Hello everyone. I've read many articles on the topic but none seem to address exactly how all these countries came together after literally thousands of years of fighting and resentment not only to form an alliance but a true intermingling of governments, currency, borderless countries, and free movement? How did all these people put it all aside and do something like this? From everything I've learned about European history this seems like it should have been impossible. Heck even 30 years ago this seems like pure fantasy. Not only that, ask any citizen of these countries and they don't harbor any resentment toward anyone else even when less than 100 years ago (and far less in some cases) these same people were seriously oppressing or committing war crimes against the others? It seems like they view what happened like how they view a rival football team.
Growing up I've just always accepted Europe was a peaceful, progressive place but it wasn't that long ago that it was a seriously hard place to live. I wasn't sure if this should have been an Explain like I'm 5 post or not.. I must be missing something.
Seems impossible, right? Eurosceptics would do well to look back on the astounding fact that, for the most part, European Integration has been a resounding success: the continent hasn't tried to rip itself apart for over sixty years! You'd think people would forgive the union for not being perfect in light of Europe's bloody past.
The pre-eminent scholar on the european integration process is Mark S. Gilbert, who has published a book detailing the answer to your very question. Although I won't summarize the entire book for you, I can give you a brief overview of how, following the Second World War, European nations set a process into motion which would lead to the European Union we know today.
Little over two years after the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill stood in the Royal Albert Hall in London and proclaimed that Europe was “a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate. Ancient nationalistic feuds and modern ideological factions distract and infuriate the unhappy, hungry populations. Is there then to be no respite? Has Europe's mission come to an end? Are the States of Europe to continue forever to squander the first fruits of their toil upon the erection of new barriers, military fortifications and tariff walls and passport networks against each other? Are we all, through our poverty and our quarrels, for ever to be a burden and a danger to the rest of the world?"
The simple answer to Churchill’s rhetorical questions was no. Like never before in history, after 1945 the European powers were economically, financially, and militarily spent. Their ability to wage war on a global scale would be forever hampered by the irreparable cracks appearing all over their colonial empires. What’s more, the Soviet Union under the yolk of Stalin proved again and again that the very real threat of authoritarian oppression had most certainly not disappeared with the defeat of Hitler’s Germany. There was nothing the depleted armies of the European states could do about the new threat apart from trust in the United States as a benevolent, albeit distant, ally. Rather than eternal warfare, it would seem that the destiny of Europe was one of eternal submission.
The search for strength in unity is certainly the simplest way to characterize the general Europeanist feeling dominant in the high offices of Western European governments in the postwar era. However, the roots of European Unity predate the cold war. Nationalistic fascism of wartime Europe had already spawned a reactionary opposition which favored the elimination of national borders in favor of a unified European federation. As this opposition emerged from exile and incarceration to find itself in charge of postwar reconstruction, the economic necessity of a coordinated European reconstruction process was easily integrated with the political desire for lasting European unity. Consequentially, European Integration was fueled not only by the search for peace and prosperity, but also by an aversion to authoritarian oppression. The forces behind European integration, then, appear as a series of paradoxical juxtapositions: prewar ideas penned by antifascist idealists were adopted by postwar anticommunist pragmatists who resolved to compromise national sovereignty to maintain national relevance.
That was a fantastic response thank you very much for writing it all out, it absolutely answered my questions and then some!