Quentin Peel
Welcome everybody. Are you all signed on to this latest of Chatham House’s virtual events for its members? My name’s Quentin Peel and it’s my great pleasure and duty today to be the moderator for a debate about an extraordinary man, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who’s been described as many things. “The European Union’s Forgotten Grandfather” is our title today. Adolf Hitler called him something rather different, he called him a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’. He didn’t like him very much. He’s also called on his gravestone, which one of our speakers tonight first described almost by mistake, as “the Pioneer of the United States of Europe”. So, I’m delighted to be introducing a man who I must confess I had never heard of until Martyn and Claudia, our speakers today, invited me to come along and sent me the book.
We’re going to have a debate first, with Martyn taking the lead, as the Author of this first English language biography of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and then Claudia Hamill will come in to flesh out the discussion and maybe put some alternative points of view. Martyn is an old friend of mine, as is Claudia, where I first met him when he was running the European Parliament’s office in London, which on occasion, was a rather thankless task. But Martyn is a man who actually has had three careers, one as a Journalist, he was a BBC Correspondent in Berlin, he’s also been an Academic in Northern Ireland, lecturing on Western Europe and he’s also been a European Civil Servant. He’s the prime Author of this book, and a man who’s actually become fascinated by its subject.
Claudia says, in contrast to Martyn, she has had no less than nine careers. I won’t go through them all. Most importantly to us now, I think, is the fact that Claudia was a member of council of Chatham House, and it’s a wonderful excuse we have to have this debate about Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, because he also was a regular attendee at Chatham House. He spoke no less than four times during the 1930s about his vision of Europe, his ideas and the dangers of the rise of Adolf Hitler. Chatham House became his main, sort of, place of intermediation with the British debate on Europe.
So, I think today, we’re going to have three sections. The first will just be 20 minutes with first, Martyn and then Claudia, giving their views of this extraordinary man. Then we’ll have a conversation among ourselves and finally, for the last 20 minutes, I want you all to come in with questions, which please submit whenever you want through the question-and-answer function. Don’t try and submit it through the ‘Chat’ function, which is going to be switched off for the debate. Now I hope that I’ve said all the housekeeping bits that I need to say, oh, except that this indeed, is on the record, not under the Chatham House Rule, and it’s going to be recorded. Martyn, may I pass the microphone, the virtual microphone, over to you?
Dr Martyn Bond
Thank you very much, indeed, Quentin, thank you, and thank you everyone, also, for attending this event. I hope we shall keep your interest strongly through this period, because the man himself is quite extraordinary, both his life and the range of his ideas and the way he pursued his ideas. He was, indeed, a child of his times. Sorry, I’ve got, for some – he was a child of his time, most certainly, and was blessed, indeed, rather, cursed, with near prophetic foresight, I think. Let me give you a thumbnail sketch of where we best situate him in the debate about the future of Europe. It’s relevant to us today, but we’ll start with it in his own times.
The Count came of age in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War. He dubbed it a European Civil War, the first of the century, and he could see that it had bled Europe dry. What he witnessed and played a role in was the struggle, then, of the liberal and democratic forces in society against extremes of communism, on one side, and fascism on the other. The Soviet Union was obviously very newly minted, 1917, and only secured under Lenin’s leadership by about 1921, the same year that Mussolini and his Fascist Party took power in Italy. So here is our man, as it were, in Vienna, halfway between Italy, fascist, in the south, Russia, communist, as the Soviet Union, away in the East, and what’s going to be the centre of attention, Berlin, just to the North.
The Count made a distinction between fascism, the Italian and later, the Austrian versions of this authoritarian right-wing government, and Nazism, the Nazi German version, with its reliance on racial distinctions between those governed and who were governed. The – he experienced the Nazis directly, being, himself, half Japanese and married to a Jewish actress. The political movement that he set up in the 1920s, the Pan-Europa, was banned by Hitler when he came to power in Germany, quite clearly as a competitor, another vision and not the Nazi vision that he wanted to promote. The Count’s vision was of a consensual integration of all the states of the continent into a confederation like Switzerland. That was anathema to the project of Aryan racial domination that Hitler stood for. The Count experienced the threat at first hand. He was high on the Gestapo hit list when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938 and he fled from Vienna just in time. Two years later, he was forced into exile in America.
Now, during the Second World War, he influenced American opinion very strongly in favour of alliance with Britain, and garnered – gathered Truman’s and Marshall’s support for a united Europe after the hostilities ended. He returned to Europe in 1946 and worked assiduously through the Cold War, subsequently, the Cold War, playing his own role, both with a revived Pan-Europa movement and also with a European Parliamentary Union, which he set up in 1947. He was also then close, first, to Churchill and then, to de Gaulle, advising and supporting them on European integration, although they had different views on how that should happen. He died in 1972, just a few weeks after the UK had voted to join the European Communities.
So, he spans 50 years of work, from the early 20s to the early 70s, and during those 50 years, he had a consistent vision, a united Europe brought together by consent of all member states, not by the domination of any one of them. And frankly, that’s one of the major reasons why there was a Second World War. There were two conflicting visions in Europe of how to do it. The United States of Europe, in his eyes, would be more than just an alliance, it would be a superpower, ensuring peace internally through its own federal structures of government and projecting Europe’s interests and values globally. It would have both hard and soft power, becoming an alternative political force, eventually, between the Soviet Union and the USA.
Now, between the World Wars, his vision was popular among the European intelligentsia, cultural and political elite of the continent and as an illustration of that, let’s look in the 1920s, his books even outsold Mein Kampf. Hitler was so concerned by this competition that in 1928, he wrote a third volume for Mein Kampf, in which he railed at length against Pan-Europa and the Count, calling him a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’ as you heard, and that’s where I take the title from my biography. But Hitler’s Publisher declined to bring out that third volume of Mein Kampf, because he had too much old stock of volumes one and two still to sell. It only saw the light of day after the war, when an academic publishing house in West Germany brought out an annotated edition.
