Europeanists during the Interwar Period

The Europeanists of the interwar period, deeply marked by World War One and obsessively fearing decline, saw the notion of a united Europe, and French-German rapprochement in particular, as the only way of maintaining lasting peace on the continent. They formed a heterogeneous series of more or less organized movements with very diverse aims, and were joined by intellectuals and isolated militants. Although their often highly ambitious political projects hardly translated into concrete reality, the same was not true of a number of more limited and realistic economic initiatives. Confronted by the crisis, totalitarian regimes, and the spectre of a new global conflict, the 1930s saw the scattering of the Europeanist galaxy.