National identity

German history provides few models for constructing a national identity. Such a presumed German ‘national identity’ has not been a historical constant, but is a product of only the last two centuries, has fluctuated greatly over time, and been based on shifting sets of ‘German’ territorial borders since the Napoleonic conquests.

—Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 280.

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