Coudenhove-Kalergi spent those war years in exile in New York, persuading American public opinion, as I said, not only to come into the war, in fact, on Britain’s side, but in favour of a united Europe at the end. President Truman declared the United States of Europe to be, quote, “An excellent idea” and Marshall aid was made conditional on European states agreeing a common plan for its distribution. That too, was his lobbying of Marshall, he claimed, that got that made the condition, a first small step towards economic integration. The Count briefed Churchill before his great Zurich speech of 1946, when he spoke of the need for a kind of United States of Europe.
And in 1947, the Count set up as a personal and individual endeavour, the European Parliamentary Union, the EPU, a powerful pressure group of pro-European MPs in every democratic parliament. It was a remarkable feat of organisation. I mean, close to 4,000 MPs were polled on their views of European integration, and then their leaders invited to a meeting in their personal capacities, not delegated by their governments, in Gstaad in Switzerland, to decide the programme and the organisation of EPU. So, the European Parliamentary Union pressed their governments to encourage closer European integration, that was its purpose, and the creation of the first Europe-wide parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, is credited to the efforts of the EPU and the personal commitment of Coudenhove-Kalergi in leading that organisation so effectively. The Count also spoke immediately after Churchill at the Congress of Europe in 1948 and in 1950 he was the first recipient of the prestigious Charlemagne Prize, some years before Jean Monnet or Churchill.
Now, despite major change – that’s the background, that’s where it all is, where it all comes from. Despite the major changes of technology nowadays and the growth of the EU on the basis that Jean Monnet devised, with the Schuman Declaration, not on Coudenhove-Kalergi’s basis, we face similar choices today to those that the Count projected for Pan-Europa nearly 100 years ago. First, the EU began as six states in the heart of Western Europe. It’s now expanded to 27, including former communist as well as former fascist states. The historical and cultural experiences of the current member states are now considerably more diverse than when they all came from Western Europe. Now, it’s much more akin to the diversity the Count was having to try to marshal into coherence in the 1920s. Holding the whole lot together in common – in support of common values, is a more serious issue now than it’s ever been since the 1950s.
Enlargement, the second point, enlargement has given the EU new neighbours. The certainties of the Iron Curtain, when Prague was a foreign country for West Europeans, are gone. Now the European Union in the east borders Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. The issue of borders and security, both traditional territorial security and, also, modern security, think cyber, are acute, potentially much more flammable than before, when everybody knew what lines not to cross. The situation today is much more fluid, much closer to that patchwork of bilateral and multilateral alliances that tried to keep the peace in Coudenhove-Kalergi’s day, tried and failed.
C, third point, an enlarged EU now acts more powerfully on its surrounding region, both economically and politically. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, through the Caucasus, the Middle East, to North Africa and beyond, Europe matters to its neighbouring region, and the region matters more to Europe. Only a united Europe will have the clout to make its interests count in that wider context, let alone take its place in global affairs among the current and the rising superpowers.
So, just one point in conclusion, a more modern point, the effect of Brexit. The EU has clearly lost a major player, not just another small state. What will it do in response to that shock? Will it go on to integrate further and faster to attempt to become a pan-European superpower, what Coudenhove envisaged and worked for all his life, or will it remain, as Coudenhove-Kalergi found Europe in the 1920s, a disunited continent? Then he described it as “the chessboard on which other nations played out their attempts at world domination.” Will it stay that way today, or will it get its act together and become politically, as well as economically, a global player, itself?
Quentin Peel
Right, thank you very much. That’s given us the big question to ask about the relevance today of Coudenhove-Kalergi. I wonder if, Claudia, I could bring you in to actually flesh out a little bit why you think this man had such a degree of influence and so on. What were the influences on him? Here is a man who, at the age of 19, fell in love with a great actress on the stage in Vienna, who was a huge influence on his life, but so was his father. These people maybe really steered him in the direction of believing in this vision of a United States of Europe, which was at those day –at that stage, really quite ahead of its time. Can you tell us a bit about both those people?
Dr Martyn Bond
Unmute, unmute.
Claudia Hamill
I’ve just got it, sorry, I just, I really – having been stranded. Well, good evening. I just want to thank everybody at Chatham House for organising and hosting this tonight and just repeating, really, what Quentin said, which is that he asked – that Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi was invited to speak here four times between 1931 and 1939 and hosted by people like Duff Cooper and Leo Amery. And I will come to those points, Quentin. I just wanted to put a few in first, just to, kind of, get – I noted, very much, that we were asked to look at the private initiatives in diplomacy and the key players and the historical insights, and I want to complement a bit Martyn’s overview. And I should say that although we do have debates on quite a few approaches to this, the overall theme we totally agree on, just before we get too divisive too early on. So, I’m just going to give a few examples on Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi if I may, and I’ll probably bring in Heinrich.
I’m going to use RCK as the abbreviation, because Martyn and I just gobbled up on Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and so – and I felt very justified when I found the letters were signed off with RCK occasionally, and it is of course, used in Martyn’s biography. And he’s been referred to as the “spiritual founder of the EU”, and the title tonight, “The European’s Forgotten Grandfather” is taken from the recent article in the Chatham House publication The World Today, and that was taken from a chapter heading in the biography, which looked at his relationship with Jean Monnet, which we can come into later maybe in the discussion, Quentin. And as Martyn said, it was one of the choices for the book title, but “Hitler’s Cosmopolitan Bastard” was preferred, and we can perhaps just a – kind of, elaborate a bit on that. Cosmopolitan in those days was a pejorative description with Jewish links, and as Martyn pointed out, his first wife was Jewish, and bastard was strictly accurate, as his parents were not yet married when he was born, and he was legitimised retrospectively. And all of his initiatives, all the things that he did, were private ones.
