Postwar: The Dawn of Today's Europe

"Richard Mayne was a very remarkable man. He died not long ago, and I knew him pretty well. He was a passionately keen European, and he knew all the leading continental Europeans. He worked in the coal and steel community and at the commission in Brussels, but he was also a journalist and wrote several books. I found Postwar extremely interesting. It deals really with the whole period from the end of the war in 1945 to the Rome Treaty [1957] and all that. It’s a very positive account of the way Europe developed in that period – what made people want to have a united Europe – and it’s written from the perspective of someone who believed in it but who was also immersed in it and describes it really very well. It’s a kind of prelude to the Tony Judt book about the period after the war, which I might have chosen if I hadn’t thought of Richard Mayne. Mayne brings a special dimension. He understood what was going on in a way which not many British people did or do now. The understanding of what it was that made people want a European community is pretty poor. Well, I think I was fortunate enough, if that’s the right way to describe it, to be in the British Army as a young officer during the last year of the war, fighting in northwest Europe on into Germany, and then spending 18 months in immediate postwar journey, in various places including Berlin, and I saw on the ground the real enormity of what had been done to Europe. It’s very hard to describe, although it’s not hard to remember, how simply dreadful life was in postwar Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium – but particularly in Germany. I’ve never regretted having had that experience, but it’s that which made me come away thinking that this really must never be allowed to happen again and that the way to deal with it was to bring the countries of Europe closer together. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s not complicated at all. Although I never discussed it with him in detail, I think it was the same reasoning that made Ted Heath the convinced European that he was. He was older than me, I think a Brigadier in the army, also serving in Germany. A number of us had the same feeling, and I think having lived through that period is a great help to one’s understanding."