If one wishes to understand Putin, Ukraine and Russia, one simply needs to understand Hitler: what motivated him to insist that the country of his birth, Austria, must "return to the great German mother country." It's an infantile phantasy enacted in the "real" world.
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RETURN TO THE MOTHERLAND

In the first pages of Mein Kampf, Hitler set forth his project for uniting Austria and Germany. It was providential, Hitler said, that “Fate should have chosen Braunau on the Inn” as his birthplace, for this town lies on the border between “two German states which we of the younger generation at least have made it our life work to reunite by every means at our disposal.”

Austria, Hitler declared must “return to the great German mother country.” The desire for union, Hitler insisted, had nothing to do with economic considerations. The union must take place because “one blood demands one Reich.”

Hitler wrote that Austria’s destiny was so bound up with the life and development of all Germans that a separation of history into Germany and Austria “does not seem conceivable.” He described the desire for political reunification as the “elemental cry of the German-Austrian people for union with the German mother country.” This desire for re-union was the result of a longing that slumbered in the heart of the entire people to “return to the never-forgotten ancestral home.”

Richard Koenigsberg