It started with coal and steel.

After the horrors of 1914 gave way to the even greater ones of 1939, France and West Germany tried to tie their economies so close together in 1951 that the continent could never turn into a slaughterhouse again. So along with Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, they set up the European Coal and Steel Community to create a common market for those strategically-vital resources and head off any renewed rivalry. Six years later, that was expanded into a common market for everything else with the European Economic Community, and that in turn was expanded to include more and more countries before it became a part of the then-new European Union in 1993. The common currency came next in 1999, which has, yes, been expanded since, with Lithuania becoming its latest member just this year.

Read the article “ANALYSIS: Why the Greece Crisis Could Be the Beginning of the End of Europe” on washingtonpost.com.