They drew in the key players, but there was no governmental support, or he wasn’t under any governmental umbrella for any of this. And in 1920s and 30s, his first Congress, the one in 1926, got 2,000 of the great and good to a conference hall, which is pretty good, even under 2021 times, well, perhaps 2019 times. And his Pan-Europa regular publication had 9,000 subscribers across Europe, so it was quite a movement. And when he was in the US in the 1940s, he became more convinced about the value of democracy, and that’s really one of the reasons I argue, it’s not necessarily the one that Martyn argues, that he created the European Parliamentary Union, bringing together these 200 MPs in their private capacity. And that really – they then made pressure – put pressure on the parliaments, their parliaments, that led to the Council of Europe, and those two meetings in 1950 of the Franco-German MPs really was something that Churchill called for in his Zurich speech. And all of this contributed RCK not just getting the Charlemagne Prize, but also, the Légion d’Honneur by de Gaulle and the Bundesverdienstkreuz by Adenauer.
And he thought in terms of continents for identity, and I quote from the biography, “Political federation needed to rest on the legitimacy of public opinion, which he was sure would quickly be convinced of its pan-European identity.” His map, which is in the original book, splits the continent – the world into continental groupings. So, you’ve got America, Russia Federation, the British Empire, a loose grouping of East Asia and, most importantly, Europe and for him, the whole thing was about public relations. So, he hoped that publishing Pan-Europa would culminate for everybody in a shared sense of European patriotism, and he argued that this was the way it would take its place as a crowning compliment of everyone’s pride in their individual nation. And sailing back from New York to Cherbourg in 1926, he wrote, he wasn’t just returning to France but to Europe, and I quote, “We had become European patriots.”
And after all, he was born into an Empire which disappeared, with many nationalities in his heritage. And this picks up on the question for today of multiple or single identities, citizen of Europe, rather than of nowhere or indeed of somewhere. And he inspired statesmen. He was held in high esteem, not just between the wars by Masaryk, Briand and Stresemann, but after World War II by Churchill, who wrote the preface to one of RCK’s five autobiographies, not a modest man, and for Marshall and Truman on matters European, but also, later, for de Gaulle. And by the way, Churchill wrote that, kind of, preface while he was Prime Minister and you could argue, we need that, kind of, inspiration now.
And he was a key player behind the scenes. So – and he drew support across all the political parties. Not maybe the far left and the far right, but all the main ones. And that was a prize, it mattered, because when he wanted recognition beyond his organisations, it was, for instance, the price for being the second keynote speaker after Churchill at the Hague Congress, because he brought in the socialist MPs from the continent. And the only time he tried to have some parliamentary, kind of, position, he asked de Gaulle whether he could become a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, but it never got past those first posts, ‘cause de Gaulle said, “Well, probably not, you operate so much more effectively outside any governmental structure.”
He was a very good orator, and there’s a lovely quote in the book, “His ability to leave the magic of words time and space to play themselves out, so that even hardnosed realists were charmed or surprised.” Not all the hardnosed realists. In the UK Foreign Office, opinion between the wars was divided. He’s described on the one hand as, “Full of energy and uprightness of character,” but also as, “an impractical theorist,” and he was very good looking. Thomas Mann said he was the most handsome man he’d ever met. And I want to just draw that, because perhaps it’s his looks and his character which are the reasons he was thought to be the model for Victor Laszlo in the film Casablanca. And I know, Quentin, you looked at the film again recently, and I looked at it again, and I must admit, I realised what an upright character Laszlo was. But it’s more likely that his role as a focal point for Nazi resistance and the knowledge of his family influenced the Playwright and the Actor playing him, and like Laszlo, as Martyn pointed out, he had several narrow escapes. Two of the four involved these desperate flights, and both of those, indeed, are the stuff of films.
And he was just ahead of Nazi pursuit, but he was well ahead of the game in public relations. Today is the 17th of May, and, actually, I asked Chatham House whether we could have that date for our event, because that was his nominated day for a Europe Day, not the 9th of May, the 17th. He coined the idea of a European currency. He hoisted a European flag at every one of his congresses, had the Ode to Joy played as a European anthem, suggested a European Court, floated the idea of a European passport, pushed for economic integration and proposed a Charter of Human Rights.
Just to conclude, at his death in 1972, Julian Amery, son of Leo Amery, both RCK supporters and both British Government Ministers at the time, he wrote, “It is given to few to dream great dreams and contribute to their fulfilment.” Now, whether it is fulfilled is a challenge that we might have as part of the discussion tonight and I’ll go into the father, happily, Quentin, during the discussion. Thank you.
Quentin Peel
Okay, Claudia, thank you very much, and we will come back to those influences. But I am fascinated by – we’ve given the title to this event, “The EU’s Forgotten Grandfather,” and that actually relates to the words of the Former Editor of Le Monde, who described Jean Monnet as the EU’s father and RCK as the EU’s grandfather, slight distortion, because RCK was a younger man. But the extraordinary thing about these two is that their personal relations, in spite of the fact that they both had the same ideal of an integrated, united Europe, seem to have been – they barely seem to communicate with each other. Didn’t you, I think, Claudia, find quite a lot of stuff in their letters showing how they almost avoided talking to each other?
Claudia Hamill
I think it was a bit one-sided. It was more that Monnet avoided talking to RCK. So – and when he did have phone calls, he actually minuted one of the phone calls, he often had a sore throat. Once, he had a broken arm, I think, which is a bit desperate, the Secretary answered. He had a much clearer idea that they shared a vision than they actually did. There’s some echo going on, sadly. He – they were rivals in the overview, as well as in the detail. RCK argued that Monnet shared his vision and Monnet said that he didn’t, and I mean, they couldn’t even agree on what it was that they disagreed on. So, when he looked at the steps that Monnet had these incremental small steps, and he got very angry with RCK and said, “Look, you’ve just got the vision. I’m more interested in the means to the end,” and I think that was the important bit. And there’s a little bit of a story also, a backstory, and Martyn will elaborate, possibly, on this too, that he – Martyn, you might like to explain about the Loucheur story as well, ‘cause there’s a little bit of animus which goes back a lot further than that.
