[1939-1945] The European idea during the Second World War: The europeanists in the resistance

"The general spirit today is already far more disposed than it was in the past towards a federal reorganisation of Europe". Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi.

The resistance fighters, as all the adversaries of Hitler's racist New Europe, were inspired by patriotic feelings. As a matter of course, they first struggled for their countries and their peoples. But it does not mean that these fighters were necessarily anti-European. Among them, many campaigned not only for the liberation of their country, but also for the creation of a European union respectful of the rights of nations. It must be noted right off that the resistance brought together numerous movements and players, often opposed as for the future of Europe. All the same, let us try to paint a picture of the europeanist resistance to the German yoke.

Within the resistance, two main school of thought initiated the reflection on the organisation of the post-war Europe: the socialists and the Catholics.

Two socialist europeanists: on the left, Léon Blum (1872-1950);
on the right, Vincent Auriol (1884-1966).
This picture photo is dated 1929.

Unlike the communists, whose action was strictly nationalist, the socialists retained during the war their internationalist aspirations. They were proud to be Europeans and, more than that, citizens of the world. They fought for a united Europe in a united world, where the war would be definitively eradicated. With this objective in mind, the Committee of Socialist Action¹ (Comité d'Action socialiste) proposed, in November 1942, the setting up of a new League of Nations as well as a new European cooperation. The 11 December 1943, it drawn up a common programme of resistance in which the creation of the United Stated of Europe, first step before the United States of the World, was envisaged. The socialists (in particular Léon Blum and Vincent Auriol) wished that, once «denazified» and federalised, Germany should join the European federation. It was obviously a mean to put an end to the German imperialism, warmonger and aggressive.

The Catholics played also an important role in the europeanists debates, in spite ofthe unfavourable position of the Church on this subject. We must quote here two great Catholic intellectuals: the French Jacques Maritain and the Italian Luigi Sturzo. Maritain, who took refuge in the USA, mentioned from 1940 the hypothesis of a federal Europe after the war; he wanted a federal Germany too, inasmuch he considered the Prussian centralism as a danger (contrary to the pope Pie XII, who believed that a strong German State could contain communism). Like Maritain, Luigi Sturzo was expatriated to the USA, forced to flee fascism. Founder of the Italian Popular Party, he was a convinced antifascist and internationalist: he campaigned for a new European and world order based on federalism, which would establish an authentic peace: the Christian peace. 

  

Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986).

Nearly all the europeanists from the resistance, whatever their doctrines or their beliefs, maintained the noxiousness of nations and hence wished the suppression of national sovereignties. The nation-State would be intrinsically aggressive whereas the federation would necessarily bring peace in the continent. This idea was notably expressed by a famous document, written in June 1941 by a group of Italian antifascists: the Ventotene Manifesto. Its main redactors were, in order of importance, Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni. To promote the ideal of a Europe governed by a federal authority, which would recognise only the peoples and not the national States, Spinelli created just after the fall of fascism in 1943 the Italian European Federalist Movement. It was only a beginning. Behind Spinelli, numerous Italian europeanists commited themselves in federalist organisations: socialists like Silone or Saragat, liberals like Benedetto Crocce and Christians Democrats like Alcide de Gasperi, etc.

In France, the great representative of European federalism was Henri Freney, founder of the resistance group Combat. This passionate republican was one of the redactors, with Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli, of the European Resistance Declaration. Published in July 1944, this text had considerable impact in France, in Italy, in Belgium and even in Germany, where the resistance, although heterogeneous, was clearly federalist.

In London and in Alger, where the polical leaders were exiled, the europeanist projects multiplied. Of course, there were big divergences. Across the Channel, the Belgians Paul Van Zeeland and Paul Henri Spaak defended the idea of a custom and monetary union of Western Europe whereas the Czech President Edvard Beneš, the Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski and his advisor Joseph Retinger thought about the organisation of central Europe. Within the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité Français de Libération Nationale), based in Alger, some wanted only an economic union, other a strong federation; the socialists advocated a pro USSR Europe, their opponents an atlanticist Europe… The coordination of all the europeanist trends seemed impossible, especially as the unification of Europe was not on the agenda of the allies.

1The committee of Socialist Action was a very important movement of the French resistance. It was created during the autumn 1940, after the dissolution of the SFIO, principally at the instigation of Daniel Meyer and on the instructions of Léon Blum.