The day after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, President Obama went on record to reassure Prime Minister David Cameron that there would be no major change in American policy toward Britain. The two countries, he said, had always had a special relationship and this would continue.

It was not the first time this “special relationship” has been invoked. Tony Blair did so when Britain decided to join the U.S.’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. And the idea actually dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when the well-known British journalist William Stead published his book on The Americanization of the World, at the end of which he proposed an Anglo-American “Reunion.”

Yet the prevalence of talk about a special relationship is misleading. Yes, the U.S. and Britain have cooperated closely at times, particularly during World War II. But the two nations’ relationship has been far less unique than the myth of a “special relationship” suggests. In fact, history suggests it is Germany’s relationship with the U.S. that lives up to the title — especially as it pertains to the economy.

For a short history of the modern U.S.-UK relationship, start in December 1941, when the U.S. joined Britain and the Soviet Union in their determination to defeat Germany, Japan, and Italy’s dreams of empire. In this period Washington, D.C. and London did forge a special relationship, buttressed by the 1942 Lend-Lease agreement.

In 1945 Britain hoped the U.S. would forgive some of these loans and extend new ones for the reconstruction of the war-torn British economy. Instead, President Truman canceled Lend-Lease and insisted on repayment. The debt was later reduced and a fresh loan, amounting to half of what had been requested, was approved by Congress.

In 1947 Britain was included in the U.S.’s Marshall Plan, but it still was reeling from the “financial Dunkirk” (in the words of economist J.M. Keynes) it had suffered in 1945 at the U.S.’s hands. Against British opposition, Washington pushed forward with the creation of international institutions and agreements, such as Bretton Woods, designed to secure America’s hegemony in the postwar world economy and founded on the principle of the Open Door. Since 1942 Washington’s peace aims had been directed not only at the destruction of the autarkic power blocs of Germany, Japan, and Italy but also against the preferential tariff system of the British Empire and other colonial powers.

The wartime special relationship was gone, and Britain now defiantly concentrated on the preservation of its Empire. That the U.S. was bent on undermining it was driven home in the Suez Crisis in 1956. President Eisenhower told Prime Minister Eden that unless Britain stopped its invasion of Egypt immediately, he wouldn’t send the U.S. Navy — he would sink the pound sterling. Eden hastily withdrew, together with France and Israel.

Denying these new postwar realities, British memory of the special relationship became a myth, even when the U.S. persistently sidelined its former ally. It was not just Blair’s invocations; Margaret Thatcher never admitted how dependent her government had become on the U.S. With the Empire still shrinking, she also ignored that Washington had urged her predecessors to join the European Economic Community. She opposed the reunification of Germany in 1990 but had to fall into line when George H. W. Bush decided to pave the way for it.

These setbacks highlight a bitter irony: It was Germany that the U.S. forged a special relationship with after the six years of war against Hitler. After 1945 U.S. experts quickly discovered that West Germany, Allied bombing notwithstanding, still had greater industrial potential than Britain. This potential, if mobilized, could be used as the engine for the growth and modernization of Western Europe.

The rapid reconstruction of the West German economy spilled over into its neighbors as they responded to Marshall Plan aid and to the first phase of integration, the European Coal and Steel Community that the Americans were promoting. Britain refused to join, and remained focused on its declining Empire. As the American-German special relationship blossomed, with export-oriented, highly adaptable German industries taking advantage of the Open Door, Germany greatly benefited from what eventually became the European Union.

To put it bluntly, during the 20th century Germany twice failed to achieve a dominant position on the European Continent by brutal military force. Following World War II, and thanks to their special relationship with the U.S. and its business community, Germany gained hegemony in Europe without firing a single shot.

Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador now at Harvard University, had comforting words for Cameron after the Brexit vote, reassuring him that the UK would remain a central concern of U.S. policy. But he added that it was “undeniable now that U.S. ties to Germany will be key on EU issues.” In other words, while Britain’s former place in Washington lives on as myth, America’s special relationship with the Federal Republic continues on for real.