As Europe's largest economy and most populous nation, Germany remains 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.
The southern part of the country is generally mountainous and heavily forested. In the southwestern region, east of the Rhine, which forms the border with France, is the vast expanse of rugged wooded peaks that constitute the Black Forest, an extension of Switzerland’s Jura Mo9untains. Further east the thickly wooded Bavarian Plateau rises out of the Danube Valley, leading to the spectacular peaks of the Alps along the border between Austria and Germany in the far southeast.
The central part of Germany is also a highland area, part of a chain of mountains and hills that extends from France as far east as the Carpathians. These, too, are heavily wooded, particularly in the more mountainous regions. The valleys are often fertile and undulating and extensively planted with crops and vines. The highest and most rugged peaks are found in the Harz Mountains in the north of these central uplands. In the northern part of the central uplands, where the country slopes toward the northern plain, there are areas of fertile soil that support crops such as wheat, barley and sugar beet.
Northern Germany is an extensive lowland plain that covers about one-third of the country’s area. Part of the North European Plain that stretches eastw3ard into Russia, it is a region of fertile pasture and croplands, sandy heaths and stretches of marshland. A network of northward-flowing rivers, most notably the Elbe and its tributaries, drains this northern plain. About one-third of the country is cultivated. Cereal crops are widely grown, as are hops for the German beers that are famous throughout the world. Vineyards are most widespread in the valleys of the Rhine and Mosel Rivers. Cattle and pigs are the principal livestock and are concentrated mainly on the northern plain.
Manufacturing industry, centred largely in the Ruhr Valley but also in such cities as Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich and Berlin, is the main strength of the German economy. Coal is the only mineral resource of which ~Germany has large reserves, although its importance has declined in recent decades as oil has replaced it as an industrial fuel. Iron and steel production support well developed machine manufacturing and other metal industries. Cement, chemical, car and electronic industries are also significant. |
