Germany

Germany is a major industrialised nation in central Europe, a federal union of 16 states. Germany has a long, complex history and rich culture, but it did not become a unified nation until 1871. Before that time, Germany had been a confederacy (1815-1867) and, before 1806, a federal empire comprising many separate and quite different principalities. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification between the old East & West in 1990