You just prove my point. Tito failed. He did not delete the underlying identities, he tried, and he couldn't. After Tito was gone, they broke their way once again.

Or look at the Ukrainian conflict - the same. Stalin moved people by the millions. Millions died, huge resettlement projects throughout the Soviet Union. Suppression of Muslim republics in the south. Then, the USSR gone - and eruption of multiple conflicts.

Look at the artificial border-drawing by Western imperialists in the ME, the states formed that way, where beliefs and tribes got stuffed together that do not go well together. The whole region is a powderkeg. You remove the dictator that held the lid on the kettle by raw power - and the thing exploded imemdiately.

Look at the 70 years of sleeping of Islam in Turkey, where Attaturk tried to overcome traditional Islam and form a modern, Western society. Erdioghan took less than one decade to end that experiment and reverse it. Turkey is on its way back into the pre-Attaturk era. Conservative Islam was never gone - it was suppressed, so it pulled back and rested some decades, and now its back in full force.

You cannot change historically grown identities of regions and people by power and force and pressure.

The EU doing it now - it will terribly backfire one day. If you think the days of war are over in Europe, then you are wrong.

Tito didn't fail. He just died at the end.
He was sucesseful because there was no ethnic tension while he was alive.

The party failed because they let people that didn't believe in a multi-national
state take power.

Actually, he was succesefull even in the long run. The current young generation is growing past that ethnic hatred. Cheap travels and the internet made connecting with the other republics as simple as a push of a button. Cultural borders that Tito tore down and the nineties built back are decaying on their own.
Only some sad angry individuals still linger in the shadows. Bitter because there was no winner in those wars. Causing trouble when they can but only reinforcing the unity between the open minded.

Yugoslavia is being reborn even if only in the minds of the young ones, not corrupted by the leftover brainwashing that destroyed their parents generation. And they take Tito as an example.

So, Tito did not fail. Only his ideals skipped a generation.

That would make sense if Hispanics were not defined as deriving from Hispania which is of course in Europe.

Whereas that makes no sense.
What you ascribe as a problem of federated super states like the applies equally to nation states of all sizes, extends to county city and town level and even fits little villages or tiny hamlets

Not really, that is too shallow an argument. The German identity started to set in already roughly one thousand years ago. Its a bit more tricky than just going back to 1848/49 (I assume you refer to the Frankfurt Parliament), or 1871 (founding of the German empire). Or 1648, the end of the 30-years war and Germany being a collection of German states.

You need to go back as far as to Heinrich I. (9th century) to find the era in which the German identity started to form up as a characterising trait uniting many groups. The initiliasing event was his successful campaign against the ongoing raids and attacks by predatory Hungarians.

Others will trace back the birthday of "German-ness" even further, back to the time of the Roman empire.

What it comes down to? Identity is more than just a passport or nationality.

Is that why you claim Bavarians are not Germans?

@neal
Not really, ideologies are like a horseshoe. The extremes are close together so its only a very short move from one to the other

Unfortunately I am very certain that sooner or later you will come over to my POV. You seem to thiunk that Milosevic and the nationalsits were a mishap, a variable penetrsating the system from the outside. But they found their birth in the middle of society. And growing trends for regional independence in former Yugoslav provinces emerged all by themselves, even before Milosevic started to go on rampage. He did - in reaction to these independence movements.

An arrangement in a state that only remaisn as long as the found/dictator/king/whoever stays alive and keeps it unde rhic controll is no evidence for this arrangement functioning, Betonov. Tito thus failed, like Attaturk failed in the long run, too. Both men did not change the cultural and ethnic realities in their sphere of influence, just suppressed them for some time. When they were gone, they sprang back to life like the spring-puppet out of the box.

This is true, and certainly there are parts in other countries that consider themselves German and there are parts of Germany that consider themselves something other than German. Brazil and Bavaria respectively are the two words that spring to mind.
However, back before the Unification of Germany, would a man from the Kingdom of Saxony refer to himself as German or Saxon? Would a Prussian refer to himself as German or Prussian?

I do see where you're coming from, but it's not a definite rule that such things always occur. Were this the case then Germany would have split into federalised states again, Belgium would be in even a bigger mess than it already is, and the US would be all over the place. Not to mention that Russia would be a complete mess in terms of borders.
Assimilation does occur, and the success does vary, but fracturing is not inevitable. England has managed to stay together for over a millennia without devolving back into Wessex, Mercia and the East Angles.

Utter drivel.:down:
the growing trends for regional independence were a result in the Serbian attempts at expansion into the autominous provinces in the preceeding decade.

I got a special pill for that occasion

Pistol is more en vogue, I hear. :yep:

Yeah, but I'm a Agatha Christie fan.

Ah, but surely it was more a case of not taking a pill, Hastings. :03:

Actually those parts broke free in 1832.

But nobody noticed. :O:

Ssssh, don't tell the continentals that! :nope: :O:

;) Language, anyone...? :)

The German states, although a lose collection at first that had regions also competing with each other (one of the reasons, if not the most important one, for the temporary blossoming of German cultural and economic life later on, btw), had more in co9mmon, for the most,k than any of these states and for example the Spaniards, or the English, or the French - although in the medieval, at Heinrich i.'s reign, they saw themselves in parts as successor of the Franconian heritage.

Hm, not sure I got the right word in English, Franconian. Sorry if I picked the wrong one.

Shared language (native language I meran) is one of the most important tools to create shared identity. It transports identity over time - by telling tales of history and mythology. The less you feel close to a given place'S laguages spoken, the more foreign and isolated you feel. In the end, back in those times you still could travel from Northern to Southern Germany - and still get along with the language you spoke. If you tried to stick to that language while moving to England, France, Italian places, you would have had problems...

The German "Ritter- und Heldensagen" (German sagas of knights and heroes, also show that common ground between the Germanic places, and "Burgund", the kingdom in the Franconian area. But that only as a curious detail. Wonderful sagas, btw, I like them as much as ancient Greek sagas, the King Arthur cycle, and the Nordic sagas. I still wait for a psychologically adequate and complex film-making of the Nibelungenlied.

Small detail from the present: not English, Itlaian or French or Spanish but German is the most spoken native language on the European continent. Its also the most spoken foreign language.