'The fatherland perished in the frozen wastes of Russia': West-Germans in search of the European soldier, 1940–1967. Issue 2 (17th February 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tattenberg, Jan
• Is Part Of: History of European ideas. Volume 46:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 190
• Page End: 208
• Publication Date: 2020-02-17
• Subjects: European Union -- European integration -- Second World War -- Eastern Front -- military history -- intellectual history; Europe -- Intellectual life -- Periodicals; Europe -- History -- Periodicals; 190.5
• DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2019.1678190
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0191-6599

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Although the European Union is today largely understood as the guarantor of peace and prosperity on the continent, a continued but neglected aspect of discourses of European integration has been military integration. The idea of a European army appealed in particular to West-German military elites. European military integration, they understood in part as a pragmatic response to technological and geopolitical developments. But they also sought to conceive of a way to safeguard both the West-German state and the Christian Occident from Bolshevik invasion. The solution was a European soldier, who embodied a set of masculine, Christian values. Such an image was a result of experiences gathered on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, which continued to shape the West-German military elite's thinking about European integration into the late 1960s.