The democratization of Western Europe in the Postwar: The example of veterans’ associations

The project examines the role played by associations in the democratization of Western Europe in the period after the Second World War. It is thus related to a broad body of literature that followed Alexis de Tocqueville in assuming that associations were conducive to democracy by cultivating virtues of societal coexistence. However, as political philosopher Mark Warren has shown, Tocqueville is not very specific in his explanation of how the connection between democracy and association actually works in practice. Nor does Tocqueville consider the possibility of anti-democratic associations. The existence of such associations, which sociologist Dylan Riley, for example, has examined using the example of fascist regimes in Italy and Spain, complicates the connection between democracy and association suggested by Tocqueville.
Post-war veterans' associations, the subject of this research, provide excellent material for examining the conditions under which associations develop positive or negative effects on a democratic order, particularly against the backdrop of the interwar years, when the claim to represent the “war experience” was used for anti-republican mobilization in organizations such as the “Stahlhelm” or the “Croix-de-feu”. Unlike Tocqueville, the project is less concerned with individual virtues than with the relationship between government and the governed, in which associations may play a role of some kind. The emergence of a “disciplined democracy” in the postwar period appears to be one aspect of a specific balance of the effects of association, as it developed in postwar Western Europe. The argument is developed on the basis of archival material (both state and private) from the history of West German and French veterans' associations from 1945 to approximately 1965.
The analysis focuses on two aspects in particular: firstly, the nature and degree of involvement of associations in political decision-making, to some extent the “actual” state of democratic rule. Secondly, it examines the language used to discuss and express this democratic government. These two aspects are not identical, but they are linked.
The first aspect can be approached with the help of sociologist Charles Tilly's reflections on the role of trust networks in democratization. According to Tilly, their partial involvement in the ruling order is a prerequisite for democratization. However, this cannot involve the complete integration of the networks, as this would result in the loss of the autonomous ability to agree or disagree, and thus the democratic act itself. Nor, however, can democratization be sought in the complete autonomy of the networks, which could then sidestep collective decision-making. This provides a measure with which to approach the veterans' associations. With this concept, one would have to see the anti-democratic effect of the Stahlhelm and similar associations in their capacity and willingness to withdraw themselves and their members from democratic decision-making. This is a different problem than the one found in the literature, which often focuses on political rhetoric.
This brings us to the second aspect mentioned above, because it is clear that the language used by the actors was not entirely unrelated to their mobilizations. The sources show that the public commitment to democracy that was widespread in the postwar period was not just empty rhetoric, but was polemically directed against specific opponents with the aim of achieving specific exclusions. These opponents, e.g., association officials burdened by their involvement in an authoritarian regime, now mobilized the vocabulary of democracy to counteract these exclusions. In this way, the degree of integration of the associations and the discourse on democracy interacted and influenced each other.
This form of democratization can be examined particularly well in moments of contact between German and French associations. Calling these contacts between former war enemies “European” was just as much a part of the vocabulary of democratization as the imitation of the state's steps toward European integration had something to do with the associations' relations with the government. The project refrains from adopting the federalist ideology that Europeanization and democratization are synonymous and mutually reinforcing phenomena. Instead, it asks where a concrete explanation for the coincidence of the two can be found in the actions of the associations.