# How do you justify Germany's existence in the first place? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 25, 2000, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-justify-germanys-existence-in-the-first-place/26810 "2000-07-25T17:44:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![TheThill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheThill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheThill)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2000, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-justify-germanys-existence-in-the-first-place/26810/81 "2000-08-01T11:44:19Z")
First, no I don’t think the U.S. is historically a nation-state. It is a territorial state, if anything. It may be becoming a nation-state by creating a new culture on its territory. Interesting question, actually. Using language as a sole basis of nationality is also a tricky point, as has been established. But it has often been used as a piece of the puzzle of ethnicity. But it is actually very difficult to find a state founded on language alone, and it is easy to find many that weren’t. Certainly, the State of Israel was not founded on lingusitic grounds, and indeed that was one of the problems at first, since the immigrating Jews spoke all sorts of languages: Yiddish, Ladino, German, Russian, Polish, English… As for Germany, the sense of national identity has always had a lot to do with language, despite the many German dialects. In other words, each case would seem to have its own character, and it’s very difficult to compare them all. I would have to conclude that a state has a right to exist when a majority of its inhabitants today want it to exist. Of course, this can lead to problems with minorities, etc. But in the end there is probably no perfect answer. ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2000, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-justify-germanys-existence-in-the-first-place/26810/82 "2000-08-01T13:04:30Z")
It does, of course, have to be dealt with on a case by case basis, but certain rules of thumb can be helpful, I think. Language and popular opinion are a couple of the better ones. I believe that this thread is going to die very, very soon. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-justify-germanys-existence-in-the-first-place/26810/83 "2000-08-11T22:09:44Z")
It was us British that wanted the separate states that make up modern Germany united so that they would give the French something to keep their mind off invading England. It seemed to escape our attention that after invading France, Poland etc they would turn their attention to us. Yes we did bring it on ourselves. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-justify-germanys-existence-in-the-first-place/26810.md?page=4)