American Committee on United Europe

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The American Committee for a United Europe ( ACUE ; German American Committee for a United Europe ) was a US organization founded in 1948 to promote a “free and united Europe”. It also promoted the formation of blocs in Western Europe with the aim of European integration against the Eastern bloc .

The managing director was the former head of the secret service of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), William Joseph Donovan , who acted as a civil lawyer , and his deputy was the CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles . It was funded by the Ford Foundation , the Rockefeller Foundation, and government-affiliated corporate groups. At the end of the 1950s, former OSS officer and managing director of the Ford Foundation, Paul Hoffman , was also head of ACUE. The first CIA director Walter Bedell Smith was later involved in the advisory body .

history

On April 23, 1948, a first meeting was held at the New York University Faculty Club with the aim of creating a special committee to support a "free and united Europe". It had been summoned by Richard Nikolaus Graf von Coudenhove-Kalergi . One of the authors of a US Congress resolution on the principles of a European federation , James William Fulbright, served as president . The US Ambassador to the Soviet Union 1933–36, William C. Bullitt , served as vice-president of the ongoing conference.

From the meeting began support for the European Conference on Federation , which took place for the first time on May 7, 1948 under the chairmanship of Winston Churchill in The Hague and in which members of parliament of the 16 recipient countries of the Marshall Plan took part. Work was done on a draft constitution for the United States of Europe and the Council of Europe was founded .

activity

The ACUE was an important sponsor of the European movement , (50%) the Union of European Federalists (UEF) and especially its European Youth Campaign (100%) until the 1960s . This enabled the leaders of the “European Movement” Robert Schuman , Paul-Henri Spaak and Józef Retinger to be influenced. When Retinger tried to increase the share of European own funds - perhaps in order to become more independent of American directives - he met resistance on the American side. A memorandum dated July 26, 1950, signed by Donovan, contains instructions for a campaign to create a European Parliament . The ACUE promoted the integration of the United Kingdom into the EEC.

A note from the European ACUE section dated June 11, 1965 for the Vice President of the EEC , Robert Marjolin , aimed at covertly promoting monetary union . It recommended suppressing the debate to the point where "adoption of such proposals would become virtually inevitable".

Founding members and boards of directors

List of founding members and board members:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Extension of Remarks of Hon. Hale Boggs of Louisiana in the House of Representatives Tuesday April 27, Appendix to the Congressional Record 1948 pp A2534-5
  2. ↑ Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs ( Memento of March 24, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). In: Daily Telegraph , September 19, 2000.
  3. ^ New York Times of April 24, 1948, New Group Backs Federated Europe - Public Officials and Educators Form Committee to Support "Free" Bloc Abroad
  4. ^ New York Herald Tribune of April 24, 1948