It does throw me when some documentary interviews a Frenchman with a very German last name. Until I find out he lives in Alsace. That area traded hands so many times. There are some French names on the other side of the border too, I’m told.
And isn’t “Austria” just a mistranslation of the German for “The outer lands”? But we don’t talk about that any more. Not since The War.
Ost - East
Öster - To the east, easter - relative to something
Reich - Empire
And yes, "we do not talk about that" since the war ended, the Myth that we were the "First Victim of the Nazis" still perpetuates, at least in the Generation of my Grandmother (who is 94).
The only austrian resistance when the nazis entered in 1938 was a Group of International Brigades that had returned from the spanish Civil War and they all got slaughtered. You likely will not find that in a lot of history books either, somehow the ~80.000 international Volunteers of the Civil War in Spain are rarely mentioned anywhere.
No Pasaran!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%9... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine