Commentaire

The speech of the former British Prime Minister is printed as excerpts and in German translation in the exercises section of the textbook. The exercises section is printed on coloured paper and is thus clearly distinguishable from the tutorial section. It provides working materials such as sources (reports, certificates, speech texts, contracts) or excerpts from research literature. The textbook’s design is mostly free of images and graphs; additional orientation to the headings and the basic division into the tutorial and exercise sections is only provided by the inverted years, printed as numbers and highlighted by a box. The speech is part of the chapter ‘World Politics after 1945’ of the tutorial section, and is introduced in the paragraph on ‘Basic Features of International Politics’ under the title, ‘West-German Integration’. The paragraph deals in great detail with the security requirements of the European states following the end of World War II, and the Federal Republic’s struggle for European integration, political recognition and sovereignty.

The speech is quoted in key excerpts that emphasise the motives of the Allied Forces. Churchill thus associated the reorganisation and unification of Europe with the expectation of ending the power vacuum left behind by World War II through a federal structure of European states under the leadership of France. A containment of Germany in a ‘federal system’ was of equal convenience to the security interests of the neighbouring countries and the necessity of utilising German industrial potential as to the Allies’ thoughts of establishing a stable, Western-European post-war order in the gradually emerging bloc. The abridged sections of the speech refer to the image of Christian Europe with shared traditions and values that reach back as far as antiquity. It is not least this commonplace together with the references to the suffering of the population under the consequences of both World Wars and to terms such as that of the European family that lend this speech its emphatic effect. Indeed, this impression lingers even in the excerpts printed. Remarks that make it clear that Churchill was primarily concerned with a re-ordering of Continental Europe have been omitted. Churchill did not by any means consider Great Britain a member of a ‘United States of Europe’. Rather, he believed, Britain with its Commonwealth of Nations might provide an example as to how a unification of states need not pose a threat to the World Organisation of the United Nations.

Susanne Grindel

Bibliography:

Kitzinger, Uwe, Großbritannien, das Commonwealth und Europa, Hannover, Niedersächsische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1963.

Schubert, Klaus v., Wiederbewaffnung und Westintegration: die innere Auseinandersetzung um die militärische und außenpolitische Orientierung der Bundesrepublik 1950-1952 (Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte; 20), Stuttgart, Dt. Verl.-Anst., 1972.

http://www.europa-union.de/fileadmin/files_eud/PDF-Dateien_EUD/Allg._Dokumente/Churchill_Rede_19.09.1946_D.pdf

http://www.cvce.eu/