The E.U.’s Totalitarian Founding Fathers
by Rodney Atkinson
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Today the 800-year-old British constitution has been fatally undermined, and the British Parliament, against the wishes of the true “sovereigns” (the voters) has delegated the government of Britain to others. Britons have become “citizens” of a European Union, with duties towards and taxable by that supranational power. The British courts now interpret very little of our law, the British people have lost their exclusively British passport and the British Parliament is no longer responsible for 70% of legislation applying to the British people. This emasculation of sovereign Parliaments was recently confirmed by a German Parliamentary Committee which found that 70% of German legislation is now decided by Brussels, not Germans.
To most people this seems like a fatal surrender of everything which characterizes our country, our Parliament and our democracy. But even more disturbing is the fact that so many of the founders of the European Union in the 1950s had leading roles in the violent attempt to create a European Union in the 1930s and 1940s. Leading figures like Walter Hallstein, Walter Funk, Alfred Toepfer, Paul Henri Spaak and Hans Josef Globke were both active supporters of European Fascism in the 1940s and critical promoters of the European Union in the 1950s. The question is would most people wish to surrender their democratic sovereignty to a supranational power founded by such individuals? For that is precisely what has happened to the British people as the straightjacket of European constitutional power has tightened around their necks.
The British Constitution is (or was before Edward Heath’s 1972 European Act) principally the written historical record of the statutes of our Parliament, case law and convention since the 13th century. Each Act of Parliament was capable of overturning previous Acts or parts of previous Acts. Heath’s 1972 European Act purported to completely reverse that principle—thus binding all future parliaments to the rule of Brussels with all future Acts prey to that 1972 Act. Thus Westminster statutes like the 1985 Weights and Measures Act and the Merchant Shipping Act have been overturned by those who passed them (British MPs) on the orders of the Euro-State. Later Treaties merely extended the 1972 obeisance to alien law (usually by deceit and sleight of hand) to ever more areas of policy making. None of this was ever contained in a British Party’s election manifesto.
But given the nature of the European Union and the history of its founders this is not surprising. It was Nazis who developed the Charlemagne Prize given to those who have done most to build the European Union (Bill Clinton, Edward Heath, Tony Blair, Roy Jenkins etc). And one of the leading European movements promoting ethnic regionalism was founded by the Nazis and is today funded by the German Government (the Federal Union of European Nationalities).
The modern European Union incorporates that same mixture of powers which we fought two world wars to defeat. Today, through the supranational power of the European Union, its single currency and its alienation of 27 national constitutions those defeated powers have largely overturned the Treaties of Versailles which concluded the First World War and the Treaties of Potsdam and Yalta which concluded the Second World War.
Western European (principally German) interests are gradually acquiring industrial and financial corporations, newspapers, television and radio stations in Poland, the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia has been broken up as has Yugoslavia—and into virtually the same petty states created by Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany in the 1940s. Britain and the USA have managed to destroy their historic allies (the Serbs, Czechs, Poles and others) and promote their historic enemies like the Croats, Kosovo Albanians and Muslim Bosnians, all of which were devoted followers of Fascism in the 1940s.
The break up of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the 1990s was based on a careful structuring of the European Union’s supranational law (to bypass parliaments), its presumption of “European citizenship” (to bypass nation states), regionalism (to bypass democratic governments in national capitals) a central bureaucracy and “European Court of Justice” (to replace democratic accountability with non parliamentary bureaucratic control) and the promotion of ethnic groups as a battering ram to destroy the homogeneity of the nation states.
None of this would have been possible without the removal of two fundamental pillars of democratic internationalism. Firstly popular sovereignty, parliament and the rule of law were made subservient to bureaucratic and corporate power.
Secondly at the supranational level all the historic and legal precedents which protected the nation state as sovereign (ie self governing) were systematically abandoned. The interventions by the European Union in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and today’s illegal recognition of an Albanian Kosovo were in defiance of the explicit terms of Section III of the 1975 Helsinki final Act (inviolability of frontiers), of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter and of the first international treaty to set these principles, the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Significantly the latter treaty brought peace to Europe after decades of religious wars. But that principle is perhaps even more vital today to counter the supranational hegemonies of the secular supranational religions of corporatism, communism and fascism.
To say that the European Union is a combination of modern corporatism and historic fascism may sound extraordinary but I have laid out substantial evidence of just such development in my two books (Europe’s Full Circle and Fascist Europe Rising). Readers of this article might like to guess which of these quotations from European leaders stem from the 1930s and 40s and which from the 1980s and 1990s:
“Might is right in politics and war . . . ”
“Genocide is a natural phenomenon, it is recommended, even commanded by the Almighty.”