Quentin Peel
Do you want to come in there, Martyn, and tell us about the difficulty and the background between these two great men of Europe?
Dr Martyn Bond
Yes, yeah, with pleasure. I mean, they’re – they do have a long history together. They go back to 1920s, early 20s, when they first will have crossed each other’s paths at the League of Nations. But at that time, Monnet wasn’t really involved in thinking European, Monnet was involved in the League of Nations, which technically, at least, was a global organisation, and led him on, later, through banking in America and various other activities out in China and elsewhere, to come back to Europe at the time of the Second World War, or just before the Second World War. Coudenhove-Kalergi concentrated desperately upon Europe and if anything, to the neglect of the rest of the world, perhaps.
But even further back than that, there’s a problem, because when Monnet was in London during the First World War, assuring co-ordination of shipping of supplies across the Atlantic, as the Frenchman represented in that small group, he reported back to the President, Clemenceau, and Clemenceau simply minuted his minute and sent it on to the Minister responsible for receiving these things, so, for sending reinforcement to the Front. That was Louis Loucheur, a very well-known big businessman and Politician at the time. And Loucheur eventually got irritated with these things telling him what to receive when, and said to Clemenceau, “Who is this man?” and learnt that he was a young man, quite eligible for the Forces, who happened to have been posted to London, and so, he said, “Well, I’m in charge of recruitment, and he must sign on.” And Clemenceau had to concede to his Minister that Monnet would sign up for the Front, and for a while, Monnet thought, “Well, I’ve got three weeks’ life expectation when I’m sent to the Front.” And he had this discussion with his wife over here, then wife, in London.
On his next visit back to Clemenceau, Clemenceau gave him the order, a written order, and he opened it and read it there, and at the bottom it said, “And remains posted in London.” So, he split the pair in two, he gave principal to Loucheur, but practice to Monnet. Monnet, therefore, did not like Loucheur and Loucheur did not like Monnet. Loucheur went on to become the key figure in the French organisation of Pan-Europa under Coudenhove-Kalergi and if Monnet had any relation to that, he would’ve stopped straight away. He would not have engaged with something that was led by Loucheur.
Quentin Peel
It shows that personality really matters, and it strikes me, having read your wonderful biography, that actually, RCK was not a very easy man to deal with. But I’d like to now look a little bit closer, perhaps, at his relations with the Brits and with Winston Churchill, in particular, because there the two seem to have hit it off really quite well, but it didn’t seem to last. What was – so he inspired Winston Churchill to make that extraordinary speech in Zurich, where he said, “We want a kind of United States of Europe,” but why didn’t that last? Why did RCK switch his allegiance, if you like, from Winston Churchill to Charles de Gaulle?
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, shall I start on that? But I think Claudia will probably have more to say on it in the end, than I have. I think if you – if I summarise it briefly, it’s because Churchill delegated quite a lot of his European work, apart from the big speeches, of course, and the gladhanding, he delegated it to Duncan Sandys, to his son-in-law, and Duncan Sandys was authorised to bring all the small bodies that were trying to struggle for European integration into one European movement, and he did that sort of successfully. We certainly have the European movement now as the heritage of that founded movement then. And in doing so, he played the Politician, quite clearly. I mean, he had to run rings round lots of other people to get them to co-ordinate, that’s to say come under the wing of the Brits and Coudenhove-Kalergi didn’t, in the end, accept that. He wouldn’t go under the wing of the Brits. He thought that he’d been double-crossed by Duncan Sandys. He’d given him information that Duncan Sandys had then used not in the context that he’d given it and he realised on one particular occasion, which I go into in the book, that Duncan Sandys actually tried to have him outvoted from being Secretary-General of the European Parliamentary Union, which was his new creation, that was going to be his major sword in the gladiatorial battles to come. And that just turned him entirely against this – the sort of man who could do that was not going to be a friend of his.
Quentin Peel
Do you want to come in on that, Claudia?
Claudia Hamill
Yeah, I’ll come in on a couple of points. I think the first is that, yes, I think RCK was very disappointed. He thought that Duncan Sandys epitomised an English gentleman and found that, probably, he didn’t. Coming back to your original question about Churchill, I think we both agreed on this, Martyn, that actually, Churchill waxed and waned according to what his political position was in the UK. So, when he was out of power, he saw Europe as a possible political opportunity for him, and certainly, I was delighted when I came across a letter dated the 22nd of December 1949, where – it’s a short letter, we’ve got it in the book, where he says, “British participation is essential to the success of the European Union.” And I was shocked to find this, I mean, delighted, because it actually had the word, “European Union” with a capital U in it and I’d never seen this anywhere before.
And he certainly invited him to Chartwell. There was this wonderful telegram on board, as Martyn pointed out, a very small French boat, when they came back from the States, a telegram to him from Churchill, which must have been impressive to the rest of the people on the – the passengers on the ship. I don’t think too many people got telegrams from Churchill on this small ship. And he listened to him very intently, and the Zurich speech was influenced because four days beforehand – it was a kind of, tit-for-tat. Duncan Sands received the list of all these people whom actually RCK had found, and in return, he was invited to lakeside Geneva to talk to Churchill four days before he did the Zurich speech. And I think, during that time, he actually, in the interwar period, or not the interwar period, but in the period before he was in office, he was heavily involved, but then decided to move forward, and of course, in a way, took the funding sources away from RCK. RCK had built up funding sources in America, and when – and he kept cultivating them. He did a lot of work on this and then Duncan Sands went over to talk to those in America who had funded him, and basically, diverted the money to the European movement, and this was really a tremendous blow for RCK.
