FACTBOX: Highs and lows in German-U.S. relations

(Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is to deliver a speech on transatlantic relations and meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a visit to Berlin on Thursday. Below are some key events in postwar German-U.S. relations:

POST-WAR DEVELOPMENTS

* In 1945, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, President Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to settle the fate of defeated Nazi Germany at the Potsdam Conference.

* The powers finalized the division of Germany into Western and Soviet occupation zones agreed five months before at Yalta. The zones evolved into East and West Germany in 1949, products of the East-West military standoff dividing Europe.

* In 1948, Soviet forces blocked all traffic to the three Western sectors of Berlin, starting the Berlin blockade on June 24. In response, Western allies launched an airlift of essential supplies to West Berlin. At its peak, the airlift brought in a plane every one to two minutes.

THE ECONOMIC MIRACLE OR "WIRTSCHAFTSWUNDER":

* Konrad Adenauer, one of the founding fathers of the Christian Democrats (CDU), was elected Chancellor in West Germany's first democratic election in 1949. He presided over the postwar "economic miracle", helped vastly by the Marshall Plan under which West Germany received huge U.S. investment.

WEST VERSUS EAST

* President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin in 1963, just two years after the Berlin Wall was built, and declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner), stressing U.S. commitment to resisting any Soviet threat.

* In June 1987, Reagan made a celebrated speech at the Brandenburg Gate, symbol of Berlin's East-West division and asked then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to open the gate and "tear down this wall!"

ANTI-US FEELINGS:

* Chancellor Helmut Schmidt staked his political reputation on NATO's 1979 decision to deploy Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles in Europe if Moscow refused to remove its SS-20s.

* As the deployment date approached and a large protest movement stepped up resistance to the missiles, his Social Democrats turned against the plan. By the time the first missiles were deployed in 1983, Schmidt was out of office. The last ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe left in 1991.

IRAQ

* During his re-election campaign in 2002, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Germany would "not click its heels" and follow President George W. Bush into war with Iraq -- a position that tapped into wells of German pacifism but infuriated Bush, who had sought international support to disarm or oust President Saddam Hussein.

* Bush and his close aides were especially stung by alleged remarks by Schroeder's justice minister saying that Bush was using Iraq as a political tactic and that Adolf Hitler also had tried to distract people from economic woes. She resigned.

A NEW BEGINNING

-- Schroeder's successor Angela Merkel worked hard to mend ties with Washington, even staging a wild boar barbecue for Bush in eastern Germany in 2006 before they headed to a Group of Eight meeting in St. Petersburg. There, Bush was caught on camera giving the German chancellor a quick back rub.