Since 7 May 1945 The United States has maintained air bases in Germany initially beginning as postwar occupation forces. During the Cold War, the number of bases was expanded to support NATO.
Today, only Ramstein Air Base and Spangdahlem Air Base remain as fully active U.S. air bases in Germany, supporting ongoing operations in the Middle East and Balkans.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, air, force and/or germany:
“The rising power of the United States in world affairs ... requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)
“The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“An air lambent with adult enterprise ...”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)