Focus on Germany

Germany explores the history, culture, and people of this large, economically powerful European nation. Its remarkable landscapes include broad plains, sandy beaches, high mountains, dense forests, and deep valleys, and its cities are centers for the arts and international finance. Germany's history in the twentieth-century was a troubled one. It fought and lost two world wars, perpetrated during World War II one of the most horrific wholesale destructions of humankind the world had ever witnessed, was divided into two separate and radically opposed states after World War II, and became a flashpoint for Cold War tensions. After decades of coming to terms with its past and forging a positive vision of its future, Germany became a unified nation once again in the 1990s. And while it is still struggling to integrate the people, politics, and lifestyles of its citizens from the former East Germany into the norms of the West, Germany has become one of Europe's most stable and productive societies.