“Many Jews survive today thanks to the circumstance that they were forced Labourers. Germans are tired of philo-semitic over-compensation in the media and sterile grief Rituals by politicians . . . ”
“The Jews should consider whether they would have behaved heroically if they had not been victims of the persecution . . . ”
“Germany should now, as it has become peaceful and reasonable, get all that Europe and the whole world has refused in two gigantic wars—a sort of smooth hegemony over Europe . . . ”
In fact all the above quotes are from European leaders of the 1980s and 1990s—in the following order: Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany; Franjo Tudjman, President of Croatia; Professor Lutz Niethammer, Advisor to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder; Klaus von Dohnanyi, the Former Mayor of Hamburg; and Joschka Fischer, former German Foreign Secretary.
No wonder, as Newsweek noted on June 6, 1997, that German troops who marched into Bosnia after the break up of Yugoslavia were greeted with cries of “Sieg Heil.” We live in very dangerous times.
Dr. Atkinson is the founder of Freenations and the author of Europe’s Full Circle. The article above is taken from a speech delivered at the House of Commons, February 26, 2008.
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1 Comment by Sebastian on 11 March 2008:
I’d like to thank Chronicles for introducing us to Mr. Atkinson. He supplements Mr. Trifkovic’s work and what the Brussels Journal catalogues each day.
I recently completed a paper for my old graduate school on the EU and would like to add one name to the list of somewhat nefarious founders: Alexandre Kojeve. True, he was not a fascist but rather a high Marxist who fancied himself to be “presiding over the end of Histroy.” His reinterpretation of Hegel influenced many leftist thinkers and even some Americans who have been supporters of the project for “an ever closer union.” In between the lines of his correspondence with Leo Strauss on the nature of tyranny, a view emerges that justifies the removal of popular sovereignty and self-legislation to supranational bodies as a precondition to the new society being constructed. That peculiar European admixture of multinational corporate interests and the state is reflected in his own career with the French economic ministry and the EEC, etc.
I will certainly check out some Atkinson’s books.
2 Comment by Lee on 11 March 2008:
I don’t think Sebastian needs to apologize for adding Kojeve’s name to Atkinson’s. Fascism was a unique movement started by Mussolini and is not fungible for Nazism which, after all, is merely an acronym for Hitlerian German National Socialism, a slightly less extreme movement than the ultra right Marxism and its practical expression in Leninist/Stalinist Marxism. It should also be remembered that both British (under Churchill et. al.) Socialism and American Socialism (established in earnest by FDR) Socialism are only modestly slower reactions that took root in previously democratic/Capitalist environments.
3 Comment by sam on 11 March 2008:
The European Union will never succeed, largely because of cultural barriers, particularly language. When the smaller countries like the Czech republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, etc. begin to lose their identities, they will opt out of it.
The process of identity loss will most assuredly take place because the bigger countries like Germany, France and Britain will dominate this union, with the smaller countries having very little voice.
4 Comment by Zika on 11 March 2008:
At one point You said”…Czechoslovakia has been broken up as has Yugoslavia—and into virtually the same petty states created by Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany in the 1940s. Britain and the USA have managed to destroy their historic allies (the Serbs, Czechs, Poles and others) and promote their historic enemies like the Croats, Kosovo Albanians and Muslim Bosnians, all of which were devoted followers of Fascism in the 1940s…” You are de facto telling the way things had been done during the Second World War. Each of these fascist countries had their own names and states and were officially terrorizing the rest of the population with the help of Germans and to lesser extent Italians…Balist from Kosovo were Albanian fascist…Ustashe from Croatia were Cratian fascist and so on. Today, Serbs are ethnically cleansed in Kosovo!!! Current Croatia epithomizes Nazi Germany from 1939!!! They got rid of THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF Serbs with the help of the US Army some dozen of years ago. Nowadays, the situation looks eerily similar on the Balcanic peninsula, except that the role of the USA has been more pronounced and a little ‘help’ from Germany, France and Britain can not be ignored.
OUTSTANDING ARTICLE, MR. ATKINSON!!! What strikes me the most is your sharp and crystal clear tone of the truth, which resonates loudly during the entire article.
5 Comment by Brutus on 11 March 2008:
“Each of these fascist countries had their own names and states and were officially terrorizing the rest of the population with the help of Germans and to lesser extent Italians…”
Yes, but who were “the rest of the population?”
We see and mostly hear them today shouting “celebrate diversity!, deindustrialize now! gay rights!, amnesty!, open borders!, never criticize!, etc.
