ABSTRACT
Politically meaningful co-operation among Catholic parties in Europe had already become very difficult after Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933.1 After the outbreak of the Second World War and with the occupation of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in 1940, such contacts could exist only in exile. The historical literature on political exile in Britain, the United States and other countries during the war is quite extensive. However, political exile is usually treated in a purely national context. Without doubt, questions of national collaboration and post-war reconstruction were of overriding importance to the majority of continental European politicians in exile. Transnational contacts and co-operation, however, also took place, and it is clearly crucial to know more precisely to what extent these contacts may have formed an organizational, or at least an intellectual, bridge to post-war European party collaboration and reconstruction.2
