"Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where, historically, empires clashed and sieges from the east toppled kingdoms and enslaved peoples. Many view the region-comprising present-day Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, and Romania, among other countries--as united only by the shared experience of invasions launched by foreign powers, from the Huns of the fourth century, to the Swedes of the seventeenth,...