Germany’s economy is vast but fragile, dependent on exports. However distant the threat, a war between the US and Europe on one side and Russia on the other would create a mess out of the European and global trading systems. This is something Germany can’t risk, regardless of how unlikely the event.
Germany is trying to defuse the situation, but it has almost no influence over the US and surprisingly little over Eastern Europe. For the Eastern Europeans, the threat from Russia is more important than what Germany thinks. For the Americans, Germany’s lack of active participation in matters of interest to the US has rendered Germany mostly irrelevant.
Beneath the surface, in the deep structure of European geopolitics, Germany has always been fascinated and at times frightened by Russia. Russia was critical in the unification of Germany in 1871 and between the First and Second World Wars, when treaties were made and broken. During the Cold War, Germany was trapped between the Soviet Union and the US. It doesn’t plan to go there again.
Germany is also always wondering what an arrangement between German technology and industry and Russian natural resources would look like. Previous attempts to work together have ended in war, but Russia is weaker this time… and the Germans are considering their options.
The decision of whether to support American sanctions against Russia thus leads to some of the deepest issues of German history: how to evade US war plans, how to take advantage of Russian resources without getting trapped in Russia’s grasp, and so on. The Germans don’t really care about the sanctions beyond the fact that they force Germany to make a decision before it is ready. History, of course, has placed Germany in this position before. Germany has frequently wound up the worse for it, along with the rest of Europe.