Introduction

After the end of the Second World War, the countries of western Europe decided to create a supranational organisation, whose aim was to bring about economic integration and to ensure peace and stability in the continent. Thus, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 and the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 were the first steps towards the common market and the formation of an authentic European union. We all know the architects of this union: Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Paul Henri Spaak, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, to mention just a few names. What is less known is the origin of europeanism, namely the doctrine that Europeans share common values, have the same culture and have an interest in uniting.

Europeanism is essentially an ideology of the XX^th century¹. Admittedly, the will to shape a united Europe is very old. Some thinkers even argue that the first projects of "European union" were formulated long before the emergence of modern nations, during the Middle Ages². But it must be recognised that it was only during the XX^th century, and especially after the Great War, that we saw the appearance of a true European militancy. If the "fathers of Europe" were, of course, inspired by old philosophical trends, the European integration is undeniably the fruit of the debates and the reflections of the years 1918-1950, as attested by the importance of the French-German question during these troubled times. The need for peace and the obsession of decline were stronger than ever and, in this context, a certain intellectual elite considered that europeanism was the remedy to the ills that afflicted the continent. 

In our blog, we will answer these two major questions: what are the objectives of europeanism? How has this ideology evolved from 1918 to what it has become in the early 1950's? To answer them, our presentation will be chronological: first, we will examine the different trends of europeanism during the interwar period; then, we will talk about the conceptions of Europe during the Second World War; finally, we will focus our attention on the consequences of World War II and the start of the European integration.

---------------------------------------------------------------

1. 1918-1939: The emergence of a new political doctrine

1. Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, a precusor
2. The first golden age of europeanism
3. The crisis of the European idea in the 1930's

2. 1939-1945: The European idea during the Second World War

1. Nazism and the New Europe project
2. The europeanists in the resistance
3. The Allies and Europe

3. 1945-1951: Towards a European community

1. The beginning of the Cold War
2. The second golden age of europeanism
3. The Schuman Declaration and the birth of the ECSC 

1Bernard Bruneteau, Histoire de l'idée européenne au premier XX^e siècle à travers les textes, Paris, Armand Colin, 2006.

2In 1306, the French jurist Pierre Dubois (1250-1320) proposed in a book entitled De recuperatione Terrae Sanctae the establishment of a European political organisation in order to reconquer the Holy Land. This idea was then adopted in the XV^th century by George of Poděbrady (1420-1471), king of Bohemia and leader of the Hussites. See in particular Denis de Rougemont, Vingt-huit siècles d'Europe. La conscience européenne à travers les textes, Paris, Payot, 1961 and Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, L'idée d'Europe dans l'histoire, Paris, Denoël, 1965.

[1918-1939] The emergence of a new political doctrine: Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, a precursor

"The whole European query culminates in an either... or: War or peace! Anarchy or organisation! Arms race or disarmament! Rivalry or cooperation! Collapse or fusion!" Richard Count Coudenhove-Kalergi.

On 11 November 1918, the armistice between the allies and Germany was signed. After four years of butchery, the worst in the history of the world, the war was finally over. It was a real trauma for the peoples of Europe: the scale of the mobilisation, the "total" character of the conflict, its terrible demographic consequences (around 9 million Europeans perished, and millions of others became disabled, disfigured or insane) rattled the consciences and weakened the faith in progress of civilisation. Everybody on the continent had the feeling that Europe was no longer what it used to be. Its decline was clearly perceptible.

Yes, it is true that the theme of European decadence was not new - Baudelaire or Nietzsche already discoursed on it in their times - but at the wake of the war, the impression of a moral regression, of a "crisis of the mind" has never been stronger¹. "We later civilisations … we too know that we are mortal" wrote magnificently Paul Valéry². He was absolutely right, especially as the new international order set up by the treaty of Versailles was as fragile as a sand castle. The peace was neither just nor lasting: the continent remained divided and Germany, militarily occupied and territorially reduced, conserved its state unity, that is the political capacity to take its revenge³. Concerning the young League of Nations, dreamed by the American President Woodrow Wilson, it was weak and powerless as far as it did not dispose of its own armed force. 

