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European Federation in the Political Thought of Resistance Movements during World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Walter Lipgens
Walter Lipgens
Affiliation:
University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken
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Extract

The experiences and catastrophes of the second World War fundamentally affected European political attitudes. Particularly intensive was the reconsideration of fundamental problems that went on in the non-communist resistance groups in the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe. What were their political plans? Research on the resistance movements is still in its early stages; however, there is already general agreement that the resistance movements did not fight for a return to prewar conditions, but for a new European society. In particular, as several writers have pointed out, the goal of a democratic federation of all European nations appears repeatedly in the newspapers and proclamations of the Resistance. To describe the ideas of the Resistance on European federation requires a thorough study of the documentary material on the various European resistance movements, with particular attention to those texts concerned with the future relationships of the European states; the following pages are a first report of the findings of such a study.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1968 , pp. 5 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1968

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References

1. The following is the slightly revised text of a lecture presented at a number of American universities in the spring of 1967. I gratefully acknowledge the suggestions of Fritz T. Epstein, Hajo Holborn, and my colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during the academic year 1966–67, Felix Gilbert and Peter Paret.

2. See, for example, all pages under “Europe” in the indexes of Rothfels, H., Die deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler (Frankfurt, 1958Google Scholar; enlarged edition of The German Opposition to Hitler [Hinsdale, Ill., 1948])Google Scholar; Michel, H., Les Courants de Pensée de la Résistance (Paris, 1962)Google Scholar; Delzell, C. F., Mussolini's Enemies. The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance (Princeton, 1961).Google Scholar

3. See especially Pegg, C. H., “Die Résistance als Träger der europäischen Einigungsbestrebungen in Frankreich während des II. Weltkriegs,” Europa-Archiv, VII (1952), 5197–206Google Scholar, and Delzell, Charles F., “The European Federalist Movement in Italy: First Phase 1918–1947,” Journal of Modern History, XXXII (1960), 241–50. I have greatly benefitted from these two articles.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Because this is a first report, prepared in the form of a lecture, certain difficult areas are necessarily dealt with in a summary and general way. A full account is contained in the author's forthcoming Europa-Föderationspläne der Widerstandsbewegungen 1940–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1968). Footnotes refer (by document number) to this work, in which detailed bibliographical information can be found.Google Scholar

5. Op. cit., No. 77, Frenay, Henri (Leader of Combat), Dec. 12, 1943.Google Scholar

6. Op. cit., No. 49, “Kreisauer Grundsätze” (Moltke), Aug. 9, 1943.

7. Op. cit., No. 17, Rollier, Mario A. (Editor of the illegal L'Unità Europea), May 1944.Google Scholar

8. Op. cit., No. 81, Le Franc-tireur, Organe du Mouvement de Libération Nationale, Édition Sud, Mar. I, 1944.

9. Op. cit., No. 10, Foundation Convention of the illegal “Movimento Federalista Europeo,” Milan, Aug. 28, 1943.

10. Op. cit., No. 100, Goedhart, Heuven (Editor of the illegal Het Parool), Dec. 12, 1942.Google Scholar

11. Op. cit., No. 78, Viannay, Philippe (Leader of Défense de la France), Jan. 1944.Google Scholar

12. Op. cit., No. 16, anonymous, in the illegal L'Unità Europea, May 1944.

13. Op. cit., No. 103, anonymous, in Vrij Nederland, Sept. 1943.

14. See for example op. cit., Nos. 50 (Goerdeler) and 62 (O.C.M.), 1942–43.

15. Op. cit., No. 59, Léon Blum in Riom, June 1942. Cf. Nos. 10, 31, 71, 104, 114a, 129, etc.

16. Op. cit., No. 11, Luigi Einaudi, illegal leaflet, Sept. 1943.

17. Op. cit., No. 136, “The Geneva Declaration of Resistants,” May 1944.

18. Both quotations from a “Program” of the Comité général of the “Mouvement de Libération Nationale (Region Lyon),” Aug. 1944, op. cit., No. 89.

19. Op. cit., No. 114, “Program Polski Ludowej,” Dec. 1941.

20. Op. cit., No. 31, von Moltke, Helmuth James Graf, “Ausgangslage,” Apr. 24, 1941.Google Scholar

21. Op. cit., No. 100, Goedhart, Heuven (Leader of Het Parool), Dec. 12, 1942.Google Scholar

22. Op. cit., No. 10, “Movimento Federalista Europeo,” Aug. 28, 1943.

23. Op. cit., No. 89, “Program,” distributed by the Comité général of the “Mouvement de Libération Nationale (Region Lyon),” August 1944. The leading persons of this committee were Socialists. It would be an important task of research to compare the positions of the various authors in domestic and social politics with their convictions concerning the future federation of Europe. The result, so far as I can see, would be that in the great majority European Federation plans were written by men of the “left.” The “rightists” were either collaborators, or, if they were in the Resistance, would mostly speak in more reserved terms of “confederation” and “collaboration,” instead of “federation.”

24. Op. cit., No. 136, “The Geneva Declaration of Resistants,” May 1944.

25. Op. cit., No. 110, “Hades” (Salinger, H. D., The Hague), Sept. 1944.Google Scholar

26. Op. cit., No. 79, anonymous, in the illegal Cahiers politiques, Jan. 1944.

27. Op. cit., No. 109, van Rosenthal, Bosch R. to Willem A. Visser 'tHooft, letter concerning the Geneva Declaration, Aug. 21, 1944.Google Scholar

28. See with many documents, explanations, differentiations, etc., op. cit., Nos. 139–169.

29. See in op. cit. especially Nos. 84, 118, 155, 167, 170, and 172. Further research about this attitude of the Soviet Union is needed. To some extent, presumably, it was a continuation of the sort of power politics which saw in the weakness of one's neighbors a guarantee of the welfare of one's own state, but which in the second half of the 20th century may itself become a cause of weakness. But it is also a continuation of the attitudes of 1929 and 1930, which declared (with some reason) the “European Union” ideas of Briand and Coudenhove to be “bourgeois,” “reactionary,” and “interventionist.” Nevertheless only the former can explain why, with the development of the fascist regimes, the Soviet Union did not accept the fact that conditions had changed.

30. See also the discussion of the literature (with special reference to McNeill, William, Feis, Herbert, and Woodward, Llewellyn) in op. cit., Nos. 159, 160, 164, 170, and 172.Google Scholar

31. Op. cit., No. 108, De Ploeg (Groningen), 08 1944.Google Scholar

32. Op. cit., No. 110, “Hades” (Salinger, H. D., The Hague), Sept. 1944.Google Scholar

33. Op. cit., No. 111, van der Leeuw, A. J. (in De Ploeg), Jan. 1945.Google Scholar

34. Op. cit., No. 2, Altiero Spinelli for the “Ventotene Group,” Aug. 1941.

35. Op. cit., No. 22, Altiero Spinelli for the “Movimento Federalista Europeo,” Sept. 1944.

36. Op. cit., No. 77, Frenay, Henri (Leader of Combat), Dec. 12, 1943.Google Scholar