Austria is a land-locked alpine country in Central Europe bordering Switzerland and Liechtenstein towards the west, Germany and Czech Republic towards the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east and Slovenia and Italy to the south. Austria, as well as neighboring Switzerland, will be the winter sports capital of Europe. However, it is as popular for summer tourists visiting its historic cities and villages and hike inside magnificent scenery of the alps.

Today’s Austria ‘s what used to be the German speaking core and center of power for the large multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. This empire stretched eastwards from present-day Austria through a lot of east-central and south-central Europe. While Prussia united the German states towards the north into one “Germany” inside the latter the main 19th Century, Austria remained oriented eastwards towards its empire. However, from the beginning of the Last century, the political history of Austria has become closely for this misfortunes and disasters of modern German history, mainly the Second World Wars and their aftermath.

The modern republic of Austria came into being in 1918 because of its defeat in World War I. In the wake, the empire split up into Austria’s current borders, Hungary, southern Poland (which originated in the Russian and German empires), Czechoslovakia and quite a few of Yugoslavia. Following an unresistant invasion and annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938, Austria pretty much functioned in Nazi Germany during the next World War. Thus the majority of the population initially supported Hitler as well as their incorporation into Germany. Austrian soldiers also fought within the Wehrmacht, cities were bombed heavily from the Allies and concentration camps existed on Austrian soil (e.g. Mauthausen near Linz).

In 1945, Austria was separated into zones of occupation like Germany. However unlike Germany, Austria wasn’t susceptible to further territorial loses. A State Treaty signed in 1955 ended the Allied and Soviet occupation, recognized Austria’s independence, and forbade future unification with Germany. A constitutional law of this same year declared the country’s “perpetual neutrality”, that was an ailment for Soviet military withdrawal, and saved Austria from Germany’s fate of the divided nation using a divided capital. This neutrality, once ingrained included in the Austrian cultural identity, may be called into question since the Soviet Union’s collapse of 1991 and Austria’s entry in to the Eu in 1995. A booming country, Austria entered the European Monetary Union in 1999, and the Euro currency replaced the Schilling in 2002.