even] today we have a strong engagement toward Afghanistan. In that we also defend the interests of the United States.”

During the summit, Mr. Trump encouraged Germany to raise its defense spending to 4 percent of its gross domestic product. This is double what Mr. Trump has previously pushed. If Germany acquiesces, it will be spending $164 billion on defense. That amount of expenditure could eventually lead to the formation of a European military superpower.

Trump’s “America first” foreign policy could be the main reason for Germany’s resistance, according to the Washington Post. “[With a] foreign-policy strategy that has included threatening North Korea with destruction, dismantling nuclear deals considered crucial in Europe, and hugging dictators, Trump may have contributed a bit to Germans’ growing oppositions to U.S. troops here. Trump’s ‘America first’ slogan is largely being reinterpreted in Germany as ‘America alone,’ and Trump has approval ratings in the low single digits.”

Though the dpa survey does not include opinions from Germany’s leadership, the nato summit is at least another indicator of the icy relations developing between the U.S. and Germany.

Germany and the U.S. are drifting apart from one another as Mr. Trump pushes for a more unified European military. These events match a prophecy that the Trumpet has been watching and warning about consistently: Europe uniting under a single military.

After Mr. Trump became president in 2017, the Trumpet wrote about the frosty relations already beginning between Germany and the U.S.:

Mr. Trump’s presidency, then, will put Europe under huge pressure. Some are predicting that it will break up the EU. Yet others forecast the opposite. “Brexit, a shock all around, will combine with a Trump presidency to force the EU to put away childish things, and ask hard questions of itself,” wrote Reuters. “Infancy may be ending: always a hard transition.”

Yes, that transition will be hard, but over the next few months, the world is going to see Germany and Europe grow up.

“President Trump’s open hostility to the European Union and his disdain for America’s European partners in nato will be the rallying flag that Europe has lacked for a decade,” wrote Giles Merritt, former Financial Times correspondent and founder of the think tank Friends of Europe.

The opposition Europe is now facing, he wrote, marks the moment “when EU governments will rediscover the virtues, indeed the necessity, of political and economic integration.”

If Mr. Trump implements just one of his controversial measures it “would unite Europe’s fractious, squabbling governments overnight.” The only way Europe could hold its own and protect its own interests from such an American attack would be by banding together, he explains.

In 1953, the late Herbert W. Armstrong warned about a 10-nation unification in Europe. Years later in 1978, he warned:

The Europeans are far more disturbed about their safety in relying on United States military power to protect them than Americans realize! …

Europeans want their own united military power! They know that a political union of Europe would produce a third major world power, as strong as either the U.S. or the ussr—possibly stronger!

Request our booklet He Was Right to read about Mr. Armstrong’s predictions of a unified Europe that will help explain the recent events unfolding between the U.S. and Germany.