For most of the history Germans were people who were speaking the same language, nothing more. Even the word Germans is misleading, since it’s only the name of

For most of the history Germans were people who were speaking the same language, nothing more. Even the word Germans is misleading, since it’s only the name of the people the Romans first dealt with. It’s as though you were to call all US Americans New Yorkers because you flew in at JFK. Nationalists were always were good at inventing myths about the history of their particular nation but in reality there just isn’t that much there, at least not before the 19th century. (But the same is true for practically all other nations.)