The History of Germany

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Germany didn't forge in a fairy-tale forge-it splintered from Frankish fringes where Charlemagne's mustache muscled Saxons into submission birthing a Holy Roman hodgepodge that sprawled from Alps to Elbe like a drunkard's map. Teutonic orders carved Baltic crusader states with crossbow and convert while Habsburg jaws chomped Bohemia and Burgundy Luther's '17 theses nailing Wittenberg doors and sparking a schism that scorched abbeys. It was a patchwork of principalities and palatins where Thirty Years' carnage chewed a third of the folk leaving wastelands where witch-hunters prowled and peasants plotted pitchfork parliaments. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Prussia's spike rose next: Frederick's flute-fingered flurries drilling grenadiers into a machine that muscled Silesia from Maria Theresa's skirts Bismarck's mustache maneuvering Danish duels and Austrian ankles till '71's Versailles Versailles crowned Wilhelm in a spike-helmed spectacle. Kaiser Wilhelm's saber-rattling sparked the '14 inferno trenches turning Flanders to Flanders fields while Versailles' vengeful verses sowed Weimar's wild seeds-hyperinflation's bread riots and beer hall putsch that birthed Hitler's hydra. Blitzkrieg's panzers pounced in '39 but Stalingrad's snows snapped the spine rubble reigning from Rhine to Reichstag. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(102 102 102 1)>Postwar partition carved the carcass: West's Wirtschaftswunder whirring with Volkswagens East's Trabants chugging under Stasi stares till '89's Monday marches melted the Wall in a hail of hammers. Kohl's coin flipped the fence reuniting a republic that roars from Oktoberfest oompah to Merkel's migrant waves. Germany's no tidy Black Forest cake-it's a bratwurst bite of brawls and ballets proving a river-riven realm can rivet the world's rivets with its relentless rhythm.</span></p>