68

The federalist movements founded at the time of the Second World War—the European Union of Federalists (Paris 1946), the World Movement for World Federal Government (Montreux 1947), and the Atlantic Union Committee (1949), which was born out of the Federal Union Inc. (1940) in the United States—were to dispute with and oppose each other from the end of the 1940s to the Cold War years. This article aims to explore their positions on European integration and more specifically on the projects of the European Defence Community (1950–1954) and the European Political Community, the failure of which led to a split in the Union of European Federalists in 1956. Having common cultural bases (the writings of Immanuel Kant, Alexander Hamilton, or Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) and the same final objective, the World Federation, they were able to gradually come closer together in Europe and then on a global level from the 1970s to the years following the fall of the USSR.