Europe in 1919. The Russian empire, The Second Reich and the Austro-Hungarian
empire disappeared. In the name of respect of the principles of nationalities, several
states were created or ressurected: Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary,
Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Richard Nikolaus von Coundenhove-
Kalergi (1894-1972). 

Against the heralded decline of Europe and the risk of a new fratricide war, several intellectuals campaigned for the creation of a European union. Among them was an Austrian philosopher by the name of Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi. This son of an Austrian diplomat and of a Japanese mother was borned and raised in a cosmopolitan environment, at a time when the interbreeding was not common at all. Dismayed by the horrors of the war, he defended very early the idea of a European federation. After publishing several articles in the Austrian and German press, he wrote in 1923 an important manifesto, Paneuropa, where he formulated his main idea: faced with the rising power of the United States and the Bolshevik danger, Europe had no choice but to unite diplomatically, then economically and finally politically. It consisted in a pure continental project, without Great Britain which was already a very powerful empire⁴. At the institutional level, Coudenhove wished the creation of a court responsible for resolving the conflicts, a military alliance and a common currency. He wanted this union to move beyond the nationalisms by bringing together the Europeans on the Christian, democratic and liberal values. Thus, a strong Europe could bring peace and prosperity to the peoples.

In order to spread his europeanists ideas, Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Paneuropean Movement (also called International Paneuropean Union or Pan-Europa Movement), which published a journal: Paneuropa. Its first congress, held in Vienna in 1926, was a great success: it gathered 2 000 delegates from 24 different countries and was hailed by famous intellectuals like Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Jules Romain, Paul Valéry … This initiative also reveived the support of Aristide Briand, Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš⁵ and the financing of the banker Max Warburg. It certainly contributed to the formation of a European awareness within the elite, in spite of the criticisms and the reluctance of some.

The paneuropean flag: the Red Cross is the symbol of the
Christian identity of Europe; the sun reprensent the sun of 
Apollo, symbol of the prestige of the European civilisation.

Coudenhove-Kalergi was not only europeanist. He was also, in some ways, internationalist. Indeed, he was in favour of a global governance within the framework of the League of Nations (LN). In a report to the LN written in 1925, he advocated a certain form of world federalism. His project was to divide the world into "political continents" (the paneuropean union, the panamerican union, the British Commonwealth and the panasian union), which would be integrated into a "federation of federations", in other words a world federal government⁶. Although it was a pure utopia in the interwar, this ambition was shared by many federalists: European federalism and world federalism often go hand in hand⁷.

The leader of the Paneuropean Movement was a precursor. Partly thanks to his action, political europeanism grew rapidly during the 1920's, so much that we can speak of a true "golden age" of the European idea since the middle of the decade.  

---------------------------------------------------------------

For more informations on Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi and the Paneuropean movement, here is a conference by the French historian Anne-Marie Saint Gille, Professor at the University of Lyon and author of La "Paneurope": Un débat d'idées dans l'entre-deux-guerres: http://webtv.picardie.fr/video3511

1In the immediate post war period, a series of books and articles were devoted to Europe's decline. We can quote in particular Der Untergang des Abendlanded (The Decline of the West) by Oswald Spengler, Le déclin de l'Europe by Albert Demangeon, Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) by Thomas Mann or L'avenir de la civilisation by Jacques Bainville.

2Paul Valéry, Crisis of the Mind, 1919.

3See Jacques Bainville, Les conséquences politiques de la Paix, Paris, Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1920 and James L. Garvin, "The peace Treaty", The Living Age, 28 June 1919. 
4According to Coudenhove, the Paneuropean union would be unmanageable if it included the British Empire. Nonetheless, Great Britain should enjoy privileged relationships with the continent.