Quentin Peel
What about the relationship, then, that RCK builds up with General de Gaulle, because that, to a degree, leaves me rather confused? I see RCK as the man who believes passionately in a United States of Europe, where, actually, there is a genuine transfer of sovereignty from the nation states to this European Union, in a way, and that, I’ve never thought was how General de Gaulle saw the European Union. He believed in Europe des Patries, where all the countries remained so strong. But certainly latterly, RCK seems to have been really very keen on General de Gaulle. Was there ulterior motives to that? What do you think, Martyn?
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, what I – let me just take issue with Europe des patries to begin with. De Gaulle was in favour of Europe des Grande Patries, he just didn’t like the little ones. And you know, if it was France and maybe Germany, right, okay, there was a leadership role, that was really behind what de Gaulle wanted, and the whole – the plan, the Fouchet Plan and things like that, which tried to bypass the Small Steps operation in Brussels on economic issues, was to take political charge into the hands of the big nations, and that’s why it was resisted by Spaak and other people at the time. And for that reason, I think this man was attracted to RCK. I mean, he was getting older, and he could see that this was a long, slow plod, that the Brussels route was going to take many years, and I think, with a degree of impatience, perhaps, he looked again to a strong man, as he had looked earlier on to any strong man who would keep down Hitler or stop Hitler or prevent Hitler from expanding. He’d been even prepared to support Mussolini to keep Austrian independence from Hitler. So, I think this is really turning to a strong man. Authoritarian government didn’t worry him too much, I mean, he was a Democrat, but only a, sort of, qualified Democrat, as it were, if you had the right strongman.
Quentin Peel
Can I explore that a little bit more, actually? He wasn’t – he was only a Democrat up to a point. He really did seem to believe in a sort of, elite to run the show. Whether it was his aristocratic tendency, or whether it was more an intellectual question, he was quite an elitist and I wonder whether it’s that very elitist core of his view of Europe which actually is resented by some to this day, that, “Oh, the European Union is just an elitist project and not a very democratic one.” What do you think about that, Martyn, with your background in the European…?
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, I don’t think you’re putting me on the spot, though you may be trying to. I think the answer is that all politics is elitist. There are many more people who are interested in football than are interested in politics. The number of people who are active in politics is minute, country by country. That doesn’t mean that they’re working in non-democratic countries, or their approaches are not democratic. If we look for the definitions, a) it’s the vote, a popular spread of the vote, so one man, one woman, one vote. It’s things which maintain the alternance of government, it’s the rule of law, it’s a free press, it’s other supporting elements which make democracies happen. But you’re not going to change, I think, not radically, the number of people and the type of people who are interested in politics. The people who attend Chatham House are interested in politics. They are an elite. That’s not a derogatory word; that is a fact. And I think this is his analysis from the 20s, it’s his analysis when he says, “I would prefer to see not a move towards mass democracy, because that is a dilution of the quality of the people who really matter and will take the decisions, even if they don’t rest on the legitimacy of a wider body.”
Quentin Peel
Claudia, have you any thoughts on that particular elitist thing? I’m still fascinated by how this man came to this vision of Pan-Europa, of a United States of Europe. Was he actually – was he a believer in, really, just trying to preserve, if you like, the old Habsburg Empire, which he’d grown up in, or was he genuinely looking for a completely revolutionary departure? Was he a reactionary or was he a revolutionary?
Claudia Hamill
You do like putting these questions. I think, let me go back, you – I promised you I’d go back to his father, and I think at this point it would be useful. His father, Heinrich, was a most amazing man, spoke 16 languages fluently. At his table, back in his wonderful castle in Ronsberg, which we visited, he had Rabbis, mullahs, Buddhists, everybody to the dining table. Conversation flowed freely, liberally, in the best sense of the word, and the children, the oldest ones, certainly, and the two oldest boys, and RCK was the second oldest, were allowed to sit in, and listen. I mean, I don’t think they were allowed to contribute, but they would’ve listened and learned. So, I think Martyn is, in many ways, right about the elitist bit, to a degree, in the sense that he was a man of his time, and in that time, we did not have social media, we didn’t have the ability to get groupings together very fast, all of us sharing our view or spread that message across. So, I don’t totally – and I probably think I should stop at that point, ‘cause I know we’re going to run out of time on this bit, but I don’t totally agree with Martyn on this. Perhaps it’ll come out in the questions.
Quentin Peel
Okay, thank you very much, Claudia, and you’re quite right, I think I should go to the question and answers now. And if I can just take them maybe in a logical order. I’ve spotted one here from Bob Saunders, which is – which goes to the heart of why we need a biography of RCK right now. Bob, would you like to ask this through the audio link?
Bob Saunders
Ah, well, I’m happy for you to read it.
Quentin Peel
Ah, okay, well the question is, “Why do you think he’s been so relatively unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world since his death? Is it that the British elite managed to silence this man, who they regarded as fundamentally not very sound?”
Dr Martyn Bond
I’m sure they thought he was fundamentally not sound. I mean, there’s plenty of evidence in Foreign Office mandates and comments of documents written by diplomats, that suggest that. It’s because he does put awkward questions. I mean, I didn’t want to summarise them all in my three or four points in the end of my introduction, but if you get to grips with Coudenhove-Kalergi, you come away with some very uncomfortable suggestions. It’s how will you organise this? What is the respective role of different states? How do you democratise it internally for its governance, let alone hope that it produces a liberal external policy? What about the role of hard power alongside soft power? All of this is very difficult, and most governments don’t like to think of this.
Now, the British Government in particular not, I mean, we’ve gone through a very stormy passage in the last two or three generations and the whole Europe question is vexed for us, in many ways, as we well know. It was even worse for people on the continent, but in a funny way, some of them started from a clean slate, or clean slate, a cleanish slate. The Germans, I suppose, would be one lot to quote, the Austrians, perhaps. The Italians, maybe, but it was a strange end to the war for them. The French, from a complicated end to the war. All of them have had their problems. The big questions are easier forgotten or pushed to one side, especially if you’ve got a method like Jean Monnet’s community method, let’s find a small, specific interest, in which we can all work our way through, it may take ten or 15 years, and get to some sort of environmental policy, that’s great. It doesn’t actually change the basis of our governance at all.
