The Idea of Europe from 1918 to 1939

18.2.1 Europe Lies in Ruins, at the Mercy of the United

States and the Soviet Union

World War I was a cataclysm, which left the major European nations devastated. In 1914, the nations of Europe dominated the world, controlling 44 % of industrial production (edging out the U.S., with 38 %).

Europe emerged not only surpassed by the United States, but also eclipsed by the power of Soviet Russia. Lenin, aware from the very outset that the new Soviet state would not be strong internationally if it could not incorporate its various neighbor­ing states, appointed Comrade Stalin as People’s Commissar of Nationalities, thereby creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922, the only European force that could rival American power in the twentieth century.

18.2.2 The Resurgence of Nationalisms and Disunity in Europe

The decline of Europe’s nation-states could have been averted had their govern­ments undertaken a policy of convergence. Instead, nationalism grew stronger than ever before and the tension between states was only exacerbated.

American President Woodrow Wilson, the primary architect of the Peace of Versailles (1919), and the author of the agreement’s famous Fourteen Points, believed that the new international order ought to be based on a strict respect for nationalities, which meant that, in his opinion, states should coincide with “nations”—in the sense of peoples or ethnic groups.

The upshot of Wilson’s idea was that all those nations that were not independent states in 1914, obtained statehood after the collapse of Germany and the disinte­gration of Austria-Hungary in 1919. Consequently, the map of Central Europe became considerably more complicated—and volatile. This policy of state creation did not only fail to resolve the problems, but in many cases actually aggravated them. Thus, for example the new Yugoslavia was established favoring the Serb majority, to the detriment of the Croats. Independence, thus, progressively height­ened tensions and conflict between Belgrade and Zagreb until the head of the Croatian Peasant Party was assassinated during a session of the central Parlia­ment.^[1158] The same dynamic was repeated with the government in Prague, which was strongly supported only by the Czechs, who represented just half of the population under the new state, the other half being made up of Slovaks, Germans from the Sudetenland, Ruthenians and Hungarians (Slapnicka 1993, 173-197). Thus, the reorganization of central Europe in the wake of World War I created a precarious and unstable concoction that would lead to deadly strife later in the century.

Another consequence of the implementation of the nationalities principle in Europe was the secession of Ireland from the United Kingdom.

1919, Ireland declared independence from the United Kingdom unilaterally, giving rise to the Irish Republic. After a 2-year war of independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on December 6, 1921, and a year later, the entire island became a self-governing British dominion: the Irish Free State, a constitutional monarchy under the British crown.^[1159] The IFS featured a governor-general, a bicameral parliament, a cabinet called the “Executive Council” and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council. A portion of the Irish people, led by Eamon de Valera, refused to accept the treaty and began a civil war (1922-1923) against pro-treaty (Free State) forces, led by Michael Collins, which, with British aid, won the war.^[1160] The Irish Free State, however, ultimately ended when Irish citizens voted via referendum for a new constitution in 1937, which created the new state of Ireland (Eire), virtually independent from the United Kingdom but still theoreti­cally under the authority of the British Crown. This arrangement lasted until the new state seceded from the Commonwealth (Mansergh 1997, 170) through the Republic of Ireland Act of 1948, which came into force on April 18, 1949. The situation had been further complicated by the secession of Northern Ireland from the Irish Free State in 1921, creating a separate territory still technically forming part of the United Kingdom. Through the 1960s the Provisional IRA led a war aimed at overturning British rule in Northern Ireland. The conflict between Nation­alists and Unionists did not end until April 10, 1998, with the Belfast Agreement (Aughey 2005, 81-97), which set in motion a process of disarmament culminating in the Provisional IRA’s decommissioning of its weapons in July of 2005. Under the Northern Ireland Act (November 19, 1998), Northern Ireland has (since 2007) an elected first minister and a deputy first minister so that power may be shared by the leaders of the two main parties: the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein (Barnett 2002, 366-367).