5Bernard Bruneteau, Histoire de l'idée européenne au premier XX^e siècle à travers les textes, Paris, Armand Colin, 2006, p. 50.

6Anne-Marie Saint Gille, La "Paneurope": un débat d'idées dans l'entre-deux-guerres, Presse de l'université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003, p. 130-131.
7See Jean Francis Billion, Mondialisme, fédéralisme européen et démocratie internatinale, Église-Neuve d'Issac, Fédérop, 1997.

[1918-1939] The emergence of a new political doctrine: The first golden age of europeanism

"I think that between peoples constituting geographical groups, like the peoples of Europe, there should be some kind of federal bond. [...] That is the link I wish to forge." Aristide Briand.

The years 1925-30 were a prosperous period for europeanism¹. It was no longer just a poet's idea, as it was at the time of Victor Hugo, but a true political doctrine. And as in all political doctrines, several trends rapidly emerged. We mentioned previously the International Paneuropean Union and the vision of his founder, the count Coundenhove-Kalergi. Undoubtedly, it was the most influential movement in the mid 1920's. But despite this influence, it did not win unanimous support among the europeanists.

Wilhelm Heile (1881-1969).

The German Wilhelm Heile² was one of the main competitors to Coudenhove-Kalergi. Successor of the famous geopolitician Friedrich Naumann³, he founded in 1926 the Federation for the European understanding (Verband für europäische verständigung). Like Coudenhove, Heile did not want neither Great Britain nor Russia within the European union. But unlike him, he wished it to be based on the power of a great Germany which would include Austria⁴. Another difference: for Heile, Germany should first unify central Europe before planning the continental unification. This proposal was frankly pangermanist and, in fact, tinted with imperialism.

In the same years, the Danish Christian Heerfordt⁵ proposed a radically different conception of Europe. In his book A new Europe, published in 1924, he maintained that Europe is not defined by its geography: it is a civilisation without borders and "without shores". The "United States of the European nations" should therefore include Great Britain, his dominions and all the nations linked to the European civilisation (namely the American nations). Contrary to Coudenhove and Heile, Heerfordt wanted the immediate and total realisation of the European union – with its institutions, its foreign policy, its common currency and its common defence. Of course, this project was far too much imprecise and unrealistic, and the "Scandinavian initiative" did not know the success of the Paneuropean Movement, in spite of all the efforts of his instigator⁶.

Émile Borel (1871-1956).

Others projects was more pragmatic and aware of the geopolitical reality of the post-war period. It was for example the case of the French Committee for the European Cooperation (Comité Français pour la Coopération Européenne), created in 1927 and directed by the French mathematician Émile Borel. The latter was as well a radical politician, elected member of Parliament in 1924 and appointed minister under the Left-wing coalition (Cartel des gauches). His Committee did not have as a purpose the establishment of a federal Europe – Borel remained attached to the principle of national sovereignty -, but the diplomatic rapprochement of the European nations. 

The objective of the French-German Committee of Information and Documentation (Comité Franco-Allemand d'Information et de Documentation) founded in 1926 by the Luxembourgish industrialist Émile Mayrisch and his son-in-law Pierre Viénot, was even more limited. It concerned only, as indicated by the name of the organisation, the cooperation between France and Germany. Bringing together intellectuals, scientists and university professors, it published two journals: the Revue d'Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande and the Deutsch-Französische. It also organised meetings and manifestations: the first meeting took place in Berlin under the chairmanship of Albert Einstein. Concretely, the French-German Committee struggled against the nationalisms and the prejudices in order to establish a mutual trust between the two countries.