Quentin Peel
Okay, thanks very much. Let me go to another question that actually looks, very much, at RCK’s tactics in how he tried to sell his ideas. A question here from Samuel Amos. Would you like to put that question yourself?
Samuel Amos
Hi there, yes, yeah, I’d be happy. So, I came across RCK a little bit through my research into Julian Amery and Leo Amery, and I’m quite interested ‘cause them occupying the right wing of the Conservative Party and their specific brand of Conservative campaigning for United Europe. And so, I’m just interested in whether you think RCK tailored his arguments? How much he, sort of, managed to adjust himself when moving between the European left and European right, and also between British Politicians and Continental European Politicians. Thank you.
Claudia Hamill
Okay, I’ll just – one sentence. He had only one idea, right, and that was about a United States of Europe and that was what drove him and it really, it attracted people from both left and right. And coming back, Mart – Quentin, to what you said, I don’t know that he was that well known in the UK before his death either. If you – the universities, if you – University of Nantes, various universities, RCK is on their curriculum, international studies, international relations, etc., and I don’t think he’s ever been on the curriculum here. The one joy we’ve had is that the University of Maastricht, where we did a launch a little while ago, ‘cause I’m associated with it, said they were now going to put him onto their European curricula. I felt quite good about that, actually, we’ve achieved something here, to get him looked at.
I just – I, sorry, I think that’s all I would say, he was absolutely single minded. He had various iterations: the European Parliamentary Union, Pan-Europa, various other smaller ones, initiatives he had, all focused on one idea and that appealed across a very wide spectrum of people. Martyn?
Dr Martyn Bond
Yeah, yes, this – thank you, Samuel. I think it’s an important question really, because – and there’s no easy answer to it. It’s a bit like the length of a piece of string. Times changed radically from the 20s to the 70s, quite clearly, and the political parties changed in every country, quite radically as well. And in particular in Britain, you’ll know from your research, the moments when the Labour Party swung one way or another, or the Conservative Party, different aspects of it, parts of it swung one way or another over the European or the Empire question. And he was adept at shifting his presentation to win support, so long as he got the support. And this was one of his key trumps when negotiating, as it were, with the European Movement for the Congress of Europe in 1948. He withheld until about three weeks before and any formal involvement. He eventually stumped up some money for it and insisted on some conditions. One of those conditions was that the invitation should go to all the people he named from other parliaments, which included the non-Conservative memb – elements. Churchill could rally the Conservatives and the right at that time, whereas Coudenhove-Kalergi could bring in the centre left, not the Left, the Left was always very dubious about this, the Left with a big L.
Quentin Peel
Can I just come in there, Martyn, and the – look at the problem that the RCK had with the UK in those years immediately after 1945, when he was trying to get the whole relaunch? So, he has this ally in Winston Churchill, who goes quite a long way in the direction that he’s going in, but it’s the Labour Government in Britain. which is very suspicious of everything he stands for, and somehow, he didn’t manage to wing it with the Labour Government, even though he had Social Democrats on the continent who were very much with him.
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, I think it’s worth remembering how, dare I say, how radically left the Labour Party was after 1945. I mean, there were one or two people you can pull out and big figures and say, “No, they certainly weren’t.” Look at the involvement with NATO, for instance. But to the – Phillips, I mean, the General Secretary, there’s a quote that I use in the biography where he lists, I think, four reasons why they’re not going to have anything to do with Churchill’s Congress of Europe, a) because it’s Churchill, number one, and who’s Churchill’s supporter? He doesn’t quote Coudenhove-Kalergi, but quite obviously, the continental big ally of Churchill is Coudenhove-Kalergi. But Coudenhove can swing all the Social Democrats across the continent, for every country, and they’ll follow him, but they’re not interested in listening to Morgan Phillips.
Quentin Peel
Okay. Now, let me go back to the questions here. I’ve got a question from California, from David Hatoff. David, do you want me to read that out? You say you can read out query aloud. Let me try. “We here, in the US, have tried over two centuries to balance the power of state capitals with that of federal power in D.C. Did RCK foresee how such struggles, such as the current COVID vaccine distribution battle, would play out between individual European nations and a dominant central United States of Europe? Which of you would like to pick?
Claudia Hamill
Martyn.
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, okay, I’ll put my neck in the noose. He foresaw that it was the right and probably the only way to go, at least from what he had experienced, and he could also – he was rarely modest, but in this he holds back. You won’t find more than the odd minor suggestion about how this will work in detail when you’ve got an Assembly with one member for one million voters and one Senator for every country and one President above that. He doesn’t then go – well, and a Court of Justice, which will obviously have a very major role in the structure that he’s suggesting. He doesn’t really go down into detail and say, now, that will work very easily with Luxembourg, because they’ll see tremendous advantages in a role like that, and it won’t work at all with Berlin, because they’ll be giving up an awful lot. But that’s, quite clearly, where we are now, but we’ve only given it up on a very, very small fraction of what America has done over the last 200 years.
And the American story has swung one way and another, with more federalism, well, more centralism, I beg your pardon, of its federal system, or more states’ rights, and you can suggest there’s a drift in one direction, but I think that’s probably a bit uncertain. And I think it’s an uncertain future for the Europeans too, if they ever go that way any further than they’ve gone at the moment. But Coudenhove is putting the question, “If you want to get anywhere on the world stage, global stage, Europe has to unite,” and by ‘unite’ he didn’t mean what we have now.
