By Angelo Giuliano
Introduction: Rewriting history for a political goal
The European Union's foundational narrative, centered on peace and reconciliation after the horrors of World War II, is both powerful and partially true. However, a deeper historical excavation reveals a more complex and troubling lineage—one that suggests the modern EU is not a clean break from the past but a sophisticated evolution of long-standing ideological and economic blueprints. The project's origins are entwined with colonial fantasies, interwar cartels, and even the legal architecture of the Nazi "New Order," repurposed after 1945 under American supervision. This history is not an aberration but a continuum, revealing that the drive for a unified, borderless Europe has historically served the interests of technocrats and industrial oligarchs far more than those of its diverse peoples. The often-quoted admission by former European Commissioner Viviane Reding—that the construction of Europe requires "a re-reading" of its history—takes on a darker significance in this light. It acknowledges that the past must be reshaped to legitimize the present political project, a process that intentionally obscures these unsettling origins.
Victor Hugo's troubling "United States of Europe"
The intellectual lineage often begins with Victor Hugo's 1849 vision of a "United States of Europe," hailed by modern politicians as prophetic. Yet Hugo's full speech reveals a vision steeped in the colonial and racialist ideology of his time. He did not imagine a partnership of equals but a civilizing mission, declaring that a united Europe and America would "colonize the deserts" and bring order to the world. He explicitly stated this union would bring "civilization to barbarism," arguing that Asia would be "returned to civilization" and Africa "returned to man." This rhetoric frames non-European peoples as uncivilized or sub-human, casting the European project not as an inward-looking peace pact but as an instrument for global cultural and economic dominance. The modern EU's tendency to frame itself as a normative power "exporting values" and its involvement in resource politics and military interventions in Africa and the Middle East can, disturbingly, appear as a continuation of this colonial logic rather than a departure from it.
The interwar blueprint: Paneuropa and Cartel Capitalism
This ideological thread was woven into a concrete institutional plan in the 1920s by Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi and his "Paneuropa" movement. His proposal was a direct precursor to the EU's structure: a pan-European parliament, a court of arbitration, a customs and monetary union, and a governing "Chamber of States" overseeing a borderless entity where nationality would become a mere "private affair." Crucially, this intellectual project was propelled by raw economic interest. German industrial cartels, such as the chemical conglomerate IG Farben and the International Steel Cartel, aggressively championed the creation of a vast, barrier-free European market. They sought to dismantle national regulations and tariffs to optimize production and maximize profits on a continental scale. These cartels provided critical financial support to the rising Nazi regime, recognizing in a reorganized, German-dominated Europe the perfect engine for their ambitions. The fusion of this supranational idealism and cartel capitalism created a potent blueprint for a new European order.
The Nazi "New Order" and Vichy collaboration
That blueprint found its most horrific expression in the Nazi project for a "New European Order." This was not merely presented as brutal conquest but was dressed in a seductive, collaborative economic discourse. Hitler himself argued that European peoples were "a single family" requiring unified legal and economic systems. The jurist Walter Hallstein was tasked with drafting the legal framework for this Nazi-led entity following Hitler's 1938 meeting with Mussolini. In occupied France, the Vichy regime and collaborationist intellectuals became eager salesmen of this "European" ideal. Propaganda exhibitions like "La France européenne" glorified maps of a borderless, technologically networked continent, contrasting it with the "old," partitioned Europe of democratic nation-states. Their language—emphasizing inevitable integration, economic rationality, Franco-German reconciliation, and historical destiny—is virtually indistinguishable from the rhetoric used by EU proponents today, revealing a shocking discursive continuity between Vichy collaboration and modern Europeanism.
Postwar recycling: From Nazi Jurist to EU President
The post-war miracle was not the invention of a new idea but the strategic recycling of an old one under new management. As Nazi Germany collapsed, its industrial elites met at Strasbourg's Hotel Maison Rouge in August 1944 to plan the post-war revival of a German economic sphere within a united Europe, in collaboration with American interests. The most symbolic figure in this transition was Walter Hallstein. Captured in 1944, this former architect of the Nazi legal framework was swiftly rehabilitated. By 1951, he was State Secretary for Foreign Affairs of West Germany; by 1957, he was the chief German negotiator of the Treaty of Rome; and from 1958 to 1967, he served as the first President of the European Commission. The man who helped draft the legal structure for Hitler's Europe became the chief administrator of its democratic successor. This was not an accident but a conscious recycling of expertise and vision, smoothing the transition from a militarily enforced empire to a technocratically governed common market.
The resistance alternative vs. The modern collaborationist mindset
Against this collaborationist European project stood the genuine spirit of the French Resistance, crystallized in the 1944 program of the National Council of the Resistance (CNR). Its vision was the antithesis of a technocratic, borderless super-state. It demanded the "eviction of the great economic and financial feudal lords from the direction of the economy," the restoration of national sovereignty and democratic freedoms, and the establishment of a comprehensive social welfare state. This program created France's post-war social model. Today, EU governance—through its enforced austerity, competition directives, and limits on state aid—methodically dismantles every pillar of this CNR legacy. The quintessential collaborationist mindset—a servile acceptance of foreign-derived power, a cynical belief that one's own nation is too weak to act alone, and a careerist focus on personal advancement within the new system—finds its modern expression in the uncritical Eurocrat and the politician who treats EU diktats as inevitable laws of nature.
Conclusion: A system of "Enlightened Despotism"
This system has been candidly described by its own insiders. Former Italian minister and ECB member Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa called the EU's construction a revolution achieved through "enlightened despotism." Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl admitted he "acted like a dictator" in forcing through the euro without a referendum. The EU thus represents the maturation of a project conceived by cartels, refined by fascist jurists, and implemented by post-war technocrats. Its core tenets remain: the suppression of national democracy in favor of supranational regulation, the primacy of market logic over social justice, and the gradual erosion of political citizenship into economic consumerism. The path out of this engineered consensus exists in Article 50 of the EU Treaty, which guarantees the right of withdrawal. The fundamental choice is not between a progressive "European future" and a regressive "nationalist past," but between accepting a managed, oligarchic despotism and reclaiming the democratic sovereignty and social solidarity once defended by the true Resistance.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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