[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Aptrgangr

Austrians are Germans, they are of the same tribe like the Bavarians (Bajuvarian) with exceptions in the very west, those are of Alamanni origin, and there is a significant Slavic minority too.

Of course the trick of the question is to wonder about Austria alone, and not Bavaria.

Both, in the FRG and the Republic Austria the ruling classes do their best to make alternative history and one political view obligatory. In Austria e.g. all documents and movies showing the re-union in 1938 was frenetically celebrated were destroyed, one copy showing Hitler being acclaimed in Vienna survived that action. But actually Austrians themselves wanted to join the "Deutsches Reich" after the Habsburg Empire collapsed in 1918, the Entente powers did not allow this, today's claim Austria was annexed and the first vitim of Hitlers imperialist policy is ridiculous. I have a banknote originating from 1918/19, it states "Deutsch-Österreich" - German-Austria, to make sure it is not valid in countries of the former Imperium Austriacum.

Perhaps it is also worth mentioning here that the Austrian Chancelor Dolfuß was assassinated by Austrian members of the Nazi party, after a previous attempt to assassinate him also by Nazi party members, which is seen as a prelude to the Anschluss.

But to be perfectly fair, I think that there are sufficient elements to consider Austria a part of Germany if we base German unity upon the idea of the union of German states. Howver, the one big question against it, in my opinion, comes from the Nazi camp when these try to define Germany in terms of race, around the Nordic Germanic element. There, the myth that is said to build the nation in fact opens a breech in the German identity, an element of distruction through disengagement.