I know the German / European spruce thing has already been explained (again), but since this is such a pet peeve for me too, I can't keep myself from commenting (again...)
Here's a fairly typical Norwegian scenery (this happens to be from Nordmarka, just outside Oslo, our capital). Up here, its almost nothing but spruce! Sweden, Finnland, not to mention our neighbour Russia has even more. Lots more! Germany and the Alp region appear depleted by comparison.
Here's a map of the growing range. Its HUGE!
I live in a spruce house, read a newspaper made from spruce pulp, I burn it to keep warm during winter, the list goes on... This was taken earlier this fall, when we were chopping and splitting firewood, spruce of course.
As has been mentioned, spruce doesn't care about nationalities. Given the right growing conditions, and enough time, I believe any area can yield fine soundboard material. You have to find it, of course, and then know how to process it, and to sell it as tonewood, you'd need to market it as such. Up here, not many people do, I suppose in part because of lot's of buyer's preconceived notion that the material needs to be cut somewhere else. Besides its no real money in it compared to lumber and pulp, so who cares. But its there, and lots of it. Why wouldn't it be?
Here's one of my all-Norwegian-woods instruments, the Norwegian wood mandola. Its a fine sounding instrument, and to me, the top material is visually indistinguishable from the best examples of the same stuff I have from Italy.
