West Germany

West Germany ( Westdeutschland , BRD)[8] is the common name of the Federal Republic of Germany from May 23, 1949 to October 3, 1990, when the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) existed .

West Germany is a generic term, and its official name is the same as modern Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland). The name West Germany was used as an expression of contrast with the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) located in the northeast, so it was also called West Germany.

The abbreviation is BRD. However, the West German side avoided this expression to emphasize that they were authentic Germans, while the German Democratic Republic side mainly used the abbreviation when referring to West Germany.

Historians also refer to West Germany at this time as the Bonner Republik, borrowing the coinage of the Weimar Republic .

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The national flag is the same black, red, gold, and tricolor as the modern Germany .

Like modern Germany, the former West Germany used the black-red-gold tricolor flag with the national emblem as its government flag. There are images of this government flag, often placed next to the East German flag or used to differentiate before and after unification, but it should be noted that it is not the official flag of West Germany.

The national anthem is the song of the Germans . It is similar to the national anthem of the former Nazi Germany or the Weimar Republic , but only the third verse is sung with a lighter nationalistic tone. This continues in modern Germany after unification.

At first, it was 11 federal states, but in 1952, the three states of Baden, Württemberg-Baden, and Württemberg-Hohenzollern were merged to form Baden-Württemberg, which became 9 federal states, and in 1957 Saarland returned to West Germany and became 10 federal states. West Berlin was officially occupied by three allied countries , the United States , Britain , and France , not a federal state of West Germany, although the West German government exercised limited administrative power.[11] West Berlin was officially outside the sovereignty of West German authorities.

West Germany never had a legally designated capital, but the de facto capital was Bonn . Berlin, the German capital before the war, was officially under the jurisdiction of the four Allied countries beyond the sovereignty of East and West Germany, and it was also a border area surrounded by East Germany , so it could not function as the capital in practice. Therefore, central government organizations were located in the small city of Bonn, which functioned as the capital of West Germany. Many documents, including Wikipedia, refer to the capital of West Germany as Bonn. After unification, many federal agencies located in Bonn moved to Berlin .[12] However, Bonn was legally designated as a 'federal city (Bundesstadt)' to share some of the capital's functions, and as a result, some administrative agencies remain, leaving many traces of being the capital of West Germany. What is interesting is that from a legal standpoint, Bonn's status as the capital was more solid after reunification.

Map of Germany under Allied occupation , divided after the fall of Nazi Germany . West Germany was formed by merging the jurisdictions of the United States , Great Britain and France . Originally, the whole area was occupied by the Soviet Army, but due to its symbolism as the traditional capital of Germany , the three countries, the United States , Britain, and France, put pressure on it to divide it . Bremen is a border area between the US occupation zone and is surrounded by the British occupation zone.[13] On the map, to the west of the blue land occupied by the French army , there is a land painted in pale yellow (it looks almost white), which is today's Saarland state. 1947 at the request of France It was separated from the German occupation zone and became the Saar Protectorate under French protection , but returned to West Germany in 1956 to become the Saarland province. For reference, the regions further east than East Germany were Poland and the Soviet Union, respectively.[14] incorporated into the territory. Among these, the area annexed by the Soviet Union was the northern third of East Prussia , starting with Königsberg , and was renamed Kaliningrad after the annexation. Even today, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it belongs to Russia under the same name. For details, refer to that document.

West Germany's territory occupied 53% of the territory of the former Weimar Republic and 69.6% of the territory of present-day Germany .


