‘Don’t wait any longer if you want to be part of the family ...’ On 20 December 1941,Je suis partout, the leading weekly publication of the collaborationist press in France, publishes a cartoon condemning those (Jews, Gaullists and Freemasons) who it sees as preventing France from joining the new Europe. In the foreground: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy surround the new Europe, joined in the background by other countries with totalitarian regimes.

Italian poster calling for the establishment of a ‘New Europe’ based on the power of the workers and not serving capitalism and Judaism.

In 1941, the anti-Fascist activists Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli, placed under house arrest on the Italian island of Ventotene, draw up a manifesto for a free and united Europe.

The collaboration between the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupiers during the Second World War also resulted in the proliferation of propaganda posters denouncing the ‘communist threat’ from the East. This poster, displayed on walls across France in 1943, depicts Europe fighting to defend its civilisation against Bolshevism. Athena, the Greek goddess of war and symbol of European heritage, is depicted standing tall, facing the inexorable tide of "red hordes" sweeping across the continent.

On 25 March 1944, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Pan-European Movement and the Research Seminar for Post-War European Federation adopt in New York a draft federal-type constitution for a United Europe.

On 31 March, 29 April, 20 May and 6 and 7 July 1944, militants from resistance movements of several European countries meet secretly in Geneva to discuss the problems related to the reconstruction of a democratic, federally-based Europe after the war.

On 23 November 1944, after the liberation of Strasbourg, an American soldier is pictured in front of a Nazi propaganda poster. The poster attempts to discredit the Allies by claiming that ‘the Anglo-Americans and Bolsheviks bring chaos, misery, hunger, anarchy and unemployment,’ while National Socialism claims to ‘fight until the final victory for the freedom and bread of its people.’ (Angloamerikaner und Bolschewisten bringen / Chaos, Not, Hunger, Anarchie, Arbeitslosigkeit / Der Nationalsozialismus kämpft bis zum Endsieg / für Freiheit und Brot unseres Volkes!").