Boris Johnson has been in hot water for comparing the European Union to a previous attempt at creating a unified Europe under Herr Hitler.

 As Boris pointed out he was not comparing the EU as it is now to what Hitler intended under NAZI Germany, merely that his was one of the previous experiments in a long line of such attempts before the European Economic Community was set up in 1957.

 But there is a closer link.  In 1942 when the German’s still thought they were going to win the war they produced a report entitled the Europaische Wirtschafts Gemeinschaft – which translates as theEuropean Economic Community.

 This report was written by various bankers and academics and laid out a plan for how Germany would manage the economies of the conquered countries of Europe after a German victory.  The report was drawn up under the leadership of Professor Walter Funk the Reich’s Economics Minister and President of the Reichsbank.

 The report contained sections on Agriculture, Industry, Employment, Transport, Trade, Economic Agreements, and Currency.  It proposed the ‘harmonisation’ of European currencies and a harmonised currency system.

 If this all sounds all very familiar it is because the basic plan for the European Economic Community of 1942 was very similar to the actual European Economic Community that came into existence in 1957 under the Treaty of Rome.

 The firs President of the European Commission was a German, Walter Hallstein, who was Germany’s youngest law professor at 29, and who served in the German army being captured in 1944. Herr Hallstein was a member of several nominally Nazi professional organizations, although he was not a member of the NAZI party itself.  

 What emerged as the European Economic Community in 1957 was planned created by the kind of people who would have run Europe’s economies if Germany had won the war, and their plans followed a very similar pattern.