When Winston Churchill called for European unity in neutral Zurich

Churchill on his way to deliver his address at the University of Zurich, September 19, 1946. Keystone

In September 1946, Winston Churchill delivered a famous speech in Zurich, calling for “a kind of United States of Europe”. What became of his idea – and why did he present it in Switzerland, of all places?

Switzerland is home to many international organisations. But when it comes to getting involved in them, the country has historically been hesitant. It is not a member of the European Union (EU), and there are no signs of this changing. And it only joined the United Nations (UN) in 2002, after 189 states had already done so.

In 1946, just a few months after the first ever UN General Assembly, Winston Churchill, who had led Britain through the Second World War, was in Switzerland. In this year of peace, the possibility of change was in the air – and Churchill duly set a milestone when on September 19, at the University of Zurich, he called for a United States of EuropeExternal link.

“I always say there are two origins of Europe. Churchill’s speech is one of them,” says Birte Wassenberg, a historian at the University of Strasbourg who specialises in the history of European organisations. But how did it come about that the idea of European unification was proposed in Switzerland of all places?

For Wassenberg, the Zurich location – which she describes as a “good choice” – has to be seen in the context of the incipient Cold War. “Switzerland was chosen because of its classic neutrality – it was an attempt at a speech for peace on neutral European soil,” says the academic.

A speech not for the Swiss

Martin Conway, a professor of contemporary European history at the University of Oxford, agrees on the logic of the neutral location. “It doesn’t seem to me that Churchill is in any way giving a speech to the Swiss – he’s giving it to a kind of post-war European political elite, who he’s urging to look beyond immediate problems and to focus on building a new world”, Conway says.

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Today, meanwhile, Churchill’s speech is often associated with the roots of the EU – but it is at least as directly connected to the creation of the Council of Europe in 1949.

Churchill said in Zurich that there was a need to “build and fortify” the UN. But he also called for more. “We must re-create the European family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe, and the first practical step will be to form a Council of Europe,” he said. His goal: a Europe which is “as free and happy as Switzerland is today”.

“Let Europe arise!” Churchill speaking at the University of Zurich. Getty Images

And if at first not all states were ready to “join a union”, it would have to be done with those who wanted to and could, Churchill said. He envisioned France and Germany taking the lead on this – for Conway, a “striking” sign of confidence from a leader who had spent the previous years fighting Nazi Germany.

Beyond this, Great Britain, the US and Soviet Russia should become the “friends and sponsors” of the new Europe and “champion its right to live”, Churchill said.

As such, the Soviet Union was explicitly addressed; Churchill saw its participation as essential to a good outcome. “The Council of Europe initially tried not to integrate into the Cold War blocs,” says Wassenberg. But “the Soviet Union did not accept this.”

At the Congress of Europe in The Hague, held in May 1948 under Churchill’s patronage, there were still participants from states that would go on to form part of the Eastern Bloc, like Poland or Slovakia. “But with the closing of the Iron Curtain, they were denied membership in the Council of Europe in 1949”, says Wassenberg. The ten founding members of the Strasbourg-based organisation were all from Western Europe.

>> Read about how Switzerland was involved in the security arrangements that led to the OSCE:

Churchill the opposition leader

Wassenberg describes the portrayal of Churchill as a “founding father of the Council of Europe” as accurate, but with certain caveats.

For her, he is not the one outstanding champion of European unification. “He advocated for European strength; his speech on founding a European army perhaps fits in with this. But he himself was not part of the movement that truly strove for a united Europe.”

Wassenberg also points to the ambivalence in Britain’s relations with Europe – as well as Churchill’s changing positions depending on whether he was in government (1940-1945, 1951-1955) or the opposition (1945-1951), as was the case when he made his Zurich speech.

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Meanwhile the speech was also silent on what would become one of the Council of Europe’s core goals – democracy and its protection. While he talks about “tyranny” and “freedom”, the word “democracy” doesn’t appear at all. “It’s only in retrospect that people say what was being aimed at was democracy,” says Conway. “At the time, Churchill and others were basically talking about how we just recover from the war.”

Democracy in Europe after 1945

Yet Conway says the speech came at a pivotal moment for democracy in Europe. The decades after the Second World War saw democracy become the “default structure of Western Europe” – something which he also says was not at all inevitable. The term “democracy” was “rescued” from previous experiments like the Weimar Republic and repackaged – in constitutions and at the Council of Europe – as a “stable, moderate, inclusive form of government where everybody has a share in power. For Conway, this “very important redefinition of democracy” prevailed across Western Europe for the following decades.

>> Churchill did not only visit Zurich in 1946; his trip also brought him to other parts of Switzerland:

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Churchill arriving at Dübendorf Airport in Zurich on September 19, 1946. He would fly out from here the following day Keystone

Churchill and wife Clementine toast the people of Geneva Keystone

Waiting for a glimpse of Churchill in Geneva RDB/ATP/Maurer

Churchill with Swiss Foreign Minister Max Petitpierre Keystone

Churchill drives through Bahnhofplatz in Zurich RDB/ATP

A warm reception in Bern Keystone

Churchill gets a light at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva Keystone

Press photographers get ready for Churchill in Zurich RDB/ATP/Maurer

Churchill makes his famous victory sign in Geneva Keystone

Members of the crowd show their gratitude in Geneva RDB/ATP

Churchill delivers a speech on Münsterhof in the centre of Zurich on September 19 Keystone

Churchill entertaining the crowd that had filled Münsterhof Keystone

Churchill with (to his left) Max Huber, Swiss diplomat and former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross RDB/ATP

Keeping the crowd under control on Münsterhof in Zurich RDB/Milou Steiner

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In this light, Switzerland again provides an interesting backdrop for Churchill’s speech. On the one hand, the version of democracy which took hold in Western European capitals was not the Westminster two-party model favoured by Churchill. Yet neither was it by any means the type of direct democratic model associated with Switzerland. In Germany, especially, there was great distrust of the popular will after the rise of national socialism, Conway explains. Ultimately, he says, the post-war democratic turn was a “collective and pragmatic act by the political elites of Western European states […] with very little emphasis on consulting the people about it”.

The creation of the Council of Europe

Meanwhile, positions were taking shape at the international level about what European cooperation could actually look like – especially at the assembly which Wassenberg sees as the second origin of European unification: the 1948 Congress in The Hague.

At this Congress of Europe, over 800 delegates – including influential politicians such as former Swiss government minister Marcel Pilet-Golaz and future German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer – discussed routes towards European unification. “It became clear that one camp, the federalists, were more in favour of a united Europe, while the so-called unionists rather wanted an intergovernmental organisation,” Wassenberg explains.

The structure of the