6 Comment by Michael Kenny on 12 March 2008:
Ah the screwballs! What would we do without them! Mr Atkinson forgot to mention that the recent storms that have battered Britain were the result of a top secret European Commission cloud seeding programme using black aircraft!
Mr Atkison’s younger brother, Rowan, the popular comedian, could have made a wonderful sketch out of this article, just by reading it out loud.
I loved the bit about the speech being “delivered at the House of Commons”, as if Mr Atkinson had been addressing Members of Parliament!
TH EU smaer campaign is running out of steam if this the best it can come up with!
7 Comment by Zika on 12 March 2008:
#5 Brutus
Perhaps, you should have read a bit about a history of fascism on the territorry of a former Yu, that is who lived where in those times, and than pose a smart question.
8 Comment by Edward on 12 March 2008:
To #6:
Mr. Kenny, do you deny that what took place in Britain was a sacrifice of its sovereignty to an authority over which the Brits have no say? If you do not, then what was it?
If Mr. Atkinson is paranoid then why don’t you dispute the founding history of the E.U. that he offers?
I find it alarming that this could be accomplished without so much as a whimper of popular resistance from the British people. How could a people willingly submit to a faceless, foreign bureaucratic government that will decide how they will conduct their lives from offices thousands of miles away?
What is the ultimate goal of the E.U. if not the gradual dissolution of local sovereignty in order to make easier the eventual move towards some form of world government?
9 Comment by Brian Fagan on 12 March 2008:
I would like to compliment this gentleman… he ‘almost’ looks like ME – but not quite as handsome. I have poim. he has poim thereabouts. Poim per se you can’t beat the vomen off with a stick… but you do try from fatigue. Poim thereabouts…in such a visual world today – you have to work – then you know what i do – it’s worth it… but well… ?
women used to get wet over someone who could Do the nest for & with them… today… they can do it themself – so they want handsome. it’s like guys always were – they want pretty. some things (see?) never change. now both are superficial…
ain’t life grand? nice picture… Rodney… gettin’ Any?
10 Comment by Robert Taft on 15 March 2008:
But will the Fourth Reich — err, I mean the EU — LET any major country opt out? Recall the American example of the (1) Continental Congress; (2) Articles of Confederation; (3) Federal Constitution; (4) Southron Succession; and (4) War of Northern Aggression.
From now on, Britons always, always shall be slaves.
11 Comment by Howard Sitton on 15 March 2008:
I always approach reading “comments” after an article warily; the spelling, motivations, obscenity, and faulty reasoning of some of the correspondents are and I suppose always will be a “put-off”.
But sometimes a few things need to be addressed. Dr. Atkinson’s article at least started with some statements with which I could agree (the dangers of “European union”), but quickly drifted into simple Germanophobia (shades of Lord Vansittart!) , always a flag that serious thinking has been traded for some agenda or program, in this case maybe simple race-hatred.
Atkinson says “It was Nazis who developed the Charlemagne Prize given to those who have done the most to build European Union.” We google over to “Charlemagne Prize”, and find that it was proposed 19 December 1949, and officially proclaimed Christmas 1949. And here I thought that Naziism died May 9th, 1945, four and one-half years earlier! He also says that “The Federal Union of European Nationalities” was “founded by the Nazis”; checking that out, I see that one Joseph Martray, Breton, was founder (in October 1949, in France), and first Secretary-General of that organization, and the founding conference was considered important enough for France to send Francois Mitterand to attend . . .
The real howler, however, comes early on, when Atkinson claims “Leading figures like . . . Walter Funk . . . were both active supporters of European fascism in the 1940s and critical promoters of European Union in the 1950s.” Funk was a top Nazi political official, and thus a “supporter of European fascism” in the (early) 1940s, but how in God’s name could Funk be a “critical promoter of European Union in the 1950s? He was just “a weak, not very intelligent man” with “glib journalistic formulations” (Eugene Davidson), and a good portion of the 1940s and 1950s he was in jail! Funk was a former financial journalist elevated to the position of German Economics Minister when the previous Minister, Hjalmar Schacht, was sacked by Hitler for refusing to fund additional German rearmament. As a major Nazi, he was tried at Nuremberg and convicted, so from May, 1945 and “during the 1950s, he was imprisoned. “Every two months he could talk to a visitor approved by the prison authorities, in the presence of two guards for fifteen minutes. He could write and receive every four weeks one letter of no more than 1300 words” (reference page 255 in Eugene Davidson’s “The Trial of the Germans, Nuremberg 1945-1946″). To be a “critical promoter of European Union” through such a narrow access to the outside world (and carrying the odor of a convicted top Nazi in the bargain), he must have been a magician! Funk was released from Spandau Prison in 1957, three years before his death, but I suspect his “promotion” of a European Union (which he did believe in) was counter-productive, if anything.
