Guardians Of The Nation: by Pieter M. Judson.

The beautiful village in Alps on the cover reminds one of the place we holidayed in Austria most recently, in the greater Salzburg area, where the residents were generally united in declaring they were closer to Munich than Vienna in spirit, and one did wonder if the residents of the then Austria felt this way when Germany marched in. Vienna is and has generally been proud of her own identity, what with the imperial past and having been larger in Europe than France and Germany, but Austria is now ambivalent about an identity post the German turmoil of last century.

That Austria had a hugely diverse population and the regime attempted to uniformise them but failed, is not a surprise - Europe, US, generally attempt to iron out any diversity of culture of residents, what with the "now you are here in this country you must speak this language", and variations thereof of behavioural rules and interpretational ones as well (as in "calling someone "son" is an insult in this country" which was conveyed on an internet site about an internet exchange of global scale about global issues) - but even so, Austria was more varied than most other nations of Europe, and the two couldn't survive together, the diversity and the uniformisation instinct. The consequent break up of Austria gave rise to a few new nations, just as another break up more recent added to the number.

With that background it is a good question if Europe will ever be able to live with diversity or the whole EU experiment will stagnate at a stage.