Posters Artwork Documents

European Union ? Nothing new ...

Unknown author.

Interesting postcard, posted in German-occupied Paris in 1942. It shows a jolly hen - "Our Mother Europe" - shepherding her brood of chicks, flagged as representing the members of a purported European union of nations. This includes Germany, France and Italy. Neutral Switzerland and Sweden wander about, wondering what to do, while a British chick stumbles angrily in the direction of a Jewish trap. Some EUrophobic philosophers/conspiracy theorists have attempted to identify a "tainted source" for the "European Project", tainted, that is, by origins in earlier totalitarian and/or Fascist sources. At least one - John Laughland - has extended these conspiracy theories so far as to posit a Nazi/Stalinist-derived programme to form, eventually, a combined European/Eurasian Union, under the surreptitious control of a German-Russian axis. I have to say that I find conspiracy theories on this scale rather Laughable. Setting aside the more extreme reveries of the conspiracy theorists, there is in fact a substantial basis for the assertion that the seeds of the present (and prospective) European superstate first sprouted in the soil of western European extreme right-wing thought in the western Europe of the 1930s and 1940s. Mind you, there is little evidence that either Germany or Italy had much interest in this line, except as a useful propaganda ploy. Long-term German policy would have concentrated on the organization of western Europe along "volkisch" lines, with Germany herself in the predominant position. As for the Soviet Union, Stalin did not look beyond the protection of his "Socialism in One Country", at the expense of his immediate western neighbours insofar as possible; again, some things do not change ... No, the real seed-bed for these notions was the far-right of the western European countries defeated by Germany in 1940, which had entered into "collaboration" with their conquerors to a greater or lesser extent. Norwegians, Netherlanders, Flemings, Walloons, French - all faced the problem of how to maintain a national identity within a German-dominated Europe. Neither relegation to second-class status (possibly France and Walloonia) , nor absorbtion in a Greater German "Volkish" monolith (Norway, Netherlands, Flemish Netherlands) would have been welcomed by local right-wing political élites or intellectuals in these countries. Their response to the prospect of German "dominium" was to produce a more-or-less model of German hegemony that would provide a recognized and honoured place to these nations in a "European Union". Of course, the Germans had absolutely no interest in such thinking, except insofar as it contributed to propaganda and foreign recruitment to the Wehrmacht. Furthermore, the objectives of the various sections of western European right-wing thinking were often in conflict - for example, the Walloon aspiration to join a Greater France were in direct conflict with the Flemish/Dutch aspiration to a Greater Netherlands, including all of Belgium and Holland. A German victory would probably have seen all of this wishful thinking squashed; since Germany was defeated, the concept of a western European confederation, later leading to some form of federation, survived, and fed into the process that ultimately led to today's EU. As to the jolly hen herding the chicks ? Not a French cockrel, of course, but perhaps reflecting the French working concept of the current EU as one that would be dominated economically by the new Germany, which would be led, politically (and by the nose) by the "more sophisticated" political and diplomatic capacities of France. France has not, at any recent times, been backward when it came to her leadership ambitions. Again, some things are nothing new - although France might help herself towards such a position by putting some correction on her economy, and on electing politicians somewhat less enthusiastic about "l'affairs d'amour". May happen. Maybe ... Yours from the Charlemagne Basement, JR.