Friedrich Merz said Germany could ask for shelter under Britain and France’s nuclear umbrella before his election victory on Sunday night.

After his triumph, the chancellor-in-waiting warned Nato “in its current form” could be dead by June in a seismic shift of relations between Berlin and Washington.

The centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader called for Europe to quickly build up its own defence capabilities before accusing Mr Trump of Vladimir Putin-style meddling in the German elections.

A matter of hours after results that leave him poised to take the reins of the EU’s biggest economy, Mr Merz could now lead Europe’s break-up with the US.

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Mr Merz, a former BlackRock executive, is a committed transatlanticist, who had styled himself as a businessman who could negotiate with the US president.

That was before Donald Trump began peace negotiations with Moscow without Volodymyr Zelensky and blamed the Ukrainian leader for the war.

The 69-year-old was more hawkish on Russia than Olaf Scholz, the incumbent chancellor who has led his Social Democratic Party (SPD) to the worst election results of the post-war era.

Unlike Mr Scholz, Mr Merz, a bespectacled, married father of three, was willing to send long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv.

Foreign diplomats expect Mr Merz to bring much stronger leadership to Germany and Europe than the little-mourned Mr Scholz.