True, but the issue here is not what passport Hitler held but what he would have regarded as foreign. The question of German identity is quite complicated because Germany and Italy were the two late unifiers among the major European nation states. Pan-Germanic sentiment was widespread but got tangled up in the struggle for primacy from the mid-18th century forward between Prussia and Austria: the north vs. the south, Protestan vs. Catholic, a relatively homogenous north German population vs. the heterogenous Austro-Hungarian conglomeration, eyes to the north and west vs. eyes to the south. The question of intra-German primacy was settled when the Austro-Hungarian empire was broken up at Versailles. But Hitler was not unusual in his pan-Germanic perspective. His early territorial demands were a step-by-step repudiation of Versailles — thus making a prophet of Foch, who referred to Versailles as “not a peace, but an armistice for 20 years.”
The historical ties between Russia and Ukraine are deep and longstanding, but Ukraine also has a strong separate identity, a language, important differences in history and significant historical grievances against the Moscow regime. Ultimately a nation is what people will fight to defend. It seems clear that Putin massively underestimated Ukraine’s willingness to fight, and in forcing the fight, Putin may have guaranteed Ukrainian separatism for another hundred years. He is giving the Ukrainian cousins a whole new set of fresh reasons to hate Russia.
“Ultimately a nation is what people will fight to defend.”
Perfect.