Research Paper on:
Austria, Germany, and Nationalism

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
both a unifying and divisive force . Nationalism is unifying by definition. However, it is divisive because it ultimately separates people. There are obvious examples in each case-Austria and the  start of WWI, and Hitlers Germany-but there are also examples which come from each of the nations historic roots. First, it is important to define nationalism.  Nationalism, according to Ernest Geller, is a political principle for the most part (McLeish, 1993). It holds that the political and national unit should be congruent (1993).  Despite such a concise definition, there are different ways of looking at the concept and different people take it to mean different things. For instance, some think it means that  every nation should have its own state while others think that a country can express its right to self-determination within a multi-national context (1993). Conflicts in nationalism emerge when nations  do not coincide in terms of ideology (1993). Explanations as to the spread of nationalism in postmodernity also vary; one theory is that the democratization of the world is responsible  for the disarray (1993). Marxists, on the other hand, attribute the spread of nationalism to capitalism (1993). But whatever the cause, the fact is that nationalism exists and it is  growing. It is also true that for significant numbers of voters, nationalism has powerful appeal and peculiar to Austria, such ideas have found  their way into government (Elliott, 2000). Small groups of nationalists can do harm to a country and Austria stands vilified for shutting its eyes to the horrors of the past  (2000). Yet, in its midst, are problems today. During the middle of the 1990s several violent incidents against minorities took place and underground extremist right-wing groups had claimed responsibility