Quentin Peel
I’ve a question here which – from Nicolas. Would you like to ask that, Nicolas? Actually, you had two questions. I’m interested in the one about the “decolonisation process and his vision of Europe’s future relations with the wider world.” Oh Nicolas, you’re there.
Nicolas
That’s – thank you, Quentin. I was interested to know whether RCK’s fundamental interest in a United Europe was so that the European states wouldn’t be fighting each other, or whether it was for what a United Europe could achieve, either in economic terms, for the benefit of its peoples, or in terms of relationship with the wider world. And given that, at the start of his vision, a lot of the wider world was colonised, but from the 1940s decolonisation was beginning, how was his attitude to the wider world in terms of what we would now call developing countries?
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, let me be brief and quick, a good question, Nicholas. It was driven, I think, very, very clearly by peace as the first issue. Anyone who’d gone through the First World War and come of age politically during the First World War – he didn’t serve, he was – he’d got a sick ticket for four years and stayed married to his actress wife, who was, herself, a very strong supporter of the peace movement. And I’m sure that side is, emotionally, the biggest trigger for this whole suggestion. Europe should never go through that again, was really what he wanted.
And from that, he then saw, oh, but there are advantages, of course, it’s a big single market, that’s much better to reduce the customs, make a Customs Union, and then that, of course, means that we’ll be richer and bigger and stronger. And there perhaps kicks in the point Quentin made earlier, an echo of the Habsburg empire, this feeling that if you’re bigger and richer and united, then you’ll play a bigger role externally. He never says, “Like we used to” because he’s not thinking ‘we’ as Austrians, he’s thinking as Europeans. He’s thinking of the future where Europe will be big and strong and therefore, play a big role.
And you’re quite right, the outside world has gone through decolonisation, and that has meant a change, not just for the British Empire, which has been radical and that’s visceral in our experience of politics, quite clearly, but that’s been so for the Dutch, for the French, for the Spanish, for the Portuguese. That’s a European experience for part of Europe, at least. And his view in that change is – it’s quite odd, I mean, I do quote in the book what he says about the growth of the United Nations, that this is a disaster, as bad as Genghis Khan or the arrival of Genghis Khan, is all these non-European, non-northern, non-white people as countries in the United Nations. Be careful, Charles de Gaulle, we’ll be outnumbered shortly if you don’t organise a conference from America to Vladivostok, getting the whole of the North united and can then dictate what terms the world development will go on, and it becomes rather general and vague at that stage. But the immediate fear is there, and I quote the letter back to de Gaulle that he wrote on that subject.
Quentin Peel
Let’s go to Fernando Herrero, who’s got a question that I think might lead out of that about how we really should understand the idea of the United States of Europe.
Fernando Herrero
Oh yes, can you hear me?
Quentin Peel
Yes.
Fernando Herrero
Fascinating. So, what is the basis or the core of this theoretical transnationalism? Is it some, kind of, civilisational unity in the continent against other units? Are we contemplating, perhaps, the other side of workers’ internationalism? And perhaps the last comment is spot on, I’m not familiar with the figure, but you are whetting my appetite, I should buy the book and read about it.
Dr Martyn Bond
Please, please.
Fernando Herrero
Are we dealing with a little bit of a northern, white, racist European foundation here?
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, well, gently, this man is half Japanese, okay?
Fernando Herrero
Okay, okay.
Dr Martyn Bond
I mean, this is not anything that has sprung from the far right, very far from it, very far from it. He springs from a middle non-fascist, non-communist approach. That’s what he wants. He finds himself, in the 20s and 30s, drawn to the strongmen who are non-racial fascists, to Mussolini and to the Austrian fascists, but he’s adamantly against Nazism, absolutely adamant, as he is adamantly against communism, and that is his leading international light. What you – yeah, let me leave it there, that’s it. He isn’t himself, manifestly not from his experience, racist. Look at his marriages, look at his own background, but by assimilation into Europe he sees that this is something which has – and then you see his upbringing in his culture, he describes in Pan-Europa, in the book, phases of the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, sixth, seventh Europe, and they start with Alexander the Great, and they go through Charlemagne, and they go through all the great classical – I think they go through Napoleon – the great classical conquerors, if you like. The strongmen of Europe are the narrative that he creates behind his plea now to move to a peaceful Pan-Europa and the effects it’ll then have on the rest of the world.
Quentin Peel
I want to try to get in a couple, at least, of quick questions more. Michael Maclay, can I come to you?
Michael Maclay
I don’t want to take it backwards, but I was wondering how far you would see his vision as a sort of, imperial vision of the multinational Austria-Hungary that might have been, under better circumstances. How deeply Habsburg was his view? You referred to it a bit that way, Martyn, but only very briefly and I sense that you have spoken to this a wee bit.
Quentin Peel
Well, I mean, very briefly, I don’t feel Habsburg and nostalgia played a big role in his makeup. It was through his education, yes, he went to the famous boarding school, the Theresianum in Vienna, but that – the ethos of that was incredibly international. He had Chinese and Japanese people in the classes with him. So, it wasn’t just a Habsburg entity, as it were, although many of the Austro-Hungarians who went through there went into leading positions, subsequently, and he stayed in touch with them. But I don’t think he had a nostalgia that there should be, as it were, a worldwide Habsburg Empire, based on Europe, or that, somehow, this was a takeover of Europe by the Habsburgs through the back door.
Though to be fair, also, he did create – his successor was Otto von Habsburg, and the one person whom he, sort of, handed over to was Otto von Habsburg, who by then, was an MEP, I mean, not actually for an Austrian, but for a Bavarian constituency. So, there’s an element of the family still around, but he isn’t working closely with Otto von Habsburg until he meets him – they were in Lisbon together, but there’s no record of them meeting at all at the time he was trying to get out of Lisbon and get to the States. They met in the States, and they worked slightly together there. But in fact, he, when he put forward a proposal that there should be a government in exile for the Austrians, proposed to Churchill and Roosevelt that he, himself, should be the leader of it, not that Habsburg should or that [inaudible – 59:55] who was one of the former Ministers in the last government in Austria should. So, it’s interesting, that although he worked with and for and alongside Habsburg later, he didn’t see himself, automatically, in the imperial tradition.
