As of this chapter the book turns to the period from the run-up to the take-off of European integration, the years 1947 to 1951. Against the backdrop of the emerging Cold War, the Americans, the British, and the Western Europeans get their hands dirty in actions of institution-building aimed at making a more stable and just post-war European order, centred around new and deeper forms of European and international cooperation. In fact, this was what one could call the unfolding of European integration. Moreover, this second part of the book tries to uncover deeper layers (of psychology and belief) in this history through three crucial sub-histories. This chapter deals with the first of these sub-histories. It traces how the coming about and the workings of the Marshall Plan gradually illuminated an institutional, economic, and political pathway for integration in Western Europe.

This chapter is the third and final building bloc of a wider reconstruction of the main economic, (geo)political, and ideational forces that enabled European integration to take off as of the spring of 1950, It describes the practical unfolding of European integration after the Second World War. This part of the book tries to uncover deeper layers (of psychology and belief) in this history through three crucial sub-histories. This chapter deals with the third of these sub-histories. It explains how—against the background of the beginnings of the Cold War and growing British aloofness in European affairs— ‘the (West) German re-entry’ became the driving force in the process of emerging European integration. This development crystallised first in the OEEC, subsequently through the EPU, and finally in the launch of the ECSC. This process was not only political and economic in nature, but also to a great extent intellectual via the deep influence of (German) ordoliberalism in the politics of the FRG and Christian Democracy in Western Europe.

This chapter is the second building bloc of a wider reconstruction of the main economic, (geo)political, and ideational forces that enabled European integration to take off as of the spring of 1950. It describes the practical unfolding of European integration after the Second World War. This part of the book tries to uncover deeper layers (of psychology and belief) in this history through three crucial sub-histories. This chapter deals with the second of these sub-histories. It traces how the coming about and the workings of the Marshall Plan gradually illuminated an institutional, economic, and political pathway for integration in Western Europe. This second sub-history shows how the gradual (self-)outmanoeuvring of the United Kingdom in matters of European cooperation happened to that country and the West, and how this worked as a catalyst for regional European integration and ‘the emergence of a continental West’.