FRANKFURT - Five members of the euro zone, including Italy, fell into recession in the final quarter of 2011, official data showed Wednesday, as the sovereign debt crisis and the imposition of austerity measures discouraged consumers from spending and businesses from investing. But the zone's two largest economies, France and Germany, held up better than expected. The 17-nation euro zone contracted by 0.3 percent from the third quarter of the year, Eurostat, the European statistics agency said - the first such decline since the second quarter of 2009. That contraction was smaller than the 0.4 percent economists had expected, but the pain was nonetheless acute among smaller countries and in Southern Europe - ground zero of the debt crisis. German output fell 0.2 percent in the quarter, less than expected, while France surprised economists with 0.2 percent growth, defying expectations of a decline as exports of Airbus planes bolstered exports and business investment increased. The data were "a bit reassuring," said Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London, even if the weakness should continue through the first quarter of 2012. This shows that Europe is not going into freefall, it's not like the post-Lehman crisis. "The key for the outlook," Mr. Schulz continued, "remains whether the debt crisis can be contained. For the moment, the markets are giving Europe the benefit of the doubt," meaning countries that are not carrying out big fiscal adjustments - like Germany - could be growing again by the second quarter. The leaden pace of activity in the euro zone, which grew 0.7 percent from a year earlier, compares unfavorably with the United States, which grew by 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2010. The British economy grew 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter from 2010. "It could have been worse," Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING Bank, said of the euro zone data in a note to clients. Five euro zone countries had at least two quarters in a row of declining output, the generally accepted definition of a recession. The Spanish economy shrank by 0.3 percent, following a flat third quarter. In Italy, where Prime Minister Mario Monti's government is struggling to reduce debt and restore investor confidence, the national statistics agency, Istat, said the economy contracted for a second straight quarter, shrinking by 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter from the prior three months, and by 0.5 percent from a year earlier. Defense Minister Giampaolo Di Paola said Wednesday that Italy would save money by buying cutting military spending, including buying fewer Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets than it originally ordered. Mr. Di Paola told legislators that Italy would buy 90 warplanes instead of the 131 it had initially ordered, Reuters reported. A European fiscal compact agreed to in December and a move by the European Central Bank to allow banks to borrow almost unlimited sums at 1 percent interest for three years have helped to ease the sense of crisis in the bloc. Economists are fairly optimistic that the slowdown in Germany, the largest economy in Europe, will be fairly short lived. David Jolly reported from Paris.