The issue of Austrian nationality and ethnicity was throughout recent centuries and remains to this days a sensitive issue and a topic of dispute. Before the end of the Second World War, most of Austria’s population were clearly self-identified ethnic-Germans, who considered themselves part of a larger German Volk (ethnic nation), together with the other German-speaking-populations of Europe. A distinct Austrian national identity has emerged since the mid-twenthieth century and most Austrians now no longer identify themselves as "Germans". In modern Austria only a small minority of population, mostly but not entirely people with conservative or far right political views, advocate a pan-German ethnic identity for German-speaking.