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Background:
As Europe's largest economy and second most populous nation (after Russia),
Germany is a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defense
organizations. European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating
World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied
by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in
1945. With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949:
the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic
Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and
security organizations, the EC, which became the EU, and NATO, while the
Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline
of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990.
Since then, Germany has expended considerable funds to bring Eastern
productivity and wages up to Western standards. In January 1999, Germany and 10
other EU countries introduced a common European exchange currency, the euro.
This information comes from the CIA
World Factbook June 2009.
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