‘Don’t wait any longer if you want to be part of the family ...’ On 20 December 1941,Je suis partout, the leading weekly publication of the collaborationist press in France, publishes a cartoon condemning those (Jews, Gaullists and Freemasons) who it sees as preventing France from joining the new Europe. In the foreground: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy surround the new Europe, joined in the background by other countries with totalitarian regimes.

Italian poster calling for the establishment of a ‘New Europe’ based on the power of the workers and not serving capitalism and Judaism.

In 1941, the anti-Fascist activists Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli, placed under house arrest on the Italian island of Ventotene, draw up a manifesto for a free and united Europe.

On 25 March 1944, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Pan-European Movement and the Research Seminar for Post-War European Federation adopt in New York a draft federal-type constitution for a United Europe.

On 31 March, 29 April, 20 May and 6 and 7 July 1944, militants from resistance movements of several European countries meet secretly in Geneva to discuss the problems related to the reconstruction of a democratic, federally-based Europe after the war.