The Idea of Europe Between the World Wars: Hopes, Problems, and Paradoxes
The Idea of Europe Between the World Wars: Hopes, Problems, and Paradoxes

Summary/Abstract: The history of the European integration project after the end of the Second World War is familiar.However, the opinions, hopes, expectations, and paradoxes that went into the idea of a common Europe are still notoften investigated or discussed. The topic of what inspired the thinking of people such as Louis Loucheur, RichardCoudenhove-Kalergi, Jean Monnet, Arthur Salter, Gustav Stresemann, Aristide Briand and Altiero Spinelli—that is, people of diverse backgrounds, ways of thinking, and experiences—requires dispassionate and discursiveanalysis. If, at the height of a nationalist frenzy on the European continent, Monnet’s stated objective was to bringabout “a union among people” and not “coalitions between States,” then why was the latter pursued? Similarly,for the British civil servant Arthur Salter, why was it necessary to work on a European project when the country towhich he belonged was, if not outrightly skeptical, not overenthusiastic about it? What compelled Altiero Spinellito draft the famous Ventotene Manifesto advocating a federalist idea of Europe? Or what were the motivationsof Henry Spaak in advising/requesting Monnet to keep the political dimension of the “project” disguised as“economic cooperation” (involving a dismantling of trade barriers)? And was the idea of a common Europe theproduct of the hyper-idealism that came to reside in European thinking in the wake of President Woodrow Wilson’sFourteen Points Declaration? Or was the idea a product of Nazi expansionism? Or was it a counter-response toa putative reemergence of the latter in the unknown future? This paper endeavors to find explanations for someof these questions. In the process, it will also attempt to make sense of the forces and necessities that helpedcrystalize the idea that there was a need for a common European space, a supra state, or as Monnet famously said,“a community of nations.”

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