Pre-1945 ideas on European unity
Encyclopedia
The idea of European unity is a historically recent idea.
The word 'Europe' originally referred to the south-eastern part of Europe, in the same way that 'Asia' originally referred to western Anatolia, and 'Africa' referred to northern Africa, and it was the ancient Greeks who used the words to mean the continents as they do today.
After the Fall of Constantinople
to the Turks
in 1453, the first proposal for peaceful methods of unifying Europe against a common enemy emerged. George of Podebrady
, a Hussite
king of Bohemia
proposed the creation of a union of Christian
nations against the Turks in 1464. However, there is no evidence that he viewed Europe as being anything other than a geographical place where those Christian nations resided.
The Frankish Empire
of Charlemagne
and the Holy Roman Empire
united large areas of Germany, Italy and France under a loose administration for hundreds of years without articulating an 'idea of European unity'. However, the idea of Western Europe
, of those parts of Europe occupied by Germanic peoples
, representing 'Europe' had become common by the 19th century. That the 19th century idea of Europe was essentially a Germanic one can be witnessed from the counterblast by the Russia philosopher Danilevsky in his Russia and Europe. The idea of Germany and Europe being coterminous was taken to its fateful conclusion under Hitler.
suggested that the notion of Holy Roman Empire
as a federal political entity influenced the later structural ideas of the European Union.
In 1693, William Penn
looked at the devastation of war in Europe and wrote of a 'European dyet, or parliament', to prevent further war, without further defining how such an institution would fit in to the political reality of Europe at the time.
In 1728, Abbot Charles de Saint-Pierre proposed the creation of a European league of 18 sovereign states, with common treasury, no borders and an economic union.
After the American War of Independence the vision of a United States of Europe
similar to the United States of America was shared by a few prominent Europeans, notably the Marquis de Lafayette and Tadeusz Kościuszko
.
Some suggestion of a European union can be inferred from Immanuel Kant
's 1795 proposal for an "eternal peace congress".
In the 1800s, customs union
under Napoleon Bonaparte's
Continental system
was promulgated in November 1806 as an embargo of British goods in the interests of French hegemony
. Felix Markham notes how during a conversation on St. Helena, Napoleon remarked, "Europe thus divided into nationalities freely formed and free internally, peace between States would have become easier: the United States of Europe would become a possibility."
The French socialists
Saint-Simon
and Augustin Thierry
would in 1814 write the essay De la réorganisation de la société européenne, already conjuring up some form of parliamentary European federation.
In the conservative reaction after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the German Confederation
(German "Deutscher Bund") was established as a loose association of thirty-eight sovereign German states formed by the Congress of Vienna
. Napoleon had swept away the Holy Roman Empire
and simplified the map of Germany. In 1834, the Zollverein
(German, "customs union") was formed among the states of the Confederation, in order to create better trade flow and reduce internal competition. An extension of this customs union may have been become the model for a unified Europe, as alluded to by Fritz Fischer
in Germany's Aims in the First World War. The then current ideas of geopolitics
and a Mitteleuropa
were also influential in providing an intellectual framework for European Union in Germany.
United States of Europe was also the name of the concept presented by Wojciech Jastrzębowski
in "About eternal peace between the nations", published May 31, 1831. The project consisted of 77 articles. The envisioned United States of Europe was to be an international organisation rather than a superstate.
Italian writer and politician Giuseppe Mazzini
called for the creation of a federation of European republics in 1843. This set the stage for perhaps the best known early proposal for peaceful unification, through cooperation and equality of membership, made by the pacifist
Victor Hugo
in 1847. Hugo used the term 'United States of Europe' (États-Unis d'Europe) during a speech at the International Peace Congress
, organised by Mazzini, held in Paris in 1849. Hugo favoured the creation of "a supreme, sovereign senate, which will be to Europe what parliament is to England" and said "A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood... A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas." However, he was laughed out of the hall, yet returned to his idea again in 1851. Victor Hugo
planted a tree in the grounds of his residence on the Island of Guernsey
he was noted in saying that when this tree matured the United States of Europe would have come into being. This tree to this day is still growing happily in the gardens of Maison de Hauteville, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Victor Hugo's residence during his exile from France.