Other projects existed, notably projects of economic Europe⁶, but our goal is not to give a comprehensive list of all the europeanists movements. Our goal is to show the vitality of the European idea during the second half of the 1920's. Undoubtedly, it knew its hour of glory on 9 September 1929, when Aristide Briand delivered his speech on the "Unity of Europe" at the General Assembly of the League of Nations:

I think that between peoples constituting geographical groups, like the peoples of Europe, there should be some kind of federal bond; it should be possible for them to get into touch at any time, to confer about their interests, to agree on joint resolutions and to establish among themselves a bond of solidarity which will enable them, if need be, to meet any grave emergency that may arise. That is the link I wish to forge.

Aristide Briand (1862-1932).

For the first time, a leading statesman declared solemnly his European ambition. The speech was all the more memorable as his author was one of the most influential politicians of the period: Nobel Peace Prize in 1926, honorary president of the Paneuropean Movement for 1927 and chief of the French government, Aristide Briand was in addition considered as the "apostle of peace" for his action in favour of collective security⁸ . 

In May 1930, Briand presented at the LN his «Memorandum on the Organisation of a Regime of European Federal Union». This proposal was not as ambitious as it appears at first glance: it maintained that the European union should be an organisation of equal States, all members of the LN, which would strive to ensure the stability of the international order and the respect of the peace treaties. In fact, it was rather an intergovernmental program than a federal one inasmuch the nation-States remained fully sovereigns. Nevertheless, Briand envisaged the creation of common institutions and the development of a common market, first steps before a concrete political integration.

Unfortunately, Briand's memorandum was received with coldness and rapidly sunk into oblivion. The nationalists oppositions grew stronger, above all after the beginning of the economic crisis: the Great Depression of the 1930's was going to ended the golden age of europeanism.

---------------------------------------------------------------

To go further, you can watch this documentary, directed by Les Films du Hibou, which recounts the story of Aristide Briand: http://vimeo.com/43400982

1Gilbert Noël (dir.), Penser et construire l'Europe (1919-1992), Jouy-en-Josas, Atlantes, 2008, p. 47.

2See Jean Nurdin, Le rêve européen des penseurs allemands 1700-1950, Villeneuve d'Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2003, p. 216.

3Friedrich Naumann is the author of Mitteleuropa, a 1915 book in which he supports the idea of a confederation of State in Central Europe dominated by Germany and Austria.

4Heile explicitely spoke of Anschluss. 

5 See Claus Corneliussen, Dr. Heerfordt: A Private Political Entrepreneur and his Federal Plans for Nordic and European Unity in the Interwar Period, Florence, European University Institute, 2006.

6He did not have a network as important as Coudenhove, even though he met Aristide Briand in 1928.

7Personalities as Charles Gide, Yves le Trocquer, Francis Delaisis or Henry Truchy advocated a liberal Europe, based on free trade within the European Customs Union (Union Douanière Européenne). 

8Briand was an icon of pacifism. He believed in the system of the LN and thought that the international law could eradicate war. He was also at the origin of the Locarno Treaties in 1925, which confirmed the French-German rapprochement, and the co-signatory (with the US Secretary of States Frank Kellogg) of the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy in 1928.

[1918-1939] The emergence of a new political doctrine: The crisis of the European idea in the 1930's

"Europe became a religion without believers". Henri Hauser.

After a rapid and promising development during the 1920's, europeanism entered into a deep crisis early in the next decade. The economic and financial stability of the continent, which enabled the propagation of the europeanist ideas, was seriously undermined by the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The growth collapse and the burst of unemployment favoured the return of protectionism whereas the partisans of a united Europe were all free-marketeers. The economic union was no longer conceivable, and even less the political union. It was the time of the "tragic Europe"¹.

