In the end, though, the success of the new state was created by the efforts of its own citizens - by the sheer hard labour of its workers, by the crafts that were lying dormant in people's fingertips and the professional and entrepreneurial skills in their brains, by the readiness of so many people to put the public good at least as high as their own personal profit — and by the political skills of the leaders it found. The Basic Law was signed into effect, and the first Federal election held, in 1949, but there was already a complex political landscape in place: the Lander, the patchwork of provinces that make up the German nation (eleven of them at the time), together with their governments. Their heterogeneity reflects the very different characters and histories of the various German states that were assembled to compose Imperial Germany in 1871, and the combination of their individual politics with their participation in the Federal politics of Bonn created the characteristic complexity of modern German politics.

Since that first election in 1949, which brought the wily Konrad Adenauer to power, the Federal government has gone through many crises and scandals. It has survived many revelations that its members or officers had been implicated in the crimes of the past, or were working for East German intelligence, and many alarms when the nationalistic right seemed to be resurgent, or when the electorate seemed to be still nostalgic for past glories. In the last decade the longed-for reunification with the Eastern Lander has plunged the nation into its most severe and prolonged difficulties yet. But the Federal Republic has worked. It has proved stable and moderate. It has even survived its dependence upon coalition as a way of life something which appears unworkable to British and American eyes, which has caused endemic weakness in France and Italy, and which indeed destroyed the Weimar Republic and opened the door to Hider. Every West German government since the Federal Republic was founded has been a coalition, usually between the CDU/CSU (the conservative alliance formed by the Christian Democratic Union of the northern Lander and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria) on the one hand and the tiny FDP, the Free Democratic Party (aka the Liberals) on the other.