Brief History of Modern Germany

The population of Germany is about 82,310,000 which makes it the 14th most populated in world, 1st in Europe. The capital of Germany is Berlin, which is also its largest city.  The area of Germany is about 137,858 sq mi. Germany has the 3rd best economy in the world behind U.S. and Japan with a GDP of 3.045 trillion. The current government of Germany is a federal republic. The President is Horst Kohler and the chancellor is Angela Merkel. There has been many changes in its government. In 843 Germany was first founded as a part of the Holy Roman Empire. It wasn’t until June 8, 1815, after 972 years of occupation by the Holy Roman Empire, did Germany gain independence and become the German Confederation. But, on January 18 1871 Germany became the German Empire which competed in World War I on the Central Powers side, under the control of Emperor William Π. After the war Emperor William Π and all ruling princes were abdicated. Any traces of imperialism that had existed in the government where destroyed.

The new government was a republic called the Weimar Republic. It was the success of the German Revolution in November 1918 the previous year.  A political party called the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, was founded on January 1919. The years after Germany became a republic was filled with violence and poverty. They suffered from the Great Depression and harsh peace conditions from WW1treaties. There was a succession of unstable governments, which had thousands of politically motivated murders. But it was the Nazis that took control by forcing the president to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on January 29, 1933. This started the Third Reich who eventually started World War Π and was on side of the Axis Powers. When the war finally ended in 1945 Germany had been defeated the Nazis were responsible for 35 million deaths and the greatest loss of life there had ever been.

The remains of Germany after the war was separated into 4 different military occupation zones, one for each major county in the Allies. The Soviet Union in the northeast, the United Kingdom in the northwest, France in the southwest, and the United States of America in the southeast. On May 23, 1949 the sectors controlled by the U.K., France, and the U.S. were combined to make the Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany. About 4 months later the Soviet zone established the German Democratic Republic or East Germany. The tension between West and East Germany became escalated during the Cold War. The citizens of East Germany after years of being separated from West Germany longed to become one country. But the USSR would not let that happen. To stop East Germans from escaping into West Germany the USSR blockaded the border of East Germany. In Berlin a concrete wall called the Berlin wall was built to divide the part of Berlin that belonged to West Germany. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 there was nothing to stop East and West Germany to reunite. So on October 3, 1990 East and West Germany became one Germany. That Germany is the country that exists today.