When I read this it all began to click , and my understanding of World War II began to grow.

For about 58 years west Germany and then reunited Germany where a vassal state/satellite of the US.
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In 2003 the Germans rebelled and stood up to the US by not supporting US decision to fight the second Iraq war.
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This insurrection was led by Gerhard Schroeder who was the Chancellor of Germany at the time and who now works for the Russian controlled company Nord Stream AG, Gazprom the major Russian energy company controls 51% of Nord Stream AG.
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Many authors believe for Europe to rise and be independent that Germany its’ strongest nation must be independent and many believe that this started to happen around the time of Gerhard Schroeder’s refusal to go along with the US in the Iraq 2 war in 2003.
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One way the US controls Western Europe is through NATO, by controlling NATO and keeping Western European countries in NATO the US is able to steer the direction of Western Europe.
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The Nord stream piple line and the South Stream pipeline threaten this by giving Russia more leverage over Western Europe, creating more Western European dependence on Russia ,and creating deep commercial and cultural links between knowledge rich western Europe and resource military rich Russia.
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This is an interaction that the US is not involved in or profiting from and is done in outside of the dollar and instead done in the Euro.
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The US is promoting an alternative pipeline to this called the Nabucco pipeline which is currently behind in the race with Russia’s Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines.