The Germans have long been troublesome for their European neighbours. The Roman Emperor Augustus suffered the only major military defeat of his career there, and warned his future successors to avoid the place at all costs. Naturally this sound advice was ignored, and a painful defeat ensued. Eventually the triangle formed by the Rhine and the Danube was abandoned to the Alemmanni Tribe.
More recently, there have been a series of wars which the Germans played a major hand in provoking (I have tried my best to write this without mentioning the war, but as Basil Fawlty found when entertaining some Germans at his guesthouse, it is impossible to talk about Germans without mentioning the war).
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