The continuities of West German history: conceptions of Europe, democracy and the West in interwar and postwar Germany

Abstract This article considers support for European integration in and beyond Germany between the mid-1920s and the early 1950s. Rather than viewing debates about Europe within an isolated German context, it focuses on transnationally-connected intellectual and political groups from across the ideological spectrum. The article asks whether the growth in support for a united Europe after 1945 was a sign of the Westernization of the Federal Republic, or whether such support grew out of longer-standing dissatisfactions with elements of “western” political culture, such as the principle of national self-determination and the practices of centralized political parties within parliamentary democracies.