Germany’s NATO membership and its close foreign policy cooperation with the United States today seem almost like natural developments. Aside from Germany’s refusal to join the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, (West) German support for US foreign policy has been practically nonnegotiable since 1945. Despite Donald Trump’s threats to remove US military personnel from Germany, around forty thousand troops remain in the country. The two are also close partners in most international organizations, particularly NATO.

But that hasn’t always been the case. Despite a history of mass German migration to the United States from the 1840s and the close cultural bond between the two countries, Germany and the United States were adversaries on the foreign policy front for decades. It was not until Nazi Germany’s capitulation in 1945 and the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 that a true alliance between Germany and the United States was formed.

This postwar alliance was facilitated by a number of public and private institutions in both countries. Two important (and complementary) private organizations that played a key role in its development are the Atlantik-Brücke in Germany and the American Council on Germany in the United States. Historian Anne Zetsche’s recent book, The Atlantik-Brücke and the American Council on Germany, 1952–1974, critically examines the political influence of both organizations in the first decades following World War II. She sat down with Colin Adams to discuss why the German-US partnership was anything but a natural development — and examines the role these organizations play in German and American politics today.