Germany (Europe)

Destination Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, a Nations Online country profile of the sovereign state in Central Europe.

Germany borders the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and Denmark to the north, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France to the west, Switzerland, and Austria in the south, the Czechia and Poland in the east. Additionally, it shares maritime borders with Sweden and the United Kingdom.

An area of 357,022 km² makes Germany the seventh-largest country in Europe, compared; it is about two-thirds the size of France, or slightly smaller than the US state of Montana.

Germany has a population of 83,2 million people (2020); the capital and largest city is Berlin, with about 3.3 million inhabitants.

The official language is German (Standard German, German: Hochdeutsch), a variety of German dialects are spoken in specific regions. More than 50% of Germans speak English as a second language.

The Federal Republic of Germany is located in the heart of Europe. The nation-state now known as Germany was first unified in 1871 as a modern federal state, the German Empire.

In the first half of the 20th century, two devastating World Wars, of which Germany was responsible for, left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers.
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 Western economic and security organizations, the EEC and NATO, while the communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the fall of Communism enabled Germany's unification in 1990.

With the unification of the two German states, the country became Europe's most populous nation (situated entirely in Europe) and strengthened its role as a key member of the European Union and the continent's economic, political, and security organizations.