The Roaring Twenties and a United Europe

by Oui Sun Nov 9th, 2025 at 08:03:35 AM EST

Excellent article in weekend edition NRC newspaper ...

Who were the ardent champions of European cooperation? | NRC |
History: Where do the roots of a united Europe lie? In his book "De Groote Vrede" (The Great Peace), art historian and author Wim de Wagt focuses on the interwar period and, in particular, on the Dutch voices that were heard at the time.
After the war, internationalism seemed to be gaining ground with the founding of the League of Nations. It was not without reason that the Paris-based "internationalist" Ebed van der Vlugt called the weekly magazine he published from March 1919 onwards Le Monde Noveau / The New World. But disappointment soon resonated in the columns of that magazine--and beyond. The lofty ideal of equal rights for all had come to nothing: the League of Nations was a league of victors.
Moreover, as the English economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in his widely read book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, the call for national sovereignty, recognized in the peace treaties, had created more than 20,000 kilometers of new customs borders. Old economic ties had been severed. Combined with rampant protectionism, this had a disruptive effect on Europe.

According to internationalists, the solution was simple: trade barriers had to be removed, preferably in a united Europe. The principle platform of the Dutch "Association for the Promotion of the Establishment of the United States of Europe" (VBOVSE), founded in 1925, is very recognizable in retrospect: a single economic area, a central banking system with a single currency, a solidarity fund to relieve the heavy debt burdens of some states, and a single army. In Christian socialist and theosophical circles, there were also calls for a European political party--"Volt avant la lettre," according to De Wagt. He notes that the Dutch were generally more concrete and modern in their ideas than their fellow Europeans.
What De Wagt calls "lobby-like organizations" emerged across Europe. Besides Dutch clubs, there were also, for example, the Union Douanière Européenne and the Pan-European Movement of Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. It was primarily citizens who advocated cooperation, as governments were not responding. French Prime Minister Aristide Briand's plan for a "federal alliance" of European states, discussed (too) extensively by De Wagt, was enthusiastically received in 1929, but ultimately stalled in a French memorandum and a study commission under the auspices of the League of Nations. In an increasingly anti-democratic atmosphere, economic autarky became the buzzword.
In politics in The Hague, it was felt that the national interest should not be lost sight of, even in times of internationalization. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. In 1932, the monthly magazine `Europa!' stated: "Materialism is rampant and one is often astonished by the cynicism emanating from young lips." "Hyper-nationalism is the plague of our time," historian Johan Huizinga sadly observed in 1937.