A sharp reckoning with decades of political blindness—and a wake-up call that could not be more timely. Jörg Himmelreich traces how Germany’s deeply rooted ‘Russia complex’—a centuries-old cultural and intellectual fascination—blinded its leaders to the true nature of Putin’s regime. From chancellor Schröder’s (1998–2005) fateful personal alliance with the Kremlin to chancellor Merkel’s (2005-2021) catastrophic veto against Ukraine’s NATO accession in 2008, the book lays bare a chain of miscalculations with devastating consequences. The Nord Stream pipelines, celebrated as bridges of cooperation, became instruments of dependency—funding the very war machine now threatening European security. But Himmelreich goes further. He uncovers the historical DNA of Russian autocracy, rooted not in European tradition but in the legacy of Mongol despotism—a ruling culture built on absolute power, territorial expansion, and the fusion of state and economic exploitation. German intellectuals from Leibniz to Nietzsche romanticized this reality away. Politicians repeated their mistakes. Can Germany confront the imperial threat at its doorstep before it is too late? Is the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz able to engage a European ‘Coalition of the Willing’ for this historic task? A rigorous, provocative analysis that redefines the debate on European security and Western resolve. —This edition is an updated version of the original German edition. It also takes into account the Russia policies of German chancellors Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz as well as of US President Donald Trump.