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EU Uber Alles? Neoliberal echoes of a darker, mid-century plan for continental unity

The unflinching support for the EU and its institutions is not about preventing European countries from becoming “Afghanistan.” Not about preventing collapse. Not about the inconvenience of long lines at passport control. It is about promoting an ideology, a specific worldview, a vision for the way the world should work.

by Michael Nevradakis

Part 2 - A Case Study In Neoliberalism: What The EU Actually Is

The EU’s not so humble beginnings:

The EU’s innumerable backers in government, the press and mass media, academia, the intelligentsia, and the general public describe the supranational institution as a force for peace, indeed as the sole and exclusive reason why there supposedly has been no war or conflict—itself a false claim—in Europe since the end of World War II. The EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 based on this argument, that “for over six decades [it had] contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.

For its proponents, the EU signifies the beginnings of a “brave new world” without war and indeed without borders, a force for peace where capital—including “human capital”—can travel freely. An entity where millennials hop aboard their favorite budget airline and travel from Berlin to Milan to enjoy some prosecco without having to lose precious minutes standing on line at passport control or to exchange currency.

The EU’s beginnings, however, are hardly as benign as the official propaganda. Indeed, there exists significant evidence indicating that, at the very least, the foundations of the European Economic Community (EEC), as it was first known, may have been inspired by Third Reich plans for European “integration” and German hegemony.

At a public meeting at the British House of Commons on February 26, 2008, author, political economist, former British Ministerial Adviser and then-lecturer at Germany’s University of Mainz Rodney Atkinson described the backgrounds of Nazis and fascists who became key founding members of the EEC. In this speech, Atkinson highlighted the backgrounds of such prominent figures as Walter Hallstein and Walther Funk.

Who were Hallstein and Funk? Hallstein was one of the twelve signatories of the Treaty of Rome, the founding document of the EEC, and was the first president of the non-elected European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, between 1958 and 1967. EU proponents describe Hallstein as a “visionary,” while mainstream biographies of Hallstein note that while he was a member of some “nominally” Nazi organizations, he was not a Nazi Party member or part of the SA.

Let’s look at these “nominally” Nazi organizations. Hallstein was a member of the Association of National Socialist German Legal Professionals, which later morphed into the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals (or “Law Protectors”), membership in which was restricted to only those who displayed the most unwavering and active support for Nazi ideology. Indeed, in 1933 Hitler purged Jews and socialists from the organization. Hallstein, in a memo to Nazi administrators, confirmed in 1935 that he was a member of both of these organizations.

Following Hitler’s official state visit to Italy and meeting with Mussolini in May 1938 in the lead-up to World War II, a bi-national commission was established to create the framework for the European dictatorship that was to be achieved. Soon thereafter, the first meeting of this commission’s legal team was held, with Hallstein representing Nazi Germany.

The following year, just before the outbreak of the war, Hallstein gave an infamous speech—the handwritten manuscript of which is available online. In this speech Hallstein referred, among other things, to “the creation of the Greater German Reich” and “legal Germanization of the new territories,” via the “link up” of Austria and much of Czechoslovakia with Germany and creation of a “unified legal system” for this new territory — citing the failure to create such as system as one of the “unfinished tasks” of the Second Reich. Most egregiously, in this same speech Hallstein also advocated in favor of a “law for the protection of the German blood and the German honor,” or what were to become the Nuremberg Race Laws.

On to Walther Funk. Funk served in the Nazi Propaganda Ministry under Goebbels, and later as Nazi Germany’s minister of economics, president of the Reichsbank, and president of the Bank of International Settlements, he was responsible for dispossessing Jews of their assets, for which he was later convicted at the Nuremberg trials. Released from prison in 1957—the year the Treaty of Rome was signed—he served in Lower Saxony’s ministry of education between 1957 and 1960. To state it differently, just over a decade after the war, one of the founding member-states of the EEC offered a significant position in public administration to a convicted Nazi criminal.

Funk’s direct relevance to the EEC, however, is evident through a report produced in 1942 under his watch as economics minister and president of the Reichsbank, titled “Europaische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft,” or “European Economic Community.” Indeed, this term was apparently first introduced by the Nazi regime. This report presented a plan for how Germany would administer the economies of conquered post-war Europe, and encompassed sections on currency, trade and economic agreements, agriculture, industry, and more. More specifically, the report called for the “harmonization” of Europe’s currencies. A uniform planning and management system that would erode the economic sovereignty of individual European states—shades of the EU and such things as the “Common Agricultural Policy” today—was foreseen. And, foreshadowing today’s “identity politics” and “freedom of mobility,” national sovereignty was to be displaced by the so-called “sovereignty of the people.”

