Britain’s Role in Creating the EU: Was Contemporary Germany created by Britain?

Beyond Enemy Lines is the first study to survey in detail the cultural landscape of the British and American zones of Germany, exploring in particular the British and American writers and filmmakers who worked in Germany during the Occupation. Artists, who included W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder and Humphrey Jennings, were sent as part of the occupying armies to convert Germans to democracy through instilling British and American culture. Crucially, this was the moment when UNESCO was founded, with the belief that ‘since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed’. Right now it seems doubly important to look back at the moment that UNESCO was founded and at the crucial role played by Britain in creating the beginnings of the EU, partly as a result of their role in the Occupation of Germany.