ABSTRACT
Germany has the largest population of all members of the European Community. It has almost as high density of population as Britain. The war and the effects of the war on the German political atmosphere had a great impact on German development. The temporary division of Germany by the Allies, followed by the development of the cold war and ‘Iron Curtain’ across Europe, meant that Germany did not regain the unity, which had been established seventy-five years earlier, for another forty-five years. The total German population grew by 50 per cent between the founding of the united German state in 1871 and the outbreak of the First World War. Post-war Germany comprised only two-thirds of what had been Germany prior to Hitler’s first invasions in 1937. The post-war West German state, founded in 1949 as the Federal Republic of Germany, was organised in a unique fashion, both to counter the fears of allies and to build internal stability and order.
