Over the years all of Europe's great empires have got their paws into Germany, but none was ever able to count all it's subjects as faithful. Different pockets of fierce resistance met the Roman legions (50 BC to 5 AD), the Frankish Conqueror, Charlemagne (up till the 9th century AD) and Otto the Great's Holy Roman Empire (from the late 10th century). By the time the House of Habsburg took over in the 13th century the country was little more than a conglomerate of German speaking states.

The Hasburgs were still in control until the devastating Thirty Years War (1618-48), which was started by ongoing religious and nationalist conflicts. Germany lost a third of it's population during the period. Local princes assumed complete sovereignty over a patchwork of 300 states. This made it easier for Napoleon to come along in the 19th century and claim some for his own. The French never managed to subdue Prussia which later became the centre of German resistance. It was Prussia that led the 1813 war at Leipzig that ended Napoleon's German aspirations. Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Prussia, annexed most of Germany in 1866 consolidating his position as big wig in Europe. The Prussian king, Wilhelm I, was instated as Kaiser and a united Germany hit the world stage for the first time.

Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck in 1890, stayed around long enough to lead Germany into World War I in 1918, then ran off to Holland to hide when he realised the war wasn't going to have the outcome he'd hoped for. Germany struggled with civil unrest and disastrous peace, uniting only in dislike of the Weimar Republic. Then along came Adolf Hitler, an Austrian drifter and German army veteran who turned general disaffection in a focused lunacy. In 1933 his National Socialist German Worker's (Nazi) Party assumed complete control over Germany. Extravagant military spending and blasé border bending gave way to outright aggression, World War II, and the horror of the Holocaust. The Germans themselves were surprised at the success of their initial invasions, but by 1943 a string of heavy losses paved the way for German surrender in 1945.

Postwar Germany was divided up between the Allies, with Britain, France and the USA consolidating the west portion into the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet zone extended into the communist German Democratic Republic. West Germany received massive injections of capital, attracting many workers from the miserable conditions in the East that is until someone had the idea of building a wall around west Berlin and sealing the rest of the border. Over the next 25 years, West Germany became one of the world's most prosperous nations while it's communist Siamese sibling suffered. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe has no more potent symbol than the opening of the Berlin frontier in 1989.

As a result of the reunification of Germany, the Helmut Kohl era was recorded as one of the most dramatic periods in the country's history. After 16 years, however, it came to an end when a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens took office in 1998.