ein sancho pansa

The national development of Germany and the creation of the new German Empire pierced into this disorganized European Continent and to the south of us, Italy did the same (...). It had been hoped even then that Prussia might succeed, perhaps, by a long war, in throwing back France, but there was no wish that from Prussia's rise there should emerge a national German re-birth or, even more, a new German Empire.

From Hitler's speech in 1941