The Italian philosopher Carlo Cattaneo wrote 'The ocean is rough and whirling, and the currents go to two possible endings: the autocrat, or the United States of Europe'. In 1867 Giuseppe Garibaldi
, and John Stuart Mill
joined Victor Hugo at a congress of the League of Peace and Freedom
in Geneva
. Here the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin
stated "That in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe". The French National Assembly, also called for a United States of Europe on March 1, 1871.
, some thinkers and visionaries again began to float the idea of a politically unified Europe. In 1923, the Austrian
Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-Europa movement and hosted the First Paneuropean Congress, held in Vienna
in 1926. The aim was for a specifically Christian, and by implication Roman Catholic, Europe. In contrast Trotsky raised the slogan "For a Soviet United States of Europe" in 1923, for a non-Christian but communist Europe.
In 1929, Aristide Briand
, French prime minister, gave a speech in the presence of the League of Nations
Assembly in which he proposed the idea of a federation
of European nations based on solidarity and in the pursuit of economic prosperity and political and social co-operation. Many eminent economists, among them John Maynard Keynes
, supported this view. At the League's request Briand presented a Memorandum on the organisation of a system of European Federal Union in 1930.
In 1931 the French politician Édouard Herriot
published the book The United States of Europe
. The British civil servant Arthur Salter published a book of the same name in 1933.
Between the two world wars the Polish leader Józef Piłsudski envisaged the idea of a United States of central Europe (called Międzymorze
translated as "Intersea" or "Between-seas"), a Polish-oriented version of Mitteleuropa
.
The Great Depression
, the rise of fascism
and communism
and subsequently World War II prevented the inter war movements from gaining further support.
was launched in November 1938, and began advocating a Federal Union of Europe as a post-war aim. Its papers and arguments became well known among resistants to fascism across Europe and contributed to their thinking of how to rebuild Europe after the war.
In 1940, following Germany's early military successes in World War II and planning for the creation of a thousand year Reich, a European confederation
was proposed by German economists and industrialists. They argued for a "European economic community", with a customs union and fixed internal exchange rates.
Among those who were early advocates of a union of European nations was Hungarian Prime Minister Pál Teleki
. Hungary had lost over two-thirds of its territory at the end of World War I in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon
. In early 1941 during the Second World War
, he was striving to keep Hungary autonomous. Internally, he tried to satisfy national pride which demanded a restoration of the lost territories, which Germany had supported in the First Vienna Award
of 1938 and the Second Vienna Award
of 1940. Externally, he was striving to preserve his country's military and economic independence in the face of Germany's coercive pressure to join in their invasion of Yugoslavia. In the book, Transylvania. The Land Beyond the Forest Louis C. Cornish described how Teleki, under constant surveillance by the German Gestapo during 1941, sent a secret communication to contacts in America.
Journalist Dorothy Thompson
in 1941 supported the statement of others. "I took from Count Teleki's office a monograph which he had written upon the structure of European nations. A distinguished geographer, he was developing a plan for regional federation, based upon geographical and economic realities." Teleki received no response from the Americans to his ideas and when German troops moved through Hungary on April 2–3, 1941 during the invasion of Yugoslavia, he committed suicide.
In 1943, the German ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop
and Cecil von Renthe-Fink
eventually proposed the creation of a European confederacy, which would have had a single currency, a central bank in Berlin, a regional principle, a labour policy and economic and trading agreements. The proposed countries to be included were Germany, Italy, France, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Greece and Spain. Such a German-led Europe, it was hoped, would serve as a strong alternative to the Communist
Soviet Union.
The later Foreign Minister Arthur Seyss-Inquart
said: "The new Europe of solidarity and co-operation among all its people will find rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic boundaries are removed", while the Vichy
French Minister Jacques Benoist-Mechin
said that France had to "abandon nationalism and take place in the European community with honour." These pan-European illusions from the early 1940s were never realised because of Germany's defeat. Neither Hitler, nor many of his leading hierarchs such as Goebbels
, had the slightest intention of compromising absolute German hegemony through the creation of a European confederation. Although this fact has been used to insinuate the charge of fascism in the EU, the idea is much older than the Nazis, foreseen by John Maynard Keynes, and later Winston Churchill and various anti-Nazi resistance movements.
