The US is finally starting to pull back from Germany. Many Germans now fret about the economic impact of this draw down. The US has been in Bavaria for almost 4 generations now. Many Americans have settled there and married local women. But like all things, times change and America’s security needs have as well.
GRAFENWOEHR, Germany (Reuters) – Walter Brunner, a lively 82-year old whose blue baseball cap matches the color of his eyes, leans across a red leather booth at the American-style diner in this southern German town and tries to make light of the looming pullout of U.S. troops.
“We Germans fought for the Russians to go, now we are fighting for the Americans to stay,” jokes Brunner, chairman of the German-American contact club in Grafenwoehr, whose lifeblood is its U.S. military base
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Local businesses say up to 90 percent of their trade comes from Americans. The town of Grafenwoehr receives 2.8 million euros in state subsidies every year largely due to the U.S. presence. Some 2,900 Germans are employed directly or indirectly by the military.
According to U.S. army data American purchasing power in and around Grafenwoehr, a quaint town of 7,000 not including the U.S. base, is around 35 million euros. Another 30 million euros is spent per year on rent by American families.
“Grafenwoehr lives from the Americans and will die without them. It’s as simple as that,” said 35-year-old Helmut Dostler, whose family have run Grafenwoehr’s Hotel Zur Post for four generations.
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As the Cold War escalated the United States had more than a quarter of a million troops in Europe. German civilians complained about the noise of low-flying aircraft, drunken troops or damage to the environment.
The 1960s saw demonstrations across West Germany against the Vietnam war and the 1980s brought large protests outside some U.S. bases against plans to deploy new medium-range nuclear missiles. U.S. forces have always been viewed by some, especially on the political left, with hostility, as occupiers.
“In the 1970s we had more U.S. soldiers in Germany than there were in the entire French army. The size of the deployment was grandiose,” said Jack Clarke, a professor of defense planning at the Marshall Center in Germany.
This is the end of an era.