When Gerard Batten, a member of the European parliament with the UK Independence Party (UKIP), referred to Funk’s past in a posting on his blog, Labour Party MP Chuka Umunna described these claims as “crackpot conspiracy theories.” But are they? “Europaische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft,” with Funk as one of the co-authors, is readily locatable today. Daniel J. Beddowes and Flavio Cipollini, who together authored a book titled The EU: The Truth About the Fourth Reich – How Hitler Won the Second World War, argue that Funk put the finishing touches on the plans for what is today the EU.

According to Beddowes and Cipollini, “[i]t was Funk who predicted the coming of European economic unity. Funk was also Adolf Hitler’s economics minister and his key economics advisor.” The authors indicate that Hitler’s post-war plans foresaw a federalized, economically integrated European Union free of “the clutter of small nations,” and that these plans were themselves based on a belief held by Lenin, that “federation is a transitional form towards complete union of all nations.” Therefore, argue the authors, it is not by chance that the EU closely resembles Hitler’s blueprint for a unified Europe, and that most EU member-states are getting poorer while Germany is continuously getting richer.

An alleged U.S. military intelligence report, EW-Pa 128 — also known as the “Red House Report” and said to have been written in November 1944 — describes the proceedings of a secret meeting that took place earlier that year where Nazi officials, recognizing that defeat and the end of the war were near, ordered German industrialists to plan for the post-war future and to lay the groundwork for a new “strong German empire.” The secret report was said to have been copied to British officials and to have made its way to the U.S. Secretary of State. The industrialists, including representatives of such companies as Volkswagen, were joined by representatives of the German Navy and the Nazi ministry of armaments.

This report, if indeed legitimate, describes a post-war Europe that would eventually come to be dominated by Germany, but with this domination being economic rather than military. The economic reserves of German front companies located abroad would be exploited, and this money would later be funneled to German industrialists via other front companies in “neutral” Switzerland. These overseas front companies would maintain a direct line of communication with the top political echelons of Germany, with the goal of eventually reasserting their dominance over Germany—and over Europe.

This report dredges up memories of the infamous Merten affair, involving Dr. Max Merten, who had been installed as a Nazi administrator in the city of Thessaloniki. Infamous for having looted Thessaloniki’s substantial Jewish community of their wealth and jewels in exchange for protection—before betraying their trust—Merten maintained close ties with prominent Greek politicians, particularly the inner circle of Konstantinos Karamanlis, who in the 1950s became Greece’s Western-supported prime minister.

Merten, wishing to recover his hidden booty, returned to Greece in 1957 under the assumption that no warrant existed for his arrest. Merten was arrested, however, and served some months in prison before being amnestied by Karamanlis. Merten had been threatening the Karamanlis government with evidence that Merten was said to have in his possession, proving that Karamanlis and key ministers of his government had collaborated with the Nazis during the war.

One of Karamanlis’ closest allies, Konstantinos Gertsos, appears in the declassified intelligence files on the Merten affair. Gertsos headed a German front corporation, landing a lucrative mining concession on behalf of German businessmen. He later became Greece’s ambassador to Switzerland, where he participated in investment schemes with Karamanlis, and later was named honorary ambassador of Greece. Serving again as Greece’s first post-junta prime minister, Karamanlis himself oversaw the negotiations for Greece’s accession to the European Community in the late 1970s. His nephew, also named Konstantinos Karamanlis, served as prime minister between 2004-2009, the years that led up to Greece’s catastrophic economic crisis.

On the topic of industry, there is the example of Hermann Abs, founder of the pro-integration European League for Economic Cooperation (still in existence), a board member of Deutsche Bank, and also a board member of I.G. Farben, a union of German industrial titans such as BASF and Bayer. This consortium sought to obtain control of the global marketplace in such sectors as pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals. In 1933, it also became the largest financier of the Nazis’ rise to power, and continued to collaborate with the Nazis thereafter, to the tune of over 80 million Reichsmark during the war. In exchange, I.G. Farben took over key industries in each Nazi-occupied country.

What was I.G. Farben’s endgame? A letter presented at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal, which had been written by I.G. Farben director August von Knieriem and addressed to the Nazi government, foresaw a common European currency, legal system, and judicial system—not unlike today’s EU and Eurozone.

The Nazi foreign ministry itself crafted a draft blueprint for a “united Europe,” which—in shades of today’s hysterical anti-Russian sentiment in the West—called for a European mobilization against the USSR through the implementation of a “European image of German foreign policy” and the formation of a confederation of 14 European states that would be led by Germany and ultimately promote German interests.

None other than celebrity economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis himself has pointed out several quotations that could fairly describe today’s EU, including: “There must be a readiness to subordinate one’s own interests in certain cases to that of the European Community;” and “The solution to economic problems… with the eventual object of a European customs union and a free European market, a European clearing system and stable exchange rates in Europe, looking towards a European currency union.” Oddly enough, or perhaps not so oddly, these striking similarities with Nazi rhetoric do not lead to any hesitation on Varoufakis’ part to wholly and enthusiastically support EU institutions.

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