One of the most influential figures in this process was Altiero Spinelli
, co-author with Ernesto Rossi of the "Ventotene Manifesto
" entitled "Towards a Free and United Europe" and smuggled out of their internment camp - the island of Ventotene - as early as 1941, well before the outcome of the war was safely predictable, and widely circulated in the resistance movements. Spinelli, Rossi and some 20 others established, as soon as they were able to leave their internment camp, the Movimento Federalista Europeo (MFE). The founding meeting, secretly held in Milan on the 27/28 August 1943, adopted a "political thesis" which, inter alia, stated: "if a post war order is established in which each State retains its complete national sovereignty, the basis for a Third World War would still exist even after the Nazi attempt to establish the domination of the German race in Europe has been frustrated".
In 1943, Jean Monnet
a member of the National Liberation Committee of the Free French government in exile in Algiers
, and regarded by many as the future architect of European unity, is recorded as declaring to the committee: "There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty... The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation..."
The word 'Europe' originally referred to the south-eastern part of Europe, in the same way that 'Asia' originally referred to western Anatolia, and 'Africa' referred to northern Africa, and it was the ancient Greeks who used the words to mean the continents as they do today.
After the Fall of Constantinople
Fall of Constantinople
The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which occurred after a siege by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, against the defending army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI...
to the Turks
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
in 1453, the first proposal for peaceful methods of unifying Europe against a common enemy emerged. George of Podebrady
George of Podebrady
George of Kunštát and Poděbrady , also known as Poděbrad or Podiebrad , was King of Bohemia...
, a Hussite
Hussite
The Hussites were a Christian movement following the teachings of Czech reformer Jan Hus , who became one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation...
king of Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
proposed the creation of a union of Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
nations against the Turks in 1464. However, there is no evidence that he viewed Europe as being anything other than a geographical place where those Christian nations resided.
The Frankish Empire
Frankish Empire
Francia or Frankia, later also called the Frankish Empire , Frankish Kingdom , Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, was the territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks from the 3rd to the 10th century...
of Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
and the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
united large areas of Germany, Italy and France under a loose administration for hundreds of years without articulating an 'idea of European unity'. However, the idea of Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, of those parts of Europe occupied by Germanic peoples
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
, representing 'Europe' had become common by the 19th century. That the 19th century idea of Europe was essentially a Germanic one can be witnessed from the counterblast by the Russia philosopher Danilevsky in his Russia and Europe. The idea of Germany and Europe being coterminous was taken to its fateful conclusion under Hitler.
Holy Roman Empire
Dr. Kikuchi Yoshio (菊池良生) of Meiji UniversityMeiji University
is a private university in Tokyo and Kawasaki, founded in 1881 by three lawyers of the Meiji era, Kishimoto Tatsuo, Miyagi Kōzō, and Yashiro Misao. It is one of the largest and most prestigious Japanese universities in Tokyo, Japan....
suggested that the notion of Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
as a federal political entity influenced the later structural ideas of the European Union.
Pre-Napoleon
William Penn
William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful...
looked at the devastation of war in Europe and wrote of a 'European dyet, or parliament', to prevent further war, without further defining how such an institution would fit in to the political reality of Europe at the time.
In 1728, Abbot Charles de Saint-Pierre proposed the creation of a European league of 18 sovereign states, with common treasury, no borders and an economic union.
After the American War of Independence the vision of a United States of Europe
United States of Europe
Since the 1950s, European integration has seen the development of a supranational system of governance, as its institutions move further from the concept of simple intergovernmentalism. However, with the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, new intergovernmental elements have been introduced alongside the...
similar to the United States of America was shared by a few prominent Europeans, notably the Marquis de Lafayette and Tadeusz Kościuszko
Tadeusz Kosciuszko
Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko was a Polish–Lithuanian and American general and military leader during the Kościuszko Uprising. He is a national hero of Poland, Lithuania, the United States and Belarus...
.
Some suggestion of a European union can be inferred from Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's 1795 proposal for an "eternal peace congress".
19th century
Customs union
A customs union is a type of trade bloc which is composed of a free trade area with a common external tariff. The participant countries set up common external trade policy, but in some cases they use different import quotas...
under Napoleon Bonaparte's
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
Continental system
Continental System
The Continental System or Continental Blockade was the foreign policy of Napoleon I of France in his struggle against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars. It was a large-scale embargo against British trade, which began on November 21, 1806...
was promulgated in November 1806 as an embargo of British goods in the interests of French hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
. Felix Markham notes how during a conversation on St. Helena, Napoleon remarked, "Europe thus divided into nationalities freely formed and free internally, peace between States would have become easier: the United States of Europe would become a possibility."
The French socialists
Saint-Simonianism
Saint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon ....
Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...
and Augustin Thierry
Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry
Augustin Thierry was a French historian.He was born in Blois, Loir-et-Cher, the elder brother of Amédée Simon Dominique Thierry. He had no advantages of birth or fortune, but was distinguished at the Blois Grammar School, and entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1811...
would in 1814 write the essay De la réorganisation de la société européenne, already conjuring up some form of parliamentary European federation.
In the conservative reaction after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the German Confederation
German Confederation
The German Confederation was the loose association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries. It acted as a buffer between the powerful states of Austria and Prussia...
(German "Deutscher Bund") was established as a loose association of thirty-eight sovereign German states formed by the Congress of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
. Napoleon had swept away the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
and simplified the map of Germany. In 1834, the Zollverein
Zollverein
thumb|upright=1.2|The German Zollverein 1834–1919blue = Prussia in 1834 grey= Included region until 1866yellow= Excluded after 1866red = Borders of the German Union of 1828 pink= Relevant others until 1834...
(German, "customs union") was formed among the states of the Confederation, in order to create better trade flow and reduce internal competition. An extension of this customs union may have been become the model for a unified Europe, as alluded to by Fritz Fischer
Fritz Fischer
Fritz Fischer was a German historian best known for his analysis of the causes of World War I. Fischer has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing as the most important German historian of the 20th century.-Biography:Fischer was born in Ludwigsstadt in Bavaria. His...
in Germany's Aims in the First World War. The then current ideas of geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
and a Mitteleuropa
Mitteleuropa
Mitteleuropa is the German term equal to Central Europe. The word has political, geographic and cultural meaning. While it describes a geographical location, it also is the word denoting a political concept of a German-dominated and exploited Central European union that was put into motion during...
were also influential in providing an intellectual framework for European Union in Germany.
United States of Europe was also the name of the concept presented by Wojciech Jastrzębowski
Wojciech Jastrzebowski
Wojciech Jastrzębowski , was a Polish biologist, author of the term "Ergonomics".-Selected writings:* Rys ergonomji czyli nauki o pracy, opartej na prawdach poczerpniętych z Nauki Przyrody Wojciech Jastrzębowski (1799 Gierwaty - 1882 Warsaw), was a Polish biologist, author of the term...
in "About eternal peace between the nations", published May 31, 1831. The project consisted of 77 articles. The envisioned United States of Europe was to be an international organisation rather than a superstate.
Italian writer and politician Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini , nicknamed Soul of Italy, was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century...
called for the creation of a federation of European republics in 1843. This set the stage for perhaps the best known early proposal for peaceful unification, through cooperation and equality of membership, made by the pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
in 1847. Hugo used the term 'United States of Europe' (États-Unis d'Europe) during a speech at the International Peace Congress
International Peace Congress
International Peace Congress, or International Congress of the Friends of Peace, was the name of a series of international meetings of representatives from peace societies from throughout the world held in various places in Europe from 1843 to 1853...
, organised by Mazzini, held in Paris in 1849. Hugo favoured the creation of "a supreme, sovereign senate, which will be to Europe what parliament is to England" and said "A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood... A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas." However, he was laughed out of the hall, yet returned to his idea again in 1851. Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
planted a tree in the grounds of his residence on the Island of Guernsey
Guernsey
Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...
he was noted in saying that when this tree matured the United States of Europe would have come into being. This tree to this day is still growing happily in the gardens of Maison de Hauteville, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Victor Hugo's residence during his exile from France.
The Italian philosopher Carlo Cattaneo wrote 'The ocean is rough and whirling, and the currents go to two possible endings: the autocrat, or the United States of Europe'. In 1867 Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and...
, and John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
joined Victor Hugo at a congress of the League of Peace and Freedom
League of Peace and Freedom
The Inaugural Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom was originally planned for September 5, 1867 in Geneva. Emile Acollas set up the League’s Organising Committee which enlisted the support of John Stuart Mill, Elisée Reclus and his brother Élie Reclus....
in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
. Here the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
stated "That in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe". The French National Assembly, also called for a United States of Europe on March 1, 1871.
After the First World War
Following the catastrophe of the First World WarWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, some thinkers and visionaries again began to float the idea of a politically unified Europe. In 1923, the Austrian
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-Europa movement and hosted the First Paneuropean Congress, held in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
in 1926. The aim was for a specifically Christian, and by implication Roman Catholic, Europe. In contrast Trotsky raised the slogan "For a Soviet United States of Europe" in 1923, for a non-Christian but communist Europe.