With the settlement of the Irish question nationalist movements did not disap­pear in Europe, as some minorities, even during the present era of European integration, still clamor for the partitioning of their countries and the foundation of new nation-states based on ethnic and cultural affinities and purported rights to political independence, in some cases triggering dreadful civil wars. Fresh in the minds of Europeans are the atrocities of the Bosnian War (1992-1995). Ongoing struggles and demands by certain regions and peoples for autonomy continue to form part of Europe’s constitutional history (Keating 2001, 19-43) as is the case in Belgium, with its Wallon and Flemish communities; in Spain, where separatist movements endure in the Basque Country and Catalonia; and in the United King­dom, with Scotland.

18.2.3 Some Attempts at Integration

Despite the resurgence of militant nationalism,^[1161] it must be said that there were also farsighted and commendable attempts to curb these excesses and promote a policy of European integration.

18.2.3.1 The Pan-European Movement of R. Coudenhove-Kalergi

(1923)

The first general movement aimed at integrating the nations of Europe was opened by the work of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who in 1923 published a book that made a major impact and was widely circulated, in part because of its striking title: Pan-Europe (Coudenhove-Kalergi 1926). In it, he defended a union of European states to prevent the nations of the Continent from succumbing to either Russian Bolshevism or American economic domination. Above all, he argued that union was the only way for Europe to maintain its influence around the world.

It is significant that Coudenhove-Kalergi’s proposal omitted Russia and the U.K. In the first case, because the Russian Revolution had marked a break with the European states’ democratic system, making the Soviet Union “a Eurasian world power”. As for the U.K., Coudenhove held that after World War I the United Kingdom had transformed its internal structure to evolve from a European kingdom with colonies to a “federal intercontinental” regime.

The question of the structure of the United States of Europe, which Coudenhove- Kalergi advocated, was still one to be settled. The author of Pan-Europe was aware of the resurgence of nationalism in Europe after 1919 and, therefore, considered it unrealistic to expect all Europe’s nation-states, especially its most recent ones, to accept the authority of a federal government. For this reason, he advocated a formula that respected the sovereignty of nation states, in line with that adopted by the Pan-American Union, which at its conference in Santiago (Chile) in 1922 seemed to have managed to reconcile national independence with an effort at regional international cooperation. Coudenhove-Kalergi wished to extrapolate Pan Americanism to Europe and constitute a “Pan-European” authority equipped with a Council consisting of delegates from different states, an assembly of delegates from the different parliaments, and a court of justice (Prettenthaler- Ziegerhofer 2012, 89-110). In this way, Pan-Europe was to serve as one of the world’s regional organizations, one of the five major spheres on the globe, along with the American, British, Russian and Far Eastern, led by Japan.

Coudenhove-Kalergi knew that after the Great War, when public opinion was charged with strongly nationalist sentiment, his project would not attract the European masses. In fact, the Pan-European idea never took hold with the people—except perhaps in central Europe, particularly in Austria and Germany, where public opinion saw in it a way of overcoming the consequences of defeat. Coudenhove-Kalergi, therefore, decided to make his appeal to the ruling classes: parliamentarians and businessmen.^[1162]

18.2.3.2 Attempts at Economic Union

The growth of nationalism following the signing of the Peace of Versailles had important economic consequences, as the multiplication of European borders and the brash self-interest with which the new states sought to consolidate their national economies generally spawned a resurgence of aggressively protectionist policies.

Some of Europe’s most dynamic employers, very impressed by the United States’ enormous economic power by the beginning of the 1920s, however, began to back the creation of a massive European-wide market as a means of favoring the growth of industrial production and lowering the prices of manufactured goods. Hence, two types of initiatives emerged: the establishment of customs unions, such as that led by Prussia in the mid-nineteenth century (Zollverein), and the develop­ment of international production agreements.

Among the first mention must be made of the European Customs Union, established in 1926 (Lipgens 1984, 6), initially chaired by economist Charles Gide, and later by Yves Le Trocquer.^[1163] French fears of Germany’s industrial power, however, ended up dashing the project. Efforts were also made to encourage the signing of international agreements between producers, which was a very widespread and common practice. It was during this period when the first major intra-European economic accords were signed, including the industrial agreements that the French and German governments sought to sign between the century’s world wars to solve the problem of war reparations.^[1164]

These ideas were never brought to fruition because of the outbreak of the Great Depression (1929) and Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. However, during the 1920s, these concepts and proposals did affect the thinking of an elite group of politicians and senior international officials who supported inter-state dialogue as a means of addressing the problems afflicting Europe. Hence, the Pan-European idea was very well received in intellectual circles and media.

