L'Italia e la scelta europea : la memoria della guerra, la Guerra fredda e la solidarietà tra i popoli

The memory of the world wars played a crucial role in pushing the Italian ruling class to join the first European Communities. The attempt of promoting "solidarity among peoples" was intimately linked to the goal of pacifying the continent. Thus, European unification as an antidote to war became an integral part of the proEuropean narrative. Between 1946 and 1953, the international framework, marked by the emergence of EastWest tensions, added to the memory of wars the risk of a conflict between the two blocs (particularly after the Korean War of June 1950, a watershed in the history of European integration). The remembrance of the war and the dreaded (new) war fostered an even more intense thematization of "(Western) European solidarity" as a resource for promoting the European integration process and, as we can be read in the Schuman declaration, making war in Europe "unthinkable". [Publisher's text].