Das Deutsch ~ ‘The people’ Deutschland ~ ‘Land of the people’

It happens in many languages, whatever words are used for the main group generally translate best to just ‘people’ if you adopt their perspective. In English, Deutsch/Deutscher would probably be translated as ‘The German people’ or ‘Germans’, but the Germans themselves aren’t going to call themselves ‘The German People’, they’ll just call themselves ‘People’ and the English are ‘die Engländer’.

But you have to make this distinction, otherwise Deutsch means ‘people’ and English, French, Italian, American, Swedish, etc. also all mean ‘people’ - but they are talking about different things.