Who had the Fulda Gap which during the Cold War presented the Soviet Russian Red Army with its only realistic and only best invasion route into Germany, and thus on to France and the low countries and northward to the UK, while moving south to Spain and east to Italy and Greece.
Lookit the Fulda Gap in Cold War Germany from 1985, from East Germany into West Germany...
The concept of a major tank battle along the Fulda Gap became a predominant element of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) war planning during the Cold War, 1947-91. With such an eventuality in mind, weapons were evolved such as nuclear tube and missile artillery, the nuclear recoilless gun/tactical launcher Davy Crockett, Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and A-10 ground attack aircraft.
Frankfurt is the financial center of West Germany and now the reunified Germany and this is the first prize of the Russian Soviet invader. And let's keep in mind it was the Kaiser who facilitated Lenin traveling to Russia in a sealed train after the fall of the czar (Caesar) to execute the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, because it brings us to the Fulda Gap during the Cold War of 1947-1991 following the defeat of Nazi Germany 1939-45. That was when Germany was divided into the democratic West vs the Soviet Russia East.
So the posts of the DP
Bundesgang confirm that up to now German politics has been notorious for being dull and boring, which is why I pose the serious issues Germans and their sycophants don't like to discuss publicly. For instance the Bismarck Doctrine, that there can only be peace in Europe when Russia and Germany are happy together. Which makes Russia far more important to Germany and to a German run EU than the United States. A Russo-German run EU in fact.
The Russo-German Geostrategic Axis of Energy culminating in Nord Stream 2 into Germany is the manifestation of German exceptionalism, i.e., that the German state is destined to lord over all of Europe
by one means or another. In the 21st century that means with Russian muscle and German cold blooded technology using energy as the vehicle.
So Germany is not a global power and never will be one. Germany has little to no geopolitical or geo strategic significance, post WW II it has had no military that is a threat to anyone, they forever barely have a coast on salt water and the place is locked in by the closed Baltic sea. Germany has a small population compared to the major powers -- only 83 million.
Besides existing for itself, Germany has no real global significance. Germans are the face of Western European climate change transition but little else. Indeed the Russo-German Geostrategic Axis of energy was always designed to dominate Europe and to lord over it -- Russian fossil fuels and military muscle joined to German cold blooded exceptionalism and technology.
It's only now as the world turns hostile toward Russia in Ukraine and when Germany is identified as the "weak link of the West" that Germany has had to declare itself for NATO led by the United States and to ante up with the bucks for its pathetic armed forces.