No, it wasn't. Germany switched to far pricier [...] LNG

The instability and fear, the supply since 2023 is solid and has not been doubted by anyone.

They had it as a barganing chip, and you seem to take it as a given they wouldn't bargain with it.

It had sat for months before, and months before that it was trickling down. Russia would have at minimum waited the entire winter too, hoping Germany would cave or act less determined to replace the supply.
And then after that winter, would they have just resumed exports like nothing at the old low prices?

American LNG where it has remained.

I'd like a source on that, from what I've seen they are decreasing gas use internally to more than compensate, mainly in heating (mostly moving to heat pumps). Initially they were getting a lot of supply from inside the EU and Norway, and brokered some temporary deals with middle eastern nations (also they did have some storage to buffer it out). With LNG accounting for almost none of the total imports. The numbers I've found myself so far don't seven split out the US or middle east from the "other" category, being in the low single percent or less.

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2026/20260112_GAS.html
This would be one reliable (though not terribly specific) source I found for this.

The largest suppliers of gas were Norway (44%), the Netherlands (24%) and Belgium (21%).

This sums to 89%. Other statistics I found split the remainder between LNG and other.

https://www.bayern-innovativ.de/en/emagazine/detail/en/page/where-germany-gets-its-gas-from

I don't see any notable issue in any of this.

In looking into this I saw that the EU at large has more notable LNG imports, about half of the total, so as much as Norway and eastern (non-eu) europe combined. Which is also about as much as Russia used to supply, though has not increased by that amount so just taken up some of the slack.

Btw. my initial guess for who did nordstream was germany itself, or in cooperation with whomever (like the us), to gain the political decisiveness to properly migrate away from russian gas without constantly fighting against people still wanting to bargain with russia. May still well have been complicit or explicit support, with various players deciding to let it happen for example. Or could have truly been a few people deciding it would be best and winging it themselves.