You are right: for Germany, the reparations paid to Israel were not a strain on the budget. Quite the contrary. As I explain in the book, reparation payments turned out to be a profitable investment in economic terms alone. This was because reparations were paid out in goods and commodities, not cash. They were a stimulus to the German economy.

For Israel, reparations were, however, crucial. They helped modernize a previously largely agrarian economy. The difference in costs and importance reflects the power differential between the two countries at the time: West Germany was quickly reconstructed to a powerful position in Europe. Israel was mostly poor, its population consisting to a large extent of destitute refugees. There is bitter historical irony in this.

As for improving international standing: West Germany’s integration into the Western Cold War structures had been decided on in principle by 1952. Showing some kind of remorse was still necessary for symbolic reasons, but it did not top the list of Washington’s and Bonn’s priorities.

What’s also interesting in this context is a certain residual antisemitism in the German political class. As late as 1966, Konrad Adenauer said on German television that Germany paid reparations in order to “regain Germany’s standing” and also because of “the power of the Jews, still today, especially in America.” There is a lot of this bizarre kind of stuff in the book.

Contrary to popular thinking, the American-Israeli alliance only really took off after 1967. Before that, France and Germany were Israel’s most important suppliers of weapons. Whereas Israel had to pay for French weapons, German weapons came free of charge.

In geopolitical terms, the military relationship between Germany and Israel was formed after the Suez War of 1956, when Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt, albeit for different reasons. The United States opposed the intervention, and Britain and France ended up exiting the Middle East in a far from glorious fashion.

With American arms now a distant prospect, Israel needed to turn all the more to Germany. Counterfactuals are always difficult: I don’t know how the 1967 War would have played out without German support for Israel. But I would argue that if you add together reparations, secret financial aid, and military aid, West Germany was the key supporter of Israel prior to the all-decisive 1967 War. That’s the story I tell. What you think about that story ultimately depends on your political position, however.

It’s a complex question. We need to go back a little. Zionism, of course, emerged against the experience of European antisemitism. The Holocaust was the previously unimaginable barbarism that proved Zionism right: Jewish life in Europe was, indeed, impossible.

This means that Israel is a creation against Europe, but it is of course also of Europe. It’s a Western state, society, and economy in the Middle East. Adenauer was echoing Theodor Herzl, here, who wrote that Israel would be an “outpost” of Western civilization in the East. The Left and the Right actually agree on this point.

Bonn and Washington both agreed on Israel’s role as a Western representative in the region, but Adenauer had in fact been more strongly in favor of supporting Israel than his counterparts across the pond. The explanation is again geopolitical: the United States did not want to appear as openly siding with Israel, because this would have angered those Arab states under the influence of the anti-colonial and nationalist ideology of Nasserism. Adenauer had fewer qualms in this regard. The Americans had a bigger-picture perspective at the time, which was logical given their hegemonic position.

Let me be very clear here: if there had been any other option, Israel would much rather have ignored Germany. The founding population of Israel consisted of a third of Holocaust survivors. Everybody had family or friends killed by the Germans. Israeli society revolted against David Ben-Gurion’s decision to enter reparation negotiations with Germany.

The biggest domestic crises in Israel’s early years were about Germany, as Tom Segev shows so well in his work The Seventh Million. There was little sympathy but a lot of material need. German politicians today like to talk about the “miracle” of German-Israeli relations. I don’t think there are miracles in international politics. After its founding, Israel was a fragile experiment in a hostile environment, in bad need of consolidation. Germany was able to play a crucial role in that consolidation.

The problem with “normalization” is that for many in Germany, this meant leaving the past behind. Which I think should be opposed on moral and political grounds. After the Munich massacre, for which German authorities bore co-responsibility due to their horrendously botched response to the Palestinian hostage-taking, Israel actually remained surprisingly calm. That Israel initially held back its anger tells you how important relations with Germany were.

The historian Carol Fink has just written a book that goes much further into these issues than mine. The agenda of “normalization” proved harmful to the relationship — and after the Cold War and “unification,” Germany U-turned: relations were now to be “special” and rooted in memory of the Holocaust.

I actually agree that relations should be “special.” But what I find surprising is that there is little discussion in Germany about what this is actually supposed to mean. There is in fact very little knowledge about German-Israeli relations. Maybe my book can help change this, at least to some degree.

On a personal level, I think Angela Merkel is genuine and sincere. On the level of state interest, this commitment serves to show that a unified, enlarged, and ever more powerful Germany is not to be feared on the world stage. The dedication to the Jewish state and the patriotic pride Germany has in its “mastering” of the past is to signal to the world that Germany has learned its lesson.

As it regards Israel specifically, the special responsibility is not simply idle talk. Submarines capable of carrying nuclear weapons — a deterrent against Iran — are one out of many material expressions of this commitment.

However, Germany’s much-celebrated memory culture evidently does not help in combating the resurgence of the extreme right. The far right is strong in the German parliament, in the streets, as well as in the police and army. Germany is home to the highest number of right-wing crimes in Europe. There really should be less idle talk and more alarm bells ringing.

Michel Foucault thought that if you want to find out what a society regards as normal, you have to study its margins. So, he went to the mental asylums. I feel that way about the German left. You can learn a lot about German identity by studying the identity troubles of the Left. Moishe Postone was right when he said that the West German left has at times been the most anti-Israel and the most pro-Israel left in the West.

These internecine battles have less to do with what is happening in the Middle East than with German identity and dealing with a past that is almost impossible to deal with. In the book, I don’t talk about the German left because it has no relevance for policy making. I think that in order to defend the legitimacy of Palestinian statehood in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, there is no need to get sucked into German leftist battles. After all, this is simply the government position, which I share.