Abstract
Gebhardt offers a brief history of the exile-driven Christian Democratic Union of Central Europe, in which he played a leading role. Based out of Western Europe after World War II, East-Central Europeans like Gebhardt and his Polish Christian Labor Party worked to square American Cold War geopolitics, European identity and a deep commitment to the national sovereignty of their homelands. The way in which these exiles passed that blend of commitments on to subsequent generations—or rather, were partially blocked in doing so by their Western European colleagues—explains both the euphoric embrace of a united Europe after 1989 and a subsequent, dramatic turn away from Europe.
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Editors’ Suggestions for Further Reading
Gati, Charles. Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2006.
Goddeeris, Idesbald. “Exiles’ Strategies for Lobbying in International Organisations: Eastern European Participation in the Nouvelles Équipes Internationales.” European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire 11, no. 3 (2004): 383–400.
Jansen, Thomas and Steven Van Hecke. At Europe’s Service: The Origins and Evolution of the European People’s Party. Berlin: Springer/CES, 2011.
Łukasiewicz, Sławomir. Third Europe: Polish Federalist Thought in the United States, 1940–1970s. Translated by Witold Zbirohowski-Kościa. Saint. Helena, CA: Helena History Press, 2016.
Papini, Roberto. The Christian Democrat International. Translated by Robert Royal. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
Van Kemseke, Peter. Towards an Era of Development: The Globalization of Socialism and Christian Democracy, 1945–1965. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006.
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Gebhardt, S. (2018). The Christian Democratic Union of Central Europe. In: Kosicki, P., Łukasiewicz, S. (eds) Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64087-7_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64087-7_15
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