ABSTRACT
Two non-events during the Middle Ages combined to have a profound effect on Germany’s later history. The first was that the peoples who spoke varieties of the German language (and who must surely have been descended from a single tribe at some point in prehistory) did not develop drastically idiosyncratic versions of it. The second was that various attempts to consolidate them into a single political unit proved in the long run unsuccessful. Many things might have turned out differently either if the Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians and the rest had ceased to be able to understand one another or if a single central government had proved durable. As it was, the Germans retained the ability to feel as a nation but did not acquire the capacity to act as a state.
