ABSTRACT
Movements to unite Europe politically only emerged post-World War I (although the idea originated as far back as the seventeenth century). The horror and carnage of World War I (1914-18) was the motivation behind this wish to end the destructive antagonistic rivalry of European nation states. Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi established the Pan-European Union in 1923 as a non-party mass movement for the unification of Europe; another organisation, the Association for European Co-operation, was started in Geneva in 1926 and had committees in Paris, Berlin and London. The interwar years also saw the early advocacy of a European Customs Union and a recommendation for a single market from 1920 in the face of increasing Japanese and US exports, economic stagnation, economic nationalism and tariff protectionism in Europe. In September 1929 Aristide Briand proposed the creation of a European Federal Union at the Assembly of the League of Nations which was viewed with incomprehension by most other ministers and statesmen, though interestingly not by Winston Churchill, who published articles supporting the idea of a ‘United States of Europe’ in 1930 and 1938. Churchill believed, however, that Britain was not part of Europe but should support it from outside and that the French and Germans should create it. However, interest in such movements and proposals had no effect on the
realities of European economic and political affairs and such organisations never achieved a mass following but remained a minority preoccupation of certain intellectuals (Lipgens, 1982, pp. 35-42; 1985, pp. 5-7). The Bolsheviks in Russia were dismissive and contemptuous of federalist
schemes for Europe and the Nazis after 1933 banned all pro-European associations as pacifist. Lipgens argues that the experience of World War II had an overwhelming
formative influence on the prospects and nature of European federalist ideas. It changed everything. It increased support for federal ideas as Europe’s status diminished compared with that of the super-powers: the US and USSR. Experience of conquest and occupation under Nazi rule and the failure of national governments to provide the minimum of security and independence supposedly weakened public confidence in the nation state and strengthened federalist support.
