In September 1946, when Winston Churchill, speaking at the
University of Zurich, was calling for the creation of a United
States of Europe, parts of that continent still lay in ruins; the
wounds of war had not yet scarred over. There were zones of
occupation, but Germany had not yet split into two separate
states. Churchill attributed both world wars to the German lust
for domination and believed that a united Europe, with a
Franco-German alliance at its center, would in time erase the
memory of past horrors and make it impossible for Germany ever
again to rekindle the fires of war.

Similar arguments in favor of European unification are often
heard today, especially among the French: a united Europe, it is
said, will be able to check Germany’s imperialist tendencies. Of
course we are all aware that Europe’s history is also one of
wars, some of them appallingly bloody and destructive, and that
in this history there are no innocent parties: all European
nations have massacres, invasions, and aggressive raids on their
conscience. And although in 1946 it was natural to attribute the
cause of the war to Hitler, the Soviet Union played a
considerable part in the proceedings, beginning with the
Ribbentrop–Molotov pact and the plan of a joint partition of
Poland by two imperialist powers with an insatiable lust for
conquest, powers temporarily allied but both knowing full well
what their alliance was worth. In his Zurich speech Churchill
hardly mentioned the Soviet Union; it