Quentin Peel
I’m going to cheat, because I can see a question here from somebody who worked with Otto von Habsburg, he was in Brussels. Peter-Carlo Lehrell, would you like to come in on that, but your question, I know, is about whether he had an idea of having a European army. But Peter-Carlo?
Peter-Carlo Lehrell
Oh, hello. Now, I was just thinking, when the Weltanschauung, if I can use that word, that was definitely a Habsburgian one, from the way you describe it, you know, he may not have consciously done that, but I think, you know, it’s also what Otto tried to drive. My – bringing all that into the present day, my, sort of, real conflict, sometimes, because I’m also a supporter of this Weltanschauung, if you like, is to what extent the solution is just European, you know what I mean? Okay, if you all get together in Europe, the world’s at peace. Well, the problem is, it’s not. And so, I do wonder whether anyone in his thinking he did have any thoughts about projecting hard power or a European army, whether that could be solved? I mean, for Europe, us all getting together is peace within Europe, but, you know, the – I mean, the Habsburgians, too, knew how to use their power. And I can tell you one little anecdote, which I’ll just share, because I think, you know, it was first-hand, when Otto came out of the hemicycle after the bombing of Libya by Reagan, he was shaking his head and saying, “35 bombers, what are they arguing about in there? That’s nothing, 35 bombers. We shouldn’t even be talking about it.” So, you know, the point is there is an element, also, of us getting together in the interest of peace, but then what do we do? And what thoughts did he have there, did he maybe not? Maybe it is, you know – but anyhow…
Dr Martyn Bond
Well, I can give you a brief answer, and Claudia may well be able to say much more on this. The brief answer is that he saw the unification of Europe as the stepping-stone to world peace, and he was, now I think, under pressure from his wife, I’m sure, that developed that thought, developed that way. But he very often underlines or adds on, after this argument in favour of European unification, that this must be a stepping-stone to more. When it came down to the federalists who take on this thing, Brugmans, a classic line from Brugmans, for instance, who went off to run the College of Europe, he didn’t agree with them, because at that time, this was in the immediate post-war period, he was saying that “The most you can get is to unify Western Europe at the moment, and later may come Eastern Europe. But the most you can get to be practical is Western Europe. Don’t go on about world federation now, because you just won’t get Western Europe.” So that – he’s prepared to shift the argument, but his aim is the unification of Europe, and that is part of a peaceful world, through presumably, negotiation, eventual federation maybe, but he didn’t speculate beyond that. But Claudia?
Quentin Peel
Claudia, do you want to come in?
Claudia Hamill
Just a couple of points, a quick answer. Yes, he did have the idea of a European army, so that answers one point. I think, also, he had very – was very concerned – and actually, it’s happening now, we see other countries, I won’t name any, which are buying up large parts of industry, enterprise in Europe, and he was very concerned to make Europe an economically strong continent, which could survive, and that was a – really a critical point as well. Just two short points.
Quentin Peel
Can I ask you, Claudia, and I think I’m going to give you nearly the last word, ‘cause I’d like to bring it back to Idelle and that question I put right at the start, of the fundamental influence. She was the pacifist. She was the one who was a real believer that they needed a peace project. Was that dominant or did he then drift away from that after she died?
Claudia Hamill
Well, this is where Martyn and I don’t totally agree of the stuff that I’ve read too. He did totally support the peace movement, but he also had reservations about it when it came to things like the Second World War. So, we don’t totally agree on that one. He was influenced, very much, by her but had his own ideas. He also had two other wives, not at the same time, one of them, where he was hunting – where they were both hunting for money. She died, Idelle, in 1951. By the way, we call her Idelle, because he had a sister called Ida, and he actually got – he decided to call her Idelle as well. And literally a year later – literally a year later to the month, he married his next wife, Alex, and thought she had money, and she’s a good organising type of woman, and unfortunately, she didn’t, and I found so many letters to Lawyers where he’s trying to chase money in Kenya, which he thought she’d inherit. And then, when she died, for the last few years of his life, he married a widow, who was the widow of the Composer of the White Horse Inn musical. In fact, he didn’t marry her, actually, he had a union blessed in church, but she was going to lose all the royalties to her income if she married him, so, it was a marriage of a sort. They had a very – I mean, Alex, the second wife, had administrative capacity, didn’t share the ideas, but supported him and Melanie, his third wife, re-legitimised him with his family. He had broken off relationships with most of them, and she managed to renew and refresh those relationships, as a very human note on which to end, maybe not quite the question you asked.
Quentin Peel
Thank you, Claudia, very much, and thank you both very much for your explanations and your insights into this extraordinary man. Lots of the Q&A I see here have people saying, “What a fascinating book, I’m off to buy it,” which is, no doubt…
Dr Martyn Bond
Lovely, thank you.
Claudia Hamill
Please, somebody – if somebody’s going to Daunt’s bookshop in Marylebone High Road, they desperately want people to buy it from there. And they’ll send it to you.
Quentin Peel
I went in Hatchards just round the corner from Chatham House last week, carrying a copy under my arm, and they said, “Ooh, where did you get that? We” – that’s another thing, they were very…
Dr Martyn Bond
Thank you.
Quentin Peel
Anyway, thank you both very much. A fascinating story, and I hope everybody who’s tuned in has also found it a very interesting one and enough to whet your appetite and say, “I must go out and find more.” Thank you very much, indeed, and thank you to Emily and all her team for organising this and keeping us all on track. Thanks very much.
Dr Martyn Bond
Thank you. Thank you.
Claudia Hamill
Good night, thank you.
Dr Martyn Bond
Good night.
