It's interesting isn't it. The having of a group identity is now commonly treated as an ideology; as something optional, whereas for most of history it has been present as a kind of physiological phenomenon, more akin to possessing a sense of smell.
...Actually that's an understatement: it more closely reminds me of those strange cases of people who feel as though one of their limbs is not properly theirs, and they (in some extreme cases) end up having it removed, whereafter they report a sense of relief and satisfaction.
It seems almost as though Western man has done something of that sort with his own racial consciousness.
In spring 1933, after Nazis took power, a soldier paints the new black-white-red national shield on a WWI M16/M18 helmet, replacing Weimar symbols as part of Gleichschaltung and military restructuring under the new regime.