Brendan Simms: Germany is a big player now in the bid to tame Putin

When the new Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, goes to Brussels today to discuss the Ukraine situation, he will do so against the backdrop of acute tension with the eurozone’s largest and most important state, Germany.

Though furthest away from the scene geographically, Britain has mounted the most robust European response to Russian President Vladimir Putin after his annexation of Crimea. Britain was quick to deploy air assets in the Baltic states to deter any moves against Nato partners there, and the Prime Minister’s statement to the House of Commons yesterday on the downing of the

Malaysian airliner over Eastern Ukraine by Russian-backed separatists was the most trenchant European statement against the ambitions of Putin so far. Government sources have stressed the importance of close co-operation with Germany on further action, rightly so given that the relationship between London and Berlin is the crucial one in Europe today.

The Germans, however, are more cautious about confronting Russian aggression, and have been slow to deploy eastwards in support of their Nato allies. This partly reflects their discomfort with military power as such, and partly the catastrophic bad bet which their energy sector and industry placed on Russia during the era of Chancellor Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.

Relations with Germany are already strained after Britain’s opposition to the EU budget two years ago, and rejection of Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission. Add to this the extraordinary public interest in the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 in both countries, and divergent views on the responsibility for starting the carnage, not to mention the continuing preoccupation here with the Second World War, and we have the makings of a serious rift at a time when close co-ordination between London and Berlin is essential, and transatlantic ties fray as Obama ostentatiously “pivots” away from Europe towards Asia.

This is unfortunate because it obscures the fact that the real special relationship in Europe until comparatively recently has been the Anglo-German one. The fate of central European Protestants was a keen concern for 16th- and 17th-century Englishmen and it played a decisive role in the downfall of the Stuarts. It was 200 years ago this year, in 1714, that the Elector of the North German principality of Hanover mounted the British throne as George I, an anniversary which deserves more emphasis.

In the 19th century, British and German liberals were united in their opposition to Tsarist autocracy and in their belief in progress. Respect for German academic prowess and musical talent was more or less universal in Britain. Until shortly before the First World War, the two peoples thought of each other as kindred; the British spoke of the Germans as “cousins”.

Above all, however, the Anglo-German special relationship was a military one. Generations of British statesmen from the Pitts to Lord Castlereagh marshalled Continental coalitions against Continental hegemons to which German forces were central. We will be reminded of this next year, at the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, when the allies vanquished the oppressor of the day, Napoleon Bonaparte, in June 1815.

The Duke of Wellington’s international army included — among others — British, Dutch, Belgian and German troops. Waterloo was thus, as the D-Day veteran and former Chief of the General Staff Lord Bramall put it, “the first Nato operation”. It was primarily, however, an Anglo-German effort, and no formation epitomised that achievement more than the King’s German Legion, made up largely of Germans fighting in British uniforms as part of the regular British army. The defence of the key farmhouse of La Haye Sainte at the centre of the allied line by the Second Light Battalion of the Legion under Major Baring held up Napoleon for long enough to allow the Prussians to arrive.

It is on this legacy that Hammond should draw. He must craft a new special relationship with Berlin, which could serve as the motor for a united European response to the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, which constitute the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War in 1989.