Worse still, nationalism and fascistic ideologies were gaining ground. The hope of a democratic Europe, promised by the peace Treaties, progressively vanished. Several countries were already under the heel of dictatorships: Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Lithuania and Yougoslavia gave in successively to authoritarianism in the 1920's. The situation worsened in the 1930's: Austria became fascist in 1932, and Germany converted to national-socialism in 1933, when Hitler came to power. Thereafter, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Greece, Spain and Romania turned their backs to democracy. In short, as said the French critic Albert Thibaudet, the dictatorship became the normal state of Europe. From then on, pessimism overwhelmed the europeanists. The nationalist ideologies were stronger than ever, so much that the europeanist voice became inaudible². "An enormous and awful silence fell upon the European genius", wrote gloomily Georges Duhamel in 1933, shortly after the advent of Hitler. Disappointed and powerless, the supporters of the European idea were totally ignored. In the totalitarian States, they were even silenced and pursued. The Italian europeanists Carlo Rosselli and Francesco Nitti were forced into exile to save their freedom. Accross the Rhine, the German section of the Paneuropean Movement was dissolved, despite the concessions of Coudenhove-Kalergi³. Everywhere in the continent, the activities of the europeanists organisations slowed down. The enthusiasm of the Briand years was but a memory.

The decline of democracy in Europe during the interwar period.

Paradoxically, this wave of pessimism did not reach Great Britain⁴, a country known for its traditional anti-europeanism. Throughout the 1920's and until the very late 1930's, Great Britain remained impervious to the European idea, despite the intense propaganda of the British section of Paneuropa led by the Wickham Steed⁵. But since 1938, there was a real commitment to europeanism in the country, for several reasons: the failure of the League of Nations, in which Great Britain was actively involved, was total after the Anschluss in March 1938; a large part of the public opinion was antagonistic to Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, whose objective was to avoid the fight against Hitler; the will to get closer to France appeared, in order to neutralise the German imperialism and to maintain the balance of power.

Two main organisations promoted europeanism in the years 1938-1940: the New Commonwealth Society and Federal Union. The first one was created in 1932 by a Welsh industrialist by the name of Lord David Davies. The latter was a fervent wilsonian who was progressively seduced by the European idea. After years of pro-LN militancy, his opposition to appeasement brought him to defend a European union based on the Anglo-French alliance. In 1940, he wrote A federate Europe which is essentially a European defence project.

The second important organisation in the late 1930's was Federal Union. Founded by three young men in 1938 - Derek Rawnsley, Patrick Ransome and Charles Kimber -, it was affiliated to an American association, Federal Union Inc, directed by the New York Times journalist Clarence Streit⁶. Indeed, federal Union advocated not only the union of Europe, but the union of all the Western democracies to face totalitarianism and dictatorship. This perspective was shared by three distinguished British subjects: the ambassador in the United States Lord Lothian, the theoretician of federalism Lionel Curtis and the economist William Beveridge.

Lastly, we must talk about the action of Winston Churchill. This former influential politician was marginalised in the 1930's, a period in which he corresponded with Coudenhove-Kalergi (who joined Great Britain in 1938). Very anti-German, he wished since the beginning of the policy of appeasement the federation of the European democracies, especially the union between France and Great Britain. He began to work with Lord David Davies and, in 1936, he took over the presidency of the New Commonwealth Society. Logically, he supported the Franco-British project written by Jean Monnet and Arthur Salter in June 1940. This umpteenth europeanist project was a failure, and, without surprise, Europe was going to know another tragedy: World War II put an end to the European dream.

1Gonzague de Reynold, L'Europe tragique, Paris, Spes, 1934.

2Even those who believed in a fascist Europe, like the French writer Drieu la Rochelle, the British politician Oswald Mosley or the participants of the intellectual Unions of Rohan, were isolated. It is a point of fact that fascism was fundamentally anti-European.

3He proposed the revision of the Treaty of Versailles, the organisation of an international conference which would discuss the subjects of the war reparations, and he approved the economic rapprochement between Austria and Germany. 

4 See Christophe Le Dréau, "Un européisme britannique conquérant: les tentatives d'implantation de la New Commonwealth Society et de Federal Union sur le continent (1938-1940)", Les cahiers Irice, 1/2008 nº1, p. 33-48. URL: www.cairn.info/revue-les-cahiers-irice-2008-1-page-33.htm. 

