<P> In response to Hitler's actions, two days later, on 3 September, after a British ultimatum to Germany to cease military operations was ignored, Britain and France declared war on Germany . In the spring of 1940, Germany conquered Denmark and Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France forcing the French government to sign an armistice after German troops occupied most of the country . The British repelled German air attacks in the Battle of Britain in the same year . In 1941, German troops invaded Yugoslavia, Greece and the Soviet Union . By 1942, Germany and other Axis powers controlled most of continental Europe and North Africa, but following the Soviet Union's victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, the allies' reconquest of North Africa and invasion of Italy in 1943, German forces suffered repeated military defeats . In June 1944, the Western allies landed in France and the Soviets pushed into Eastern Europe . By late 1944, the Western allies had entered Germany despite one final German counter offensive in the Ardennes Forest . Following Hitler's suicide during the Battle of Berlin, German armed forces surrendered on 8 May 1945, ending World War II in Europe . After World War II, former members of the Nazi regime were tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials . </P> <P> In what later became known as The Holocaust, the German government persecuted minorities and used a network of concentration and death camps across Europe to conduct a genocide of what they considered to be inferior peoples . In total, over 10 million civilians were systematically murdered, including 6 million Jews, between 220,000 and 1,500,000 Romani, 275,000 persons with disabilities, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses, thousands of homosexuals, and hundreds of thousands of members of the political and religious opposition from Germany, and occupied countries (Nacht und Nebel). Nazi policies in the German occupied countries resulted in the deaths of 2.7 million Poles, 1.3 million Ukrainians, and an estimated 2.8 million Soviet war prisoners . In addition, the Nazi regime abducted approximately 12 million people from across the German occupied Europe for use as slave labour in the German industry . German military war casualties have been estimated at 5.3 million, and around 900,000 German civilians died; 400,000 from Allied bombing, and 500,000 in the course of the Soviet invasion from the east . Around 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from across Eastern Europe . Germany lost roughly one - quarter of its pre-war territory . Strategic bombing and land warfare destroyed many cities and cultural heritage sites . </P> <P> After Germany surrendered, the Allies partitioned Berlin and Germany's remaining territory into four military occupation zones . The western sectors, controlled by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, were merged on 23 May 1949 to form the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland); on 7 October 1949, the Soviet Zone became the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). They were informally known as West Germany and East Germany . East Germany selected East Berlin as its capital, while West Germany chose Bonn as a provisional capital, to emphasize its stance that the two - state solution was an artificial and temporary status quo . </P> <P> West Germany was established as a federal parliamentary republic with a "social market economy". Starting in 1948 West Germany became a major recipient of reconstruction aid under the Marshall Plan and used this to rebuild its industry . Konrad Adenauer was elected the first Federal Chancellor (Bundeskanzler) of Germany in 1949 and remained in office until 1963 . Under his and Ludwig Erhard's leadership, the country enjoyed prolonged economic growth beginning in the early 1950s, that became known as an "economic miracle" (Wirtschaftswunder). The Federal Republic of Germany joined NATO in 1955 and was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 . </P>

When was the federal republic of germany founded