[1939-1945] The European idea during the Second World War: Nazism and the New Europe project

"The current war is a war for the freedom and the union of Europe, solution to the Bolshevik problem." Cecil von Renthe-Finke.  

During the war, Germany explicitly presented itself as the champion of the European unification. The Nazi propaganda exalted the values of the European civilisation, which would be proudly defended by the German soldiers against Bolshevism, cosmopolitanism and the Anglo-Saxon imperialism. The new continental order promoted by the Nazis was seen as a way to regenerate Europe on the basis of anti-egalitarianism and racial purity¹. Hitler gave a name to this project: the New Europe.

It should be recalled here that the national-socialists was partly inspired by the writings of the conservative theoretician Arthur Moeller van der Bruck. In a book published in 1923, Das Dritte Reich, Moller van der Bruck wished the return of Germany on the international scene and the edification of a German empire that would dominate the continent. The nazis took over this general idea but for them, the German empire should ensure the supremacy of the Aryan race - the Herrenvolk - on the other races, considered as inferior². The so-called master race must also have a large "living space" (lebensraum) to enable the development of a young and energetic population beyond the narrow borders defined by the treaty of Versailles. It gives to Germany a right of conquest on the Eastern and southern territories peopled by the Slavs. As well, it implied a policy of ethnic cleansing and economic exploitation in favour of Germany, which was perfidiously hidden by the propaganda.

Even if the national-socialist program was drawn up since 1925, year of the first publication of Mein Kampf, the idea of New Europe was quite nebulous until the outbreak of the war, and especially after the conquests of the years 1940-1941. From this date, it became one of the major themes of the German policy, although it remained imprecise. To simplify, the pursued goal was to divide the continent into four parts: the Great Reich, the protectorates (which belong to the living space), the German satellites and the others satellites. The Great Reich, where the Jews would be expelled, was supposed to become the centre of the European civilisation. Thus, the "master race" could proliferate and colonised their living space, reducing to slavery the Slavic populations. As for the satellites, two groups of countries have to be distinguished: the German satellites - namely the English, the Dutch, the Fleming and the Scandinavian – were eventually intended to integrate the Great Reich; the non German satellites – that is the Latin countries represented by France, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Romania, Greece and Hungary – were meant to supply workers and raw materials to the Great Reich.

Concretely, there were during the war four types of territorial organisations³:

• the annexed countries, which was part of the Great Reich (Austria, Sudetenland, Dantzig, West Prussia, the Province of Posen, the Polish Silesia, Luxembourg, Eupen and Malmedy, Alsace-Moselle, North Slovenia, Banat and Crimea);
• the countries under direct administration (the protectorates of Bohemia-Moravia, the General Government of Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and the French "zone occupée");
• the satellites States (Vichy France, Denmark, Greece, the Yugoslavian countries, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and, since 1943, Italy);
• the neutral States (Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden).

This European order subjected to Germany constituted a basis for the realisation of the New Europe, organised according to racial hierarchies.

The German Europe was an idea supported by some politicians and intellectuals in the continent. This support could be forced, as it was in the case of the Marshal Pétain, who believed that the collaboration was a necessity to guarantee the upkeep of the French sovereignty in the new European order. But most of the time, this support was sincere and motivated by ideology. The Ustašes in Croatia or the rexists led by Léon Degrelle in Belgium were frankly favourable to the New Europe. The French fascists Jacques Doriot, Marcel Déat, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Alphonse de Chateaubriant too, and the list is long... All considered that only Hitler's Europe could transcend the old national antagonisms and protect the European civilisation from decline. The New Europe was for them an alternative to both Bolshevism and capitalism, supposedly controlled by the Jews. 

The europeanist propaganda in Vichy France:

The French collaborationist Alphonse de 

Chateaubriant presents the Nazi world order:

Ironically, some of them were ardent pacifists in the interwar period. The case of Francis Delaisis is in this regard significant: left-wing economist, he was in the 1930's member of the Human Rights League (Ligue Française des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen) and of the Watchfullness Committee of Antifascists Intellectuals (Comité de Vigilance des Intellectuels Antifasciste). Between 1927 and 1932, he was general secretary of the Paneuropean Movement under the chairmanship of Aristide Briand, to whom he was very close. In short he was a respectable europeanist, affected by the future of the peace in the continent. The fact remains that in 1940, in the name of the French-German rapprochement wanted by Aristide Briand, he became pro-Nazi and lauded the German economic system. In 1942, he wrote La révolution européenne, an authentic plea for the economic integration of Europe under the aegis of Germany, and he got closer to Marcel Déat. 

Francis Delaisi, like many others, was blinded by his pacifism. The collaborationist in general were the voices of "Nazi europeanism"⁴ in a world in the midst of change, the supporters of a perverted vision of Europe. 

1In The myth of the Twentieth Century, the NSDAP ideologist Alfred Rosenberg firmly rejected the ideal of Coudenhove-Kalergi because the Paneuropean Movement was democratic, pacifist and anti-racist. For the same reasons, Hitler attacked what he called  the "European utopia". 
2Van der Bruck was not racist. From the beginning, he disapproved Hitler and national-socialism. See this short biography written by the French philosopher Alain de Benoist: http://alaindebenoist.com/pdf/arthur_moeller_van_den_bruck.pdf. 

3Yves Durand, Le nouvel ordre européen nazi, 1938-1945, Bruxelles, Complexe, 1990.

4See Bernard Bruneteau, "L'Europe nouvelle" de Hitler. Une illusion des intellectuels de la France de Vichy, Paris, Éditions du Rocher, 2003 and Julien Prévotaux, Un européisme nazi. Le Groupe Collaboration et l'idéologie européenne dans la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Paris, François-Xavier de Guibert, 2010.