And for the record, I don’t support the idea of a European Union.
12 Comment by Simon Newman on 16 March 2008:
Robert Taft:
“But will the Fourth Reich — err, I mean the EU — LET any major country opt out?”
The EU is militarily weak. The big worry for us Europhobes is that any attempt at secession will be met with American military intervention on the side of the EU. In the name of Human Rights, of course.
13 Comment by Lynn Atkinson on 18 March 2008:
Can’t help but be proud of my husband. He is a genuine equity holder and gains nothing from his political and political economy contributions. As a very successful Ministerial advisor to Peter Walker during the Thatcher interlude, his advice saved the UK £10,000,000,000 in 10 years. (What the updated figure is I know not).
Approval expressed by Vaclav Klous, the great Milton Friedman, Lord Denning (Master of the Rolls), Norris McWhirter and PJ O’Rourke amongst others should be enough to ensure that his analysis over the spectrum is seriously and should be seriously scrutinized.
Of course Rodney has proposed the solution to the UK’s constitutional crisis (see http://www.BDIcampaign.org). His Monetarist policy would have enabled the UK to withstand the financial disaster which is about to break and which he, along with other monetarist economists, has been forecasting for some time. In laymans terms that means that a mountain of human misery would have been avoided.
That is the impetus for all his work.
14 Comment by Walter Hallstein on 21 March 2008:
#11 Howard Sitton
Atkinson says “It was Nazis who developed the Charlemagne Prize given to those who have done the most to build European Union.” We google over to “Charlemagne Prize”, and find that it was proposed 19 December 1949, and officially proclaimed Christmas 1949. And here I thought that Naziism died May 9th, 1945, four and one-half years earlier! He also says that “The Federal Union of European Nationalities” was “founded by the Nazis”; checking that out, I see that one Joseph Martray, Breton, was founder (in October 1949, in France), and first Secretary-General of that organization, and the founding conference was considered important enough for France to send Francois Mitterand to attend . . .
First, let’s tackle your first assertion about the Charlemagne Prize.
It appears logic fails you, if Kurt Pfeiffer was a member of Nazi party in 1933 what would prevent him from creating a Charlemagne Prize in 1949 (if he was a Nazi in 1933, he is still a Nazi in 1949, nice try though), both Imperial and Nazi Germany celebrated Charlemagne as the “uniter of the German nation”, which has what kind of connotations for anyone that can read and comprehend the English language?
Second, let’s tackle you assertion about Nazi’s and Nazism, when was Nazi party founded and by whom, and for what reason? After Nazi Germanys was defeat in 1945 most Nazi’s remained Nazi’s, not one of them gave up the idea “National Socialism”, and those people pursued and found organizations after the war where they could further those ideas they developed in the past and held onto for use in the future, and that is what we see today in EU, U.S., those same principles, that Mr. Atkinson points out in his article, but of course you failed to get the gist of the article, instead you went on a rant and with sheepish attempt dismissal of facts that you googled which were inaccurate or half-truths.
Also you show naivety to think just because Germany was defeated in 1945 that somehow people who were Nazi’s gave up their beliefs, and embraced democracy in 1949, four years later as you point out so cleverly. Obviously former Nazi’s stayed hidden immediately after 1945, for obvious reasons, they would have been persecuted for war crimes, so they could not apply their beliefs in practice, till they could do so without persecution.
Also get your facts together it was Kurt Pfeiffer that suggested the creation of the Charlemagne Prize
[…]On 19 December 1949, Kurt Pfeiffer presented to the reading group “Corona Legentium Aquensis”, which he had founded, his proposals for the prize: “We have the honour of proposing annual presentation of an international prize for the most valuable contribution in the services of Western European understanding and work for the community, and in the services of humanity and world peace. This contribution may be in the field of literary, scientific, economic or political endeavour.”[…]
See Edward Spalton latter on Prince Harry and Charlemagne: […]The Charlemagne Prize is just such an institution. First awarded in 1949, it was created by a prosperous Aachen textile merchant called Kurt Pfeiffer who had previously been a member of the Nazi Party and of five other organisations affiliated to it. Pfeiffer said that it was “A European prize which should be associated with the Imperial ideal (Reichsidee) of the Emperor Charlemagne, his palace and burial place” (both of which are in Aachen)
His main helper, a university lecturer called Peter Mennicken, was a member of the SA (Storm Troopers) from 1933 and of the Nazi Party from 1937. He was also employed by Dr.Goebbels’ propaganda ministry on cross-border cultural exchanges to create “international understanding” favourable to Hitler’s government. Mennicken was responsible for the “liturgy” of the award ceremony which takes place on Ascension Day in the Coronation Hall of Aachen’s Council House.
