Austrians
Historically, Austrians were regarded as ethnic Germans and viewed themselves as such. Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation until the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 which resulted in Prussia expelling Austria from the Confederation. Thus, when Germany was founded as a nation-state in 1871, Austria was not a part of it. In 1867, Austria was reformed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria was reduced to a rump state and adopted and briefly used the name the Republic of German-Austria ("Republik Deutschösterreich") in an attempt for union with the Republic of Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was founded in 1919. The Third Reich annexed Austria with the "Anschluss" in 1938.
Austrians
Though the Allied forces treated Austria as a belligerent party in the war and maintained occupation of it after the Nazi capitulation, they accepted the Declaration of Independence which Austrian politicians had signed at Vienna's city hall on April 27, 1945, and they made the first national elections possible in the autumn of that year. By the end of 1945, Austria, under the supervision of the Allied Council in Vienna, had a democratic parliament and government again, acknowledged by all four allied occupation zones.