The European Discourse in Germany, 1939-1950: Three Case Studies

Abstract

This article seeks to contextualize support after the Second World War for European integration in Germany, analysing continuities between interwar, wartime and postwar debates about unifying Europe both within and beyond Germany. Using such a temporal framing serves to highlight that many groups advocating European integration in the post-1945 period emerged out of more long-standing internationalist communities, not all of whom had supported international political frameworks and cooperation from a pro-democratic standpoint. Rather, a significant number of groups on the Left and Right sought to construct international bodies as a means of restraining what they saw as the harmful potential of majoritarian democratic nation-states. The article is therefore a contribution to recent research initiatives that have more critically assessed the growth in support for a united Europe after the Second World War and which have enriched the study of European integration from an earlier focus on primarily diplomatic processes and institutional histories. A case is made for an intellectual history of European integration, and the article highlights the importance of intellectual and political communities that argued for a Third Way Europe. The groups featured are not simply German organizations, but are communities whose membership, connections and impact were transnational. The article therefore seeks to challenge the approach typified by Alan Milward's important text, The European Rescue of the Nation State, which saw nation states as the major players in the history of integration, and their leaders as largely uninfluenced by the activities of civil society organisations.