Called "the Bonn Republic" these days by historians, the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) was a European state formed out of three of the occupation zones of Germany in the aftermath of the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, the other becoming East Germany under occupation by the Soviet Union. This didn't happen overnight - the British and American occupation zones were merged, informally very quickly after the war and more formally combined into something called at the time "the Bizone" or "Bizonia" by 1948 or so, with the French zone allowed in just before the formation of the Bundesrepublik itself in 1949. The Saarland, separately occupied and disputed by France, joined in 1957 after the residents were allowed to vote on which country they wanted to be part of. This is sometimes referred to in modern times as the kleine Wiedervereinigung ("Little Reunification").
West Germany became a democracy and an economic superpower. It joined NATO and had a considerable number of foreign military bases there. The bridges had speed limits for tanks (and still do in The Berlin Republic), because World War III would have been fought there.
West Germany had the legacy of the World War II to deal with. They implemented a No Swastikas policy and banned all vaguely Nazi organisations. West Germany also became a pretty peaceful nation, not getting involved in any foreign wars. This didn't stop East Germany from calling them fascists on a regular basis; the Berlin Wall was called "der antifaschistische Schutzwall," literally meaning "the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier." The GDR regime also had a field day any time when real or supposed connections of high ranking West German officials to the Nazi Era became public and they often leaked documents from Soviet Archives or the likes to the press themselves to land a propaganda coup. That said, the GDR itself had quite a few old Nazis in high ranks of army state and party in the 1950s and early 1960s.note
It considered itself a reconstituted Weimar Republic (despite the irony of Weimar now being in East Germany), deciding to pay reparations for both wars and keeping the D license plate. It also elected to pay reparations to Israel starting in 1953 as penance for The Holocaust (and on a more practical level, payment for the labor and property stolen from Jews by the Nazis); Germany remains Israel's foremost advocate in Europe to this day, and has discovered rather interesting ways to show its sorriness to Israel (including giving the IDF nuclear-capable submarines). The de facto capital of West Germany was Bonn, although Berlin was symbolically named the de jure capital in the Basic Law. West Berlin, an occupied city, sent non-voting representatives to the West German Parliament.
West Germany also developed culturally, with West German literature, philosophy, films, and music making their mark. On the high end, the likes of Gruppe '47 (including, most famously, Günter Grass) pointed the West German reaction to the horrors of World War II (in essence, "we were guilty and foolish, all of us!") and the process of denazification (they were for it). On the pop-cultural level, The Beatles and countless other British bands had their first breaks in Germany—typically Hamburg—and the West Germans were the first Continental Europeans to really get what this "rock" thing was all about. The West Germans returned the favor: late '60s and early '70s West German rock (called "Kraut Rock" by the British music press), led by bands like Neu!, Amon Düül II, and early Kraftwerk, had a powerful impact on Post-Punk, New Wave, Electronic, and Industrial music. West Berlin in particular was famous for both its rollicking club scene and its Hansa-By-The-Wall (yes, that Wall) recording studio, which was a magnet for musicians German and non-German alike. David Bowie spent most of his most productive and creative period in West Berlin (termed, fittingly, his "Berlin period"), inspired by the West German scene. Iggy Pop was similarly inspired, recording part of his debut album and all of Lust for Life (you know, the famous one) at Hansa-By-The-Wall.
On another cultural note, West Germans also managed to create a brilliant national soccer team, winning The World Cup in 1954, 1974, and 1990 (just before reunification). The win in 1954, against Hungary, was a massive boost to West German pride (which until then had been rather shaky), and was seen as a moral victory for the West over the Soviet bloc.
Older sources will sometimes refer to this place as simply "Germany", possibly due to the feeling that this was the real Germany- the other one was just Commie Land with Germans. (This is similar to how South Korea is sometimes referred to as just "Korea", based on much the same attitude about North Korea.) Bonn itself felt that for a while, refusing to recognise any country bar the USSR that had any relations with the GDR until Willy Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik of the 1970s. The two Germanies recognised each other (but not completely: for example, no ambassadors, but permanent representatives [Ständige Vertretung] – this would become important in 1990) and joined the United Nations together.
In the early 1980s, it was a site for the US Cruise and Pershing II deployments, something that caused considerable anxiety in a country that would have had nukes from both sides land on it in a nuclear war. In 1986, Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced the unilateral removal of those missiles- a year later the entire lot were got rid of under the INF Treaty.
The West German Basic Law was aimed at the reunification of Germany. When Germany reunified, East Germany was merely absorbed into West Germany, creating the reunified Germany- The Berlin Republic, which is basically the Bonn Republic with the former Demokratische Republik integrated into the Bundesrepublik and the government moved to the now-reunified Berlin. The Basic Law stayed in place with minor changes as it had served the country well. While Article 23 was changed (which allowed for Germany to be reunified without major changes to the constitution - something which was seen as obsolete with reunification complete) Article 146 notably wasn't - meaning the German constitution still contains a paragraph that details how it could be replaced by a new one (this was intended as the other avenue to reunification and is sometimes brought up by populist or opposition politicians)
Appears in the following works:
- Insert any fiction about the Red Army Faction
:
- The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (novel and film)
- Germany in Autumn
- The Third Generation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Marianne and Juliane
- Stammheim
- The Baader Meinhof Complex
- Greater Freedom, Lesser Freedom
- A Small Town In Germany , a John le Carré novel
- The Odessa File
- Recurring Saturday Night Live segment Sprockets
- A Case for Two until 1990.
- Derrick until 1990.
- Tatort until 1990. The series and its East German counterpart Polizeiruf 110 started in 1970 and 1971 respectively. Both are still airing as of the early 2020s.
- The James Bond film Octopussy has Big Bad Duumvirate General Orlov and Prince Kamal Khan attempting to detonate a nuclear bomb on a US Air Base in West Germany to trigger World War III.
- The incredibly depressing book and movie Christiane F., about the lives of teenage heroin addicts in West Berlin. Mostly famous outside Germany due to David Bowie providing the soundtrack and appearing in the film.
- Rosen für den Staatsanwalt satirises post-war Germany's reliance on ex-Nazis in running their (otherwise completely overhauled) legal system.
- The first act of Monster takes place in late 1980s Düsseldorf, appropriately with a family massacre involving an East German defector. While the rest of the story takes place in The Berlin Republic, the echoes of The Cold War remain omnipresent.