Both Imperial and Nazi Germany celebrated Charlemagne as the “uniter of the German nation”. Rites from the Nazi period were adapted so that he became “unifier of the Christian West”. My German colleagues, who researched this, have placed a full English translation of their report on http://www.freenations.freeuk.com .[…]
Continued…
15 Comment by Walter Hallstein on 21 March 2008:
FACTS:
Walter Hallstein:
On the 1st January 1958 Hallstein became the first president of the European Commission. In held the post for ten years and during this period he advocated the establishment of the Common Market.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERhallsteinW.htm
BTW, In 1969 Willy Brandt became Chancellor of Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). His policy of Ostpolitik (reconciliation between eastern and western Europe) replaced the Hallstein Doctrine.
Walter Funk:
In 1919 Funk married Luise Schmidt-Sieben. Following the war he worked as a journalist, and in 1922 he became the editor of the center-right financial newspaper the Berliner Börsenzeitung. He joined the Nazi Party in 1931, and shortly thereafter became one of Hitler’s personal economic advisers.
Just that little passage one of many details about Funk, support assertions made in the article written by Atkinson.
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/economics/funk.html
Alfred Toepfer:
The Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. is a German foundation established in 1931 by the Hamburg merchant Alfred Toepfer. The foundation is committed to promoting European unification and ensuring cultural diversity and understanding between the countries of Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Toepfer_Stiftung_F.V.S.
Paul Henri Spaak:
Paul-Henri Charles Spaak (January 25, 1899 – July 31, 1972) was a Belgian Socialist politician and statesman. Born in Schaerbeek, Paul-Henri was the son of Paul Spaak, grandson of the Liberal politician Paul Janson and nephew of another Liberal politician, Paul-Émile Janson, who was briefly Prime Minister of Belgium from 1937 to 1938. His mother, Marie Janson, was the country’s first female Senator. During World War I, he lied about his age to be accepted in the Army; he subsequently spent two years as a German prisoner of war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul-Henri_Spaak
Hans Josef Globke:
Hans Josef Maria Globke (10 September 1898–13 February 1973) was a jurist and high ranking public servant after World War II in the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany.
Role in Nazi Germany:
He helped to formulate the “emergency” legislation that gave Hitler unlimited dictatorial powers. He was also the author of the law concerning the dissolution of the Prussian State Council in 10 July 1933, and of further legislation which ‘co-ordinated’ all Prussian parliamentary bodies.[1] He also wrote a law commentary on the new Reich Citizenship Law (The Nuremberg Laws-introduced at Hitler’s request at the Nazi Party Congress in Sept.1935, it revoked the citizenship of German Jews). [1] [2] His membership application for the Nazi Party was rejected on 24 October 1940 by Martin Bormann reportedly due to his close alliance with the Zentrum-Party which had been representing Roman Catholic voters in Weimar Germany.[3] He thus escaped de-Nazification and the War Crime Trials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Globke
From the list above of the provided by Atkinson of leading figures, critical promoters of EU can be directly linked to officially recognized individuals as the so called Founding Fathers of the European Union. In fact there are a number of men who have been recognized as making a major contribution to the development of the European unity and what is now the European Union. There is no official list of founding fathers or a single event defining them so some ideas vary.
Bottom line is the original six members of EU were either Nazi’s, fascist or collaborators of both, that as well is undisputable fact. Two the foreign policy of EU has accomplished what Hitler’s Third Reich could not, redrawing of borders, and undoing what was done in WWI and WWII and without firing a single bullet. And the only victim of this aggressive foreign policy was Yugoslavia, and now Serbia, but also the future of EU, but EU elite fail to see the connection between the two, disregarding UN Charter, NATO Charter, Helsinki Agreement, etc., will haunt the EU leadership in the near future. Just like at the end of WWI when the League of Nations became inept, and directly led to WWII, so shell UN come to an end and will lead to WWIII, this is a very likely scenario for immediate future.
The world failed (the allies at the end of WWII) to isolate Germany and Germanys Nazi past, instead of rebuilding the smaller nations of Europe and keeping Germany away from the leading role in Europe, which sooner or later would embolden Nazi’s in Germany and elsewhere from the past to pursue their interests today, their tool for achieving their interests is exactly EU.
The history of Charlemagne and what it means to Germany and Germens:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne