A thousand years of European history are passed through the prism of the Austrian experience. The chief factors which have smothered national development throughout - loyalty to a supranational dynasty and confusion over their Germanic roots - are traced right down to modern times. The Austrian nationality as such was created as recently as 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg empire collapsed at the end of World War I. For centuries, the Austrians had been the privileged servants of the dynasty, like the stewards of some vast family estate. Already troubled by the question is there such a thing as an Austrian or are we simply a south German branch of the great Teutonic race?, they were quickly faced by a new crisis of identity when the Austrian Adolf Hitler merged them into the Thousand Year Reich with Germany.