Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s memoir hit the shelves Tuesday.
Over more than 700 pages, she plumbs her singular 16-year career as German leader for anecdotes and insights about major political events and world leaders.
We’ve selected nine of the most eyebrow-raising excerpts:
Putin’s big lie: Merkel was stunned when Russian President Vladimir Putin lied to her about the annexation of Crimea in 2014, denying the so-called little green men invading the peninsula and seizing government buildings were Russian soldiers.
“When I confronted Putin in a phone call the following day … he denied it,” she wrote.
It was the first time Putin had ever “told me an untruth,” she claimed, and it strained relations between Berlin and Moscow.
“I didn’t break off contact with him, it wasn’t really an option for me, but from then on … German-Russian government consultations, visits to various cities beyond dedicated meetings in the capitals, meetings between Putin and myself at the [Saint] Petersburg Dialogue no longer took place.”
Talks with Trump: It’s safe to say Merkel was no fan of Donald Trump, whose election to the U.S. presidency in 2016 led some to describe her as the new leader of the free world.
The Republican “judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics,” she wrote. “Each property could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was also how he looked at the world.”
Trump’s admiration for dictators and strongmen, especially Vladimir Putin, was “obvious,” she added.
“I had the impression that politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits captivated him,” she said.
Their meetings were antagonistic, with Trump saying Merkel “had ruined Germany by taking in so many refugees in 2015 and 2016, accused us of spending too little on defense and criticized us for unfair trade practices.”
She added, “We spoke on two different levels. Trump on an emotional level, me on a factual one. When he did pay attention to my arguments, it was usually only in order to construct new accusations from them.”
Brexit bashing: Merkel viewed Britain leaving the EU “as a disgrace, as an embarrassment for us, the other members of the European Union.”
She added, “Great Britain simply left us behind. This changed the world’s view of the European Union, we were weakened.”
Merkel said she “was tormented by the question of whether I should have made any more concessions to the U.K. to enable it to remain in the EU.”
But, “I came to the conclusion that, given the political developments within the country at the time, there was no way I could have prevented the U.K.’s exit from the EU from the outside.”
About that photo: A famed photo of Merkel and former U.S. President Barack Obama, with whom she had good relations, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Germany in 2015 shows Merkel with her arms outstretched, gesturing animatedly. Many have speculated about the subject of their discussion.
But according to Merkel, she was merely recounting the size of a beach chair.
That awkward Russian gas thing: Merkel has been roundly criticized for presiding over Germany’s dependence on Russian gas and approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline even after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.
But she argued Nord Stream 1 was approved by her predecessor, and as for Nord Stream 2, it would have otherwise been “difficult to get companies and gas users in Germany and in many EU member states to accept” importing more expensive liquefied natural gas from other countries.
“My successor in office, Olaf Scholz, stopped the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 after Putin recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk on 21 February 2022. The pipeline became an investment ruin,” she wrote.
“Germany’s dependence on Russian gas, which I had just been accused of in connection with Nord Stream 2, had arisen without any gas ever having been transported through this pipeline.”
Bush’s back rub: Then-U.S. President George W. Bush raised eyebrows when he gave Merkel an impromptu neck massage, causing her to stiffen in surprise, at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in 2006.
But Merkel wrote that she wasn’t offended as she and Bush were pals.
“The scene with the shoulder grab that went around the world is a very good example of the fact that the context is always important in such moments,” Merkel wrote.
“Bush and I, however, had basic trust in each other and have now experienced how misleading images can be when they are detached from the place and the people involved.”
Sadistic Putin: Merkel has been famous for keeping her personal life private, but her phobia of dogs after she was bitten in 1995 is well known. That didn’t stop Putin from giving her “a large stuffed dog” as a “special gift” in 2006 and bringing a Labrador to a meeting with her a year later.
“While Putin and I posed seated for the photographers and cameramen at the beginning of our meeting so that they could take photos and cutaways of us, I tried to ignore the dog, even though he was moving more or less right next to me,” Merkel wrote.
“I interpreted Putin’s facial expressions to mean that he was enjoying the situation. Did he just want to see how a person in distress reacts? Was it a small demonstration of power? I just thought: stay calm, concentrate on the photographers, it will pass.”
The Pope’s counsel: Pope Francis had some wise words for Merkel, a devout Christian, on how to deal with Trump.
“Bend, bend, and bend some more, but take care it doesn’t break,” he urged her — advice that ultimately did not deter Trump from withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord or Putin from invading Ukraine again.
(More) Putin power plays: Putin infuriated Merkel in 2015 when he made her and other then-G8 leaders, whom he was supposed to join for an aperitif, wait for 45 minutes.
“We waited and waited, and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s tardiness. Why was he doing this? Who was he trying to prove something to? Or did he have a real problem?” Merkel wrote. “On the outside I was chatting relaxedly with the others, but on the inside I was seething.”
When Putin did eventually turn up, he was unapologetic, saying he had been drinking Radeberger. A crate of the beer had been provided to him at his request by his German hosts before the summit.
“Now, of course, he had no choice but to drink it, he said with a grin,” Merkel wrote. “That’s what I got for my kindness.”
In another backhanded gesture, on the sidelines of the Normandy format Ukraine talks in February of 2015, “Putin handed out three gifts, a Russian-German, a Russian-French and a Russian-English antiquarian military dictionary, all published at the end of the 19th century,” Merkel wrote.
“Putin asked me to present the Russian-English dictionary in his name to Barack Obama on Monday during my visit to Washington, a discreet and sarcastic hint that although he was talking to us (Merkel and Hollande), he actually only saw the USA as a negotiating partner on an equal footing.”
