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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