In 1929, Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.- Early life :...
, French prime minister, gave a speech in the presence of the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
Assembly in which he proposed the idea of a federation
Federation
A federation , also known as a federal state, is a type of sovereign state characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central government...
of European nations based on solidarity and in the pursuit of economic prosperity and political and social co-operation. Many eminent economists, among them John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, supported this view. At the League's request Briand presented a Memorandum on the organisation of a system of European Federal Union in 1930.
In 1931 the French politician Édouard Herriot
Édouard Herriot
Édouard Marie Herriot was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister and for many years as President of the Chamber of Deputies....
published the book The United States of Europe
United States of Europe
Since the 1950s, European integration has seen the development of a supranational system of governance, as its institutions move further from the concept of simple intergovernmentalism. However, with the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, new intergovernmental elements have been introduced alongside the...
. The British civil servant Arthur Salter published a book of the same name in 1933.
Between the two world wars the Polish leader Józef Piłsudski envisaged the idea of a United States of central Europe (called Międzymorze
Miedzymorze
Międzymorze was a plan, pursued after World War I by Polish leader Józef Piłsudski, for a federation, under Poland's aegis, of Central and Eastern European countries...
translated as "Intersea" or "Between-seas"), a Polish-oriented version of Mitteleuropa
Mitteleuropa
Mitteleuropa is the German term equal to Central Europe. The word has political, geographic and cultural meaning. While it describes a geographical location, it also is the word denoting a political concept of a German-dominated and exploited Central European union that was put into motion during...
.
The Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, the rise of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and subsequently World War II prevented the inter war movements from gaining further support.
Impact of the Second World war
In Britain the group known as Federal UnionFederal Union
Federal Union is a Pro-European British group launched in November 1938, to advocate a Federal Union of Europe as a post-war aim. It continues to exist today, arguing for federalism for the whole of Europe and the world....
was launched in November 1938, and began advocating a Federal Union of Europe as a post-war aim. Its papers and arguments became well known among resistants to fascism across Europe and contributed to their thinking of how to rebuild Europe after the war.
In 1940, following Germany's early military successes in World War II and planning for the creation of a thousand year Reich, a European confederation
Confederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...
was proposed by German economists and industrialists. They argued for a "European economic community", with a customs union and fixed internal exchange rates.
Among those who were early advocates of a union of European nations was Hungarian Prime Minister Pál Teleki
Pál Teleki
Pál Count Teleki de Szék was prime minister of Hungary from 19 July 1920 to 14 April 1921 and from 16 February 1939 to 3 April 1941. He was also a famous expert in geography, a university professor, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Chief Scout of the Hungarian Scout Association...
. Hungary had lost over two-thirds of its territory at the end of World War I in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon
Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed in 1920, at the end of World War I, between the Allies of World War I and Hungary . The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. From its borders before World War I, it lost 72% of its territory, which was reduced from to...
. In early 1941 during the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was striving to keep Hungary autonomous. Internally, he tried to satisfy national pride which demanded a restoration of the lost territories, which Germany had supported in the First Vienna Award
First Vienna Award
The First Vienna Award was the result of the First Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace on November 2, 1938. The Arbitration and Award were direct consequences of the Munich Agreement...
of 1938 and the Second Vienna Award
Second Vienna Award
The Second Vienna Award was the second of two Vienna Awards arbitrated by the Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Rendered on August 30, 1940, it re-assigned the territory of Northern Transylvania from Romania to Hungary.-Prelude and historical background :After the World War I, the multi-ethnic...
of 1940. Externally, he was striving to preserve his country's military and economic independence in the face of Germany's coercive pressure to join in their invasion of Yugoslavia. In the book, Transylvania. The Land Beyond the Forest Louis C. Cornish described how Teleki, under constant surveillance by the German Gestapo during 1941, sent a secret communication to contacts in America.
Journalist Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential women in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt...
in 1941 supported the statement of others. "I took from Count Teleki's office a monograph which he had written upon the structure of European nations. A distinguished geographer, he was developing a plan for regional federation, based upon geographical and economic realities." Teleki received no response from the Americans to his ideas and when German troops moved through Hungary on April 2–3, 1941 during the invasion of Yugoslavia, he committed suicide.
