Early opposition to the European Supra State

Two fascist opposers to the "New Europe" early in 1941 were Mussolini's finance minister Alberto de Stefani and Camillo Pellizzi, editor of the magazine "Civilita Fascista". De Stefani wrote, " ...Nationalities do not form a sound basis for the planned new order...A European Union could not be subject to the variations of internal policy that are characteristic of liberal regimes.
But many advocates since the 1920's of the cause of European unity in occupied countries believed themselves that working with the Nazis was a way to achieve it. The list included Benoist Mechin, secretary of State for Franco-German relations and a Vichyite, the writer and philosopher Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The Belge leader of the Fascist Rexist movement wrote a tract, Europe for the Europeans in which he saw Nazi Europe not as a political entity but as a bastion against Communism. The Norwegian collaborationist leader, Vidkun Quisling argued that Europe would only be strong and peaceful if united. He wanted to see a Pan-Germanic Federation with a federal flag and the Fuhrer as president. Nothing in the birth of Europe illuminati provided any practical model for the type of political integration that was to emerge after the war.
As one historian commented, " Such pan- European illusions were actively fostered by the Nazis themselves. Clearly the bulk of Third Reich statements relating to pan-Europeanism disseminated by the Nazis in the occupied territories can be dismissed as cynical propaganda calculated to encourage, if not the active co-operation, then the passive acquiescence of the new vassals. Neither Hitler,nor many of his leading hierarchs such as Goebbels, had the slightest intention to compromise absolute German hegemony through the creation of a European confederation, "subsidiary" or otherwise."
The Nazis did not supply "European Integration" as it was to spill over in the post war years. Nazi thinking was an ideological cul-de-sac.
While Nazis occupied Europe during the war, the dreams of European Unity went underground. In each occupied country, resistance movements emerged. If this movement as a whole had any unifying philosophy, it was a determination to seek a new beginning in the post-war reconstruction of Europe. This then was the concept of a United Europe. In common with the pre-war "Pan Europeanists" (and that of the Nazis when it suited them), they held nationalism and national pride to be responsible for past European wars. The prevailing ethos supported the creation of new structures to transcend historical boundaries. This much was openly declared, long before the end of the war, by resistance groups all over Europe including Germany itself.
But the most strident supporters of European unity were the Italian Communists, who were at the core of the anti-Fascist movement.
So came of this, a major figure to contribute to the development of the European Union, the Italian, Altiero Spinelli. Born in 1907 he was a Communist at the age of 17 and had been active in opposing Mussolini's fascism. In 1928 he was arrested and imprisoned, spending 12 years in jai before eventually being sent to a prison on the Mediterranean island of Ventonene, 30 miles west of Naples.
In prison he broke with Communism and embraced the cause of European unity. With the help of a fellow prisoner, Ernesto Rossi, he composed what became known as the "Ventonen Manifesto" under the title Towards a free and United Europe. This was to become one of the basic texts of European Federalism. The co-author was a friend of the liberal economist,Luigi Einaudi.
Spinelli considered the future Europe to be plunging into chaos,exploiting this to secure the "definitive abolition of the division of Europe into national,sovereign states. In order to achieve this he called on his followers to foment revolution. True to his political ideology he proclaimed, "the European revolution must be socialist.
Spinelli had in mind an all powerful,supra national authority. He saw this developing into a "United States of Europe" with its own constitution and armed forces. It would have the power to ensure that its "deliberations for the maintenance of common order are executed in the individual federal states."
He stated," During revolutionary times, when institutions are not simply to be administered but created," he insisted," democratic procedures fail miserably."
A passage describes Spinelli's model of "European Federation" from his manifesto;
"During the revolutionary crisis, this movement will have the task of organising and guiding progressive forces,using all the popular bodies which form spontaneously...waiting to be guided. It derives its vision and certainty of what must be done from the knowledge that it the deepest needs of modern society and not from any previous recognition by popular will, as yet non-existent.In this way it issues the basic guidelines of the new order..By this dictatorship of the revolutionary party a new State will be formed, and around this State new, genuine democracy will grow."
In other words, "the people" were not to be involved in the process of constructing the new state. Popular assent would only be sought when the project was all but complete. At that moment their "crowning dream" would be the calling of a "constituent assembly" to "decide upon the constitution they want". The drawing up of the constitution would be the final act in the emergence of the "United States of Europe"
In 1941 Spinell's manifesto was smuggled to the mainland from prison. His idea came to be adopted by the Communist-dominated Italian Resistance as a whole, leading to the formation in 1943 of the European Federalist Movement. This spread the message to other groups in other countries giving rise to a series of meetings in neutral Switzerland, culminating in a major conference in Geneva in July 1944, attended by activists from all over Europe. At Geneva, the assembled representatives produced their Draft Declaration of the European Resistance Movement, largely drafted by Spinelli who had by now been released from prison.
The life of people in the post-war world,it was agreed, must be based on "the respect of the human individual,on security, on social justice, on the complete utilisation of economic resources for the benefit of the whole, and on the autonomous development of national life."
These aims,it was considered "cannot be fulfilled unless the different countries of the world agree to go beyond the dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the state and unite in a single federal organisation." The draft declared a worldwide organisation could not be achieved immediately,so in the immediate post-war period, "the European problem must be given a more direct and more radical solution."
This "direct solution" would consist of a European "Federal Union". It would control its own army, no national armies would be allowed. It would also have its own court, with sole jurisdiction over constitutional matters and exclusive rights to arbitrate in conflicts between the central authority and member states.
It was another 40 years before Spinelli would make his central contribution to the shape of the European Union as it finally emerged. But the ideals on which this was based were all there in the declaration of 1944, originating from the few pages he had scribbled in his island prison, at a time when Hitler's "Thousand Year Reich" had seemed the undisputed master of Europe.