Hitler's Cosmopolitan Bastard

Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi and His Vision of Europe

Martyn Bond

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780228005452
• eBook ISBN: 9780228007029
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the turbulent period following the First World War the young Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe, with no borders, a common currency, and a single passport. His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count's commitment to this cooperative ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler, who referred to him as a "cosmopolitan bastard" in Mein Kampf.

Communists and nationalists, xenophobes and populists alike hated the Count and his political mission. When the Nazis annexed Austria, the Count and his wife, the famous actress Ida Roland, narrowly escaped the Gestapo. He fled to the United States, where he helped shape American policy for postwar Europe. Coudenhove-Kalergi's profile was such that he served as the basis for the fictional resistance hero Victor Laszlo in the film Casablanca.

A brilliant networker, the Count guided many European leaders, notably advising Winston Churchill before his 1946 Zürich speech on Europe. A friend to both Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and President Charles de Gaulle, Coudenhove-Kalergi was personally invited to the High Mass in Rheims Cathedral in 1961 to celebrate Franco-German reconciliation. A provocative visionary for Europe, Coudenhove-Kalergi thought and acted in terms of continents, not countries.

For the Count, the United States of Europe was the answer to the challenges of communist Russia and capitalist America. Indeed, he launched his Pan-European Union thirty years before Jean Monnet set up the European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor to the European Union. Timely and captivating, Martyn Bond's biography offers an opportunity to explore a remarkable life and revisit the impetus and origins of a unified Europe.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Hitler’s Cosmopolitan Bastard: Why This Title?
• Introduction
• 1 European Father, Asian Mother
• 2 Siblings, School, Love, and Marriage
• 3 Thinking in Continents, Not Countries
• 4 Europe Answers His Question
• 5 Between Hitler and Mussolini
• 6 Pacifist and Freemason
• 7 Pan-Europa: Utopia or Reality?
• 8 Taking Europe to the Capitals
• 9 New Friends, New Enemies
• 10 European Patriots All
• 11 Triumph in France
• 12 Defeat in Germany
• 13 Last Stand on the Old Continent
• 14 Escape from Europe
• 15 Bringing America Onside
• 16 The United States of Europe?
• 17 Pushing Parliaments towards Power
• 18 An Open Conspiracy
• 19 Behind Churchill
• 20 Bringing Germany in from the Cold
• 21 Money Matters
• 22 The British Dilemma
• 23 ‘Mon cher ami, mon Président’
• 24 Europe’s Father, Europe’s Grandfather
• 25 Reaping Rewards in the Twilight Years
• 26 A Patron Saint for Europe
• Postscript
• The Coudenhove-Kalergi Family
• Notes
• Sources and Further Reading
• Index