In 1943, the German ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life:...
and Cecil von Renthe-Fink
Cecil von Renthe-Fink
Cecil von Renthe-Fink was a German diplomat. He was plenipotentiary of Denmark from April 9, 1940 until 1942.He was appointed ambassador to Denmark in 1936. In 1939 he became a member of the Nazi party. After the occupation of Denmark he became plenipotentiary. In 1942 he was replaced by Dr....
eventually proposed the creation of a European confederacy, which would have had a single currency, a central bank in Berlin, a regional principle, a labour policy and economic and trading agreements. The proposed countries to be included were Germany, Italy, France, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Greece and Spain. Such a German-led Europe, it was hoped, would serve as a strong alternative to the Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
Soviet Union.
The later Foreign Minister Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Arthur Seyss-Inquart was a Chancellor of Austria, lawyer and later Nazi official in pre-Anschluss Austria, the Third Reich and for wartime Germany in Poland and the Netherlands...
said: "The new Europe of solidarity and co-operation among all its people will find rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic boundaries are removed", while the Vichy
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
French Minister Jacques Benoist-Mechin
Jacques Benoist-Méchin
Jacques Benoist-Méchin was a French far right politician and writer.Although active as both a writer and rightist political figure he did not fully come to prominence until the German occupation of France during World War II, which was somewhat welcomed by the Germanophile...
said that France had to "abandon nationalism and take place in the European community with honour." These pan-European illusions from the early 1940s were never realised because of Germany's defeat. Neither Hitler, nor many of his leading hierarchs such as Goebbels
Goebbels
Goebbels, alternatively Göbbels, is a common surname in the western areas of Germany. It is probably derived from the Old Low German word gibbler, meaning brewer...
, had the slightest intention of compromising absolute German hegemony through the creation of a European confederation. Although this fact has been used to insinuate the charge of fascism in the EU, the idea is much older than the Nazis, foreseen by John Maynard Keynes, and later Winston Churchill and various anti-Nazi resistance movements.
One of the most influential figures in this process was Altiero Spinelli
Altiero Spinelli
Altiero Spinelli was an Italian political theorist and a European federalist. Spinelli is referred to as one of the "Founding Fathers of the European Union" due to his co-authorship of the Ventotene Manifesto, his founding role in the European federalist movement, his strong influence on the first...
, co-author with Ernesto Rossi of the "Ventotene Manifesto
Ventotene Manifesto
The Ventotene Manifesto is a political statement written by Altiero Spinelli and by Ernesto Rossi while they were prisoners on the Italian island of Ventotene during World War II. Completed in June 1941, the Manifesto was circulated within the Italian Resistance, and it soon became the programme...
" entitled "Towards a Free and United Europe" and smuggled out of their internment camp - the island of Ventotene - as early as 1941, well before the outcome of the war was safely predictable, and widely circulated in the resistance movements. Spinelli, Rossi and some 20 others established, as soon as they were able to leave their internment camp, the Movimento Federalista Europeo (MFE). The founding meeting, secretly held in Milan on the 27/28 August 1943, adopted a "political thesis" which, inter alia, stated: "if a post war order is established in which each State retains its complete national sovereignty, the basis for a Third World War would still exist even after the Nazi attempt to establish the domination of the German race in Europe has been frustrated".
In 1943, Jean Monnet
Jean Monnet
Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet was a French political economist and diplomat. He is regarded by many as a chief architect of European Unity and is regarded as one of its founding fathers...
a member of the National Liberation Committee of the Free French government in exile in Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
, and regarded by many as the future architect of European unity, is recorded as declaring to the committee: "There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty... The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation..."
See also
- Federal Europe
- Pan-European identityPan-European identityPan-European identity refers to the sense of personal identification with Europe. The most concrete examples of pan-europeanism are the European Union and the older Council of Europe...
- European integrationEuropean integrationEuropean integration is the process of industrial, political, legal, economic integration of states wholly or partially in Europe...
- History of the European UnionHistory of the European UnionThe European Union is a geo-political entity covering a large portion of the European continent. It is founded upon numerous treaties and has undergone expansions that have taken it from 7 member states to 27, a majority of states in Europe....
- Universal MonarchyUniversal MonarchyA Universal Monarchy is a concept and a political situation where one monarchy is deemed to have either sole rule over everywhere or to have a special supremacy over all other states .-Concept:Universal Monarchy is differentiated from ordinary monarchy in...