5Founded in 1925, it did not succeed in propagating the federalist vision of Coudenhove-Kalergi. In 1930, London criticised harshly the Briand Plan, giving priority to a global conception of economic and political relations. When the British defended the union of Europe, they maintained they did not want to be part of it. The Empire and the international trade were the main concerns of Great Britain, averall after the start of the Great Depression.

6I wrote an article about Clarence Streit in 2010: http://www.theorie-du-tout.fr/2010/11/clarence-kirshmann-streit-1896-1986.html. I also wrote this blog last year, which deals with the history of atlantic federalism: http://history-of-transatlantism.blogspot.fr/

[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.

[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. 

[1939-1945] The European Idea during the Second World War: The Allies and Europe

"Neither West nor East want to save Europe: Russia wants to conquer it; America wants to buy it." Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi.  


In a 1944 book, entitled Conditions of Peace, the English diplomat Edward Hallett Carr explained that it was finally time to consider Europe "as a unit" and no longer as a collection of Nations-States. According to him, it was henceforth necessary to go beyond the simple return to the status quo ante bellum, and to set up organisations at the European level to enable the Reconstruction. It was not a federalist programme, inasmuch it did not reject the regime of national sovereignties, but a realistic plan first addressed to the Allies … who had none of it.

The works of the historians René Girault, Robert Frank and Jacques Thobie¹ clearly showed that europeanism played a minor role in Allies' official policy. However, from the beginning of the war, several American think tanks reflected on the issue of peace by defending the European idea. It was for example the case of the Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations, created by Leo Pasvolski in January 1940, or the Council on Foreign Relations, financed by the influential Rockefeller Foundation. Admittedly, these organisations did not go as far as to propose a European federation, but only a close cooperation between the nations of the continent.

Fearing that a Europe politically united could jeopardise the American hegemony, Washington rapidly dismissed the federalist solution. This is why Coudenhove-Kalergi, who pursued his activities in the USA from 1940, was completely ignored by the American leaders², just like John Foster Dulles, who supported the federalist position at the head of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ of America³.

In Great Britain, Winston Churchill did not hide his europeanist thoughts. He even proposed, in a speech broadcast the 21 March 1943, the creation of a Council of Europe, a Supreme Court and a European military for the post-war period. But in the context of the time, Churchill talked to deaf ears. Neither the American nor the Soviet wanted to hear talk of federalism. Their conception of international relations remained based on national sovereignties, balance of powers and spheres of influence.

Yalta Conference. From right to left: Winston Churchill,
Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Staline.

Europe after the Yalta Conference.

During the great conferences of Moscow (October 1943), Tehran (November and December 1943) and Yalta (February 1945), the Allied power redrawn the map of Europe. Each camp defended harshly its conception of the new world order and, overall, its best interest. Roosevelt intended to extend the American hegemony in Western Europe, Staline in Eastern Europe. As for Churchill, he fell into line with Roosevelt in order to contain the Soviet threat. All agreed to dismember Germany and to conserve the regime of national sovereignty. After the negotiations, Europe was still divided and marked by nationalism. For the time being, it did not appear possible to realise the European unity as it was dreamed by the federalists.

1René Girault, Robert Frank, Jacques Thobie, La loi des géants, 1941-1964. Histoire des relations internationales contemporaines, Paris, Payot, 2005.

2Coudenhove-Kalergi tried to meet the President Roosevelt at the White House, but his meeting request was systematically rejected. In the US Department of State, nobody wanted to deal with this aristocrat. He obtained all the same a lectureship at New York University in 1942 and his works were appreciated by some university lecturers and professors.

3See Veronika Heyde, "Discussions américaines concernant l'Europe de l'après-guerre (1940-1944)", Les cahiers Irice, 1/2008 nº1, p.49-62. URL: www.cairn.info/revue-les-cahiers-irice-2008-1-page-49.htm