Name: Germany Continent: Europe Population: 82,400,000 Religion: Protestant 38%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 1.7%, unaffiliated or other 26.3%

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 the country 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 2002, Germany and 11 other EU countries introduced a common European currency, the euro. Information from the CIA World Fact Book

Timeline of Events Date Event 843   843 Treaty of Verdun permanently splits Charlemagne's empire 1075   1075 Pope Gregory VII decrees papal supremacy in Dictatus papae; Beginning of Investiture Controversy between the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor 1188 27 March 1188 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) leads crusader army from Germany 1341 15 March 1341 Emperor Louis IV makes peace with Philip VI 1525 24 February 1525 Imperial-Spanish army commanded by Charles de Lannoy defeats a French army at the Battle of Pavia and takes French king Francis I captive 1630   1630 Gustavus Adolphus invades Germany 1631 17 September 1631 Gustavus Adolphus destroys Imperial Army at Breitenfeld 1701   1701 Prussia becomes a kingdom 1748 18 October 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends War of Austrian Succession 1805 26 December 1805 Treaty of Pressburg formally dissolves the Holy Roman Empire 1806 14 October 1806 French army destroys Prussian army at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt 1826   1826 Zollerein established in Germany 1827   1827 Beethoven dies 1844   1844 Friedrich Nietzsche born 1848 23 February 1848 Revolution of 1848 begins in France resulting in the establishment of the Second French Republic and spread of revolutionary movements throughout Europe 1867   1867 das Kapital by Karl Marx 1869   1869 Siegfried Wagner born 1870 19 July 1870 Franco-Prussian War begins following Spanish Succession Crisis 1871   1871 Battle of Saint-Quentin 18 January 1871 Wilhelm I proclaims German Empire at Versailles 10 May 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt ends Franco-Prussian War; German Empire recognized and France loses Alsace-Lorraine 1875   1875 Albert Schweitzer born 1905 31 March 1905 The First Moroccan Crisis; Germany disputes status of French protectorate in Morocco 1914 1 August 1914 The First World War (World War I) begins after Germany declares war on Russia 5 September 1914 The German Schlieffen Plan fails when French forces defeat the German army at the First Battle of the Marne; Four years of trench warfare ensue on the Western Front 1915 7 May 1915 German submarine sinks the Lusitania resulting in the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans 1916 1 July 1916 British suffer over 50,000 casualties in first day of the Battle of the Somme 1917 6 April 1917 United States formally declares war against Germany. 1938 9 November 1938 Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass); Jewish synagogues and businesses destroyed throughout Germany 1939 23 August 1939 Signing of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact 1940 9 April 1940 Invasion of Norway 1941 1 March 1941 Bulgaria become Axis power, joins Tripartite Pact 16 April 1941 Ante Pavelic is elected head of Croatia, a new sovereign state with close ties to Germany 1942 23 October 1942 The British 8th Army under General Bernard Montgomery defeats Axis army at the Second Battle of El Alamein 1943 2 February 1943 Remnants of the German 6th Army surrender at Stalingrad 9 July 1943 Allied forces launch amphibious invasion of Sicily 1944 14 October 1944 Erwin Rommel dies 1961 12 August 1961 East Germany begins construction of the Berlin Wall Go here for timeline sources.