ABSTRACT
Two temporal frames of reference both encountered frequently in early post war texts bear upon the basic claim asserted in the idea of integration they are the past and the future. On the one hand the past is explained and assessed, National Socialism and its causes are repeatedly explicated and evaluated. On the other, a version of the future is projected, social and political reconstruction are called into being through a language which declares that which is desirable to be in existence already. Concepts of Europe are introduced into the argumentational structures in many ways. This chapter establishes the agents in this process and the identity of the participants in the European debate in early post-war Germany. It describes the process whereby concepts of Europe were instrumentalised in many ways according both to the different philosophical outlooks of those taking part in the discourse and to the relationship of the argument in question to the past or the future.
