This year, for the first time since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Germany has recorded a budget surplus. Though the $1.6 billion budget surplus for the first half of 2007 is small, it is significant in that it heralds a significant revival in Germany’s economic fortunes. Estimates suggest that by 2010 Germany will not need to borrow any money at all.

Long Europe’s leading supporter of financial discipline, Germany fell from grace during the prolonged economic slump after East Germany united with the more prosperous West Germany. Each year since 1990, German taxpayers have pumped more than $100 billion into East Germany. Approximately $3 trillion has been sent east to build new infrastructure like railways, bridges, airports and freeways.

The results are now evident. Industry has been reinvigorated and modernized, and workers in closed factories with defunct pension plans have been taken care of. Today, Germany is the world’s third-largest economy behind the United States and Japan. It is also the world’s largest exporting nation, selling high-end manufactured products to Europe and the rest of the world. German economic growth is expected to measure 2.9 percent this year. According to the forecasting firm Global Insight, U.S. economic growth is expected to be just 1.9 percent for 2007.

Think of Germany as an entrepreneur that scrimped and saved to build a massive industrial complex. Now the factories are producing, products are being churned out, and revenue streams are just starting to hit the books. “[T]here is just this huge sense of relief that it has more or less worked out,” said one government adviser.

Clearly, the process of economic absorption can take time. Once gains have been consolidated, however, merged economies often emerge vastly stronger and more powerful. The economic condition in Germany is improving, and German growth is lifting the rest of the European Union with it.

How Germany will employ its newfound economic strength is now the big question facing Europe.

Signs show that Europe itself will be the next entity to be absorbed. “Germany’s Corporate Blitzkrieg” details how quickly and effectively German corporations are reaching out beyond German borders to gain control of strategic industry and influence the destiny of Europe.