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Background:
As Europe's largest economy and second most populous nation, 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 January 2008.
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