why was hitler so obsessed with germany and their nation when he was from austria.

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I get austria means east of germany right? but im still a bit confused I thought the ethnicity was different.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Enicity is a human concept and what exact grouping you pick is subjective. Remember Germany as a country is a very recent concept, the unification of Germany was in 1871. That was 18 years before Hitler was born. So it is not in any way unreasonable to consider austria a part that had not but should join Germany.

So you can look at the German nation as all the German-speaking people regardless of what country they lived in at that time. Hitler wanted to build a unified country with them that would be a lot larger then what is started as. Lots of Eastern Europe would be colonized by German people to replace the Slavic population there,

The idea of a German people has existed for over a millennia before the country of Germany. For a long time, it was the Holy Roman Empire that united the land with Germanic but alos other people. It was not an empire like we think of them today, the emperor had control of his own part which for the later part was Austria. The independent kingdoms, principalities etc were functionally independent and there were lots of internal wars. The 30 years war (1618-1648) was in large part a German civil war between the Catholics and the protestants. Around 50% of the population was lost. The imperial alliance led by the emperor in Australia was one of the sides in the conflict.

The Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806 and it is then you start to see a separate Germany form alongside Austira and you end up with two large empire at the start of WWII. Germany from around the Kingdom of Prussia fought to be de-dominant with the Austrian Emperor. It is after the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 that Prussia formed the North German Confederation and managed to exclude Austria from German internal affairs. Looking at Germany and Austria as separate is a 19th-century idea.

Even after German unification Kingoms and other parts had lots of independence. Ask yourself who Hitler fought for in WWI. It was not the German or Austrian Army it was the Bavarian Army. The Kingdom of Bavaria was a part of the German empire but had its own army. It is after WWI when the German Empire fell and the Weimar Republic is formed that you get a Germany unified like you see today.

So looking at Germany and Austria as separate missed the history of the area and that Germany as a country was formed only 153 years ago. Austria as a separate country was only formed in 1918, It was a part of Austria-Hungary 1867-1918. Before that, you had the multinational Austrian Empire 1804-1867. Before that, you had the Holy Roman Empire where the Emperor was in Vienna but only controlled a small part directly

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