German nationalist

German nationalism is the nationalist idea that Germans are a nation, promotes the unity of Germans into a nation state, and emphasizes and takes pride in the national identity of Germans. The earliest origins of German nationalism began with the birth of romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars when Pan-Germanism started to rise. Advocacy of a German nation state began to become an important political force in response to the invasion of German territories by France under Napoleon.

In the 19th century Germans debated the German Question over whether the German nation state should comprise a "Lesser Germany" that excluded Austria or a "Greater Germany" that included Austria. The faction led by Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck succeeded in forging a Lesser Germany.

Aggressive German nationalism is viewed as having been a key factor in causing both World Wars. In World War II, the Nazis sought to create a Greater Germanic Reich, emphasizing ethnic German identity and German greatness to the exclusion of all others by exterminating Jews, Gypsies, and other peoples in the Holocaust.

After the defeat of the Nazis, Germany was divided into East and West Germany in the opening acts of the Cold War, and each state retained a sense of German identity and held reunification as a goal, albeit in different contexts. The creation of the European Union was in part an effort to harness German identity to a European identity. West Germany underwent its economic miracle following the war, which led to the creation of guest worker program; many of these workers ended up settling in Germany which has led to tensions around questions of national and cultural identity, especially with regard to Turks who settled in Germany.

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