18.2.3.3 Intellectual Pan-Europeanism

In addition to politicians, economists, and businessmen, the Pan-European idea was generally embraced with enthusiasm by a whole series of leading European intel­lectuals during the interwar period. Coudenhove-Kalergi, for example, was supported by Paul Valery, Paul Claudel, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Salvador de Madariaga and Miguel de Unamuno, among others. Thanks to them, until the mid-1930s, there was an intense intellectual movement in favor of a united Europe, which resulted in the publication of influential books calling for European integration.^[1165]

Due to the movement set in motion by Coudenhove-Kalergi, the idea of a European union was no longer monopolized by prophets, dreamers, and theorists, as it had been historically, but became a concept enjoying wide support amongst the European ruling classes. Thus, despite not having made major headway in terms of public opinion, European integration advocates came to form interest groups featuring study committees turning out reports with the hope that a government would take the first step towards an alliance.

18.2.3.4 Briand’s Proposal for a European Union (1929)

Government initiatives in favor of European unification, however, took time to materialize.^[1166] The trailblazer in this respect was Aristides Briand, France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs as of 1925, and Honorary President of the Pan-European Union as of 1927 (Wright 2005, 31-67). In 1929, he rose to head the French Government, at which time he seized the opportunity to present his proposal for European integration.^[1167]

Briand soon realized that the League of Nations was an instrument incapable of ensuring the peace, and considered it more pragmatic to back Franco-German political rapprochement within the framework of a united Europe. To this end, after he enjoyed the assistance of his German counterpart Gustav Stresemann, he made public his plans for a united Europe in a speech delivered on September 5, 1929, on the League of Nations’ fall meeting (Bellon 2009, 87-104). In it, he defended the advisability of establishing a link between Europe’s states that would enable them to deal with serious circumstances together given the need to do so. His proposal was not well-received by European leaders.^[1168] Nevertheless, the delegates of 26 European nations present at the September meeting of the League of Nations asked Briand to draft a memorandum expanding and fleshing out his ideas. This document was finally published in May of 1930 (Doerr 1998, 115), although it did not enthuse anybody because he stressed political unification rather than economic union—which was understandable, however, given the fact that it was written after the outbreak of the Wall Street Crash in October, leading directly to the Great Depression. In response to the proposal’s rejection, he watered down his proposals in a report dated September 1, 1930, endorsing not the creation of special bodies to achieve political union, but simply the meeting of a Study Commission in the interest of “European union”.^[1169]

Despite all this, it is evident that the initiative was a failure. The governments of the various European states were unwilling to cede one bit of their sovereignty, and most of their leaders were either indifferent or opposed to the idea of European union—in large measure because for each of them European unification meant something different. For the victorious states, integration was to be a means of consolidating the European order arising from the Treaty of Versailles. The defeated countries, on the other hand, were willing to participate in a European unification project only if said treaty was revised. However, the decisive development was the radical political change that occurred in Germany after the death of Gustav Strese- mann in October 1929, and the electoral victory of the Nazi Party in 1930.

In any case, the Depression dissolved the European euphoria of 1926 and 1927 and shifted the priorities of most European states, which abandoned any support for a united Europe. In fact, the prevailing trend was just the opposite: over the course of the 1930s, Europe’s economic fragmentation tended to accentuate because of increased customs duties, the establishment of exchange controls, and the consol­idation of autarchic economies in general. To make matters worse, the League of Nations failed to keep new hostile blocs from arising in Europe. In 1935, a Franco­Soviet Pact was signed to consolidate the strategic alliances established by France with Poland and Czechoslovakia (Jordan 2002, 39). To counter this alliance the Rome-Berlin Axis would emerge in 1936. In the end, the Soviet Union switched sides after the signing of the 1939 German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The resurgence of nationalism would lead to a gradual increase in international tensions, dragging Europe into World War II.

18.3