Map of Germany in 1949 . East Germany (red), West Germany (blue), West Berlin (yellow), and the Saar Protectorate (purple) are shown. On this map, each state in East and West Germany (Land, plural: Länder; English: state)[15] The boundary line was drawn. Originally, Berlin was under the jurisdiction of the four Allied countries - the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union - and did not officially belong to either East or West Germany , so it was considered a 'special region' of the Allied countries rather than a 'state' of Germany. However, as soon as the East German regime was established in 1949 , the East German government declared East Berlin, which was under the jurisdiction of the Soviet military in Berlin, as its capital, and the Soviet Union and communist countries also recognized this, making East Berlin, unlike West Berlin, a de facto part of East Germany. was incorporated.[16] Because of this, only West Berlin has a ‘hole’ in this map. When drawing the territory of East Germany, a 'hole' must be left in the West Berlin area to mark the territory correctly.[17] , East Germany often ignored this when drawing its own territory. However, on the contrary, there was no such thing as 'overthrowing the German Democratic Republic' by drawing attention to West Germany, but from the 1970s, East Germany gave up on the unification route and pursued capitalism. Because it claimed to be a socialist nation-state separate from the nation-state West Germany, there was no need to draw ' foreign ' West Germany or West Berlin as its own territory.


Areas of East Germany (red) and West Germany (blue/color) after Saarland's return to West Germany . Because East Germany was not very large and had become a centralized country, the states were abolished and 'bezirk', which was smaller than the state, was placed as the highest administrative district. Therefore, the state borders of East Germany are not drawn on this map . For reference, the state of East Germany was revived just before unification .[18] Its actual function as a state was restored after unification. After unification , East Berlin was integrated with West Berlin and became 'City State Berlin', freeing itself from the Allied occupation and officially becoming German territory.

In the 1960s , it was the second largest economy in the First World after the United States, and in the 1970s and 1980s , it was the third largest economy in the First World after the United States and Japan . The size of the economy has always been first in liberal Europe since it surpassed the United Kingdom in 1960, and its national income has also been the highest in all of Europe. In fact, Germany before division was also the largest industrial/economic power in Europe, and as a result of that legacy, East Germany also had an overwhelmingly high national income among Eastern European communist countries , including the Soviet Union .

The gap with East Germany was about 4 times that of West Germany in terms of population, 6 times that of West Germany in terms of economic size in real terms, and 1.5 times the size of the economy per capita from the height of the Cold War until just before unification. Although it remained at a similar level later, this was the result of a fixed exchange rate system that converted West German marks and East German marks at a 1:1 ratio. If we take into account the real exchange rate traded on the black market, the gap in per capita economic size between West Germany and East Germany increases. Unlike South Korea and North Korea, where there was no significant difference in economic level, East and West Germany were in an unequal situation from the beginning. Germany's largest port and second largest city under British occupation. Unlike West Germany, which has Hamburg, the Ruhr , the largest industrial zone , and Bavaria , which was occupied by the United States and quickly completed post-war recovery with enormous economic support and developed further, Mecklenburg, Pommern , and Brandenburg , occupied by East Germany, had agriculture led by Junkers . It was a region that maintained a central economy and lagged behind in industrialization compared to West Germany. Rather, it should be said that East Germany was halfway through catching up with West Germany's per capita economic size. In fact, the most economically unfavorable region within Nazi Germany from the former German Empire was eastern Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line, but that area was taken over by the new Poland and the Soviet Union. And although East Germany, which was originally central Germany, was better than Eastern Germany, the gap with West Germany widened further during the East German period.

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Unlike the modern German Federal forces, which have become colorless[19] The military power of West Germany was the strong army and the air force of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), who were in charge of defense of Western Europe with the powerful army and the air force. Besides, this was not just an al -infillation, but most of them were mechanized. This is because the US Air Force has been supported by the US Air Force, even if the war outbreaks, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treaty, the West Germany, had to prevent the West Germany (alone) in central Europe. However, in the West Germany's active divisions, the permanent division was about 10 to 12, which was not much much more than the number of divisions of the National Defense Forces during the Baimar Republic .[20]

The main firearms of the West German Army operated domestically produced firearms such as the HKG3 automatic rifle , the MG3 multipurpose machine gun, and the H&K MP5 submachine gun. I did too.

In the armor section, along with the M1 Abrams, the Leopard was once evaluated as the pinnacle of modern tanks. The tank sisters are famous.

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During the Cold War, there was a lot of political conflict between West Germany and East Germany, but there was also a lot of exchange. At that time, unlike South and North Korea , it was possible to freely travel to West and East Germany.[21] 1990 At midnight on October 3, West Germany and East Germany achieved unification .