Shortly after, Germany reunified as a nation after 45 years of agitation between the Soviet-controlled east and NATO-backed west. However, one look at a map of Germany’s football teams today will show you that the Cold War is far from over.
After the Second World War, Germany was split up into four zones of occupation. Those controlled by the USA, France and Britain merged to become West Germany. The Soviet sector became East Germany. Berlin was split along similar lines, with West Berlin becoming a western enclave behind the Iron Curtain.
Between 1945 and 1990, West Germany made remarkable progress after hostilities in Europe ended, integrating themselves politically and helping to shape and build the Europe that we know today. East Germany was a one-party communist state and a satellite of the Soviet Union.
The West went from success to success, a vibrant and progressive country at the heart of the European project. Nonetheless, it was on the football pitch where they made they biggest name for themselves. Led by names such as Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller, they won the World Cup three times. The first, in 1954, came as a huge upset as they beat a Hungarian side widely thought of as one of the best to ever play the game.
20 years later when they won their second, they were indisputably the greatest team in the world, adding to their 1972 European Championship. Lothar Matthäus and co. added another in 1990 and the Germans trail only Brazil in terms of World Cups won after they brought home a fourth by winning in South America in 2014.
The East German team, by contrast, qualified for the World Cup only once, and it was here that the two sides met in their only senior international against each other. Surprisingly, the East won 1-0, but failed to make it past the second round while the West won the tournament on home soil. By the time the two sides were scheduled to meet again, in qualifying for Euro 1992, German reunification was underway and the match was eventually cancelled.
In addition to this gulf in class between the two national sides, numerous West German club sides found success on the European stage, often at the expense of their former compatriots. Eintracht Frankfurt were the first side to reach a European Cup final, losing to the all-conquering Real Madrid side of the time in the 1960 final.
Frankfurt were soon joined by Bayern Munich and Hamburg in European competition, the former going on to win the European Cup three times in a row between 1974 and 1976, while the latter won it once. Indeed, that Bayern Munich team featured many of the same players who had already tasted success at the World Cup and they often breezed past East German clubs on the way to the final. On the four occasions where there were matches between sides from East and West Germany, it was the westerners who prevailed on every occasion.
Be that as it may, it is now 2018, 28 years since Germany reconnected, but the divide between the two regions shows no signs of shortening. It only takes a glance at the Bundesliga to tell you all you need to know. Of the 18 teams who will compete in next season’s competition, 17 are from the former West Germany. Only RB Leipzig, bankrolled by Austrian drinks firm Red Bull, provide a presence from the state of Saxony which was formerly a part of the east.
Indeed, after the Austrian money propelled Leipzig from the German fifth division to the Bundesliga in 2016, they became the first side from the former East Germany to play in the Bundesliga since Energie Cottbus' relegation in 2009.
No East German side has ever won the Bundesliga, and Berliner FC Dynamo who won the East German ‘Oberliga’ a record ten times currently play in Germany’s fourth division. When Germany did reunify, two sides from the east were seeded into the reformed Bundesliga - Hansa Rostock and Dynamo Dresden. Neither have been seen in the top division since 2008.
The ‘Mannschaft’ tells a similar story. Only one player born in former East Germany will be a member of the 23-man squad that will travel to Russia. Toni Kroos was born in Griefswald, on the north coast near the border with Poland, and he was also the sole representative of East Germany in 2014 as he helped them to win another title - both Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose were born in Poland. Moreover, Kroos was born in a unified Germany in 1990, after the country had come back together, and spent the latter part of his youth career with Bayern.
The reasons behind this massive disparity are multi-faceted. For starters, football as a sport simply wasn’t looked upon well enough by a communist government in the east. Its propensity to reward individual flair and skill did not tie in with the ideology that the collective must come above all else. As a result, for 45 years the sides in West Germany developed at a much quicker rate, building academies and training facilities that were the best of their time. When the wall did come down, they swooped in on a new market of eastern players, creating a talent vacuum.
It is a situation that is not only specific to football. As a region the east, minus Berlin, still lags way behind the West. In some places, unemployment is almost double the national rate. Investment is low, all of Germany’s bigger firms are headquartered in the west, and without this capital it is impossible to stimulate growth on or off the pitch.
For this reason, it is probably RB Leipzig who offer the only real hope to East German fans. Despite the contempt in which the club is held by many fans in Germany - they are accused of selling their soul and buying success - they are the only club with the modern training facilities, scouting networks and other means to acquire young talent. For everyone else, it is a familiar story. The Berlin wall came down in 1989, but the invisible barrier still exists as Germany’s cold war continues.