(01 March 1997) Churchill, Donovan and Dulles
The origins of covert aid to European federalists may be traced back to Coudenhove-Kalergi. Like other prominent pan-Europeanists of the interwar period, typically Aristide Briand the French Foreign Minister, his ideas owed much to disillusionment caused by the First World War. Exiled to the United States in 1943, in March 1947, on the eve of the Marshall Plan address, he was successfully lobbying US Senators J.W Fulbright and E.D. Thomas for congressional support for the idea of European unity and succeeded in having motions passed in favour of a ‚United States of Europe‘ in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. Allen Dulles and William J. Donovan, who had joined Coudenhove-Kalergi‘s campaign for American support in 1947, now came together to create the short-lived Committee for a Free and United Europe designed to publicize European unity in the United States and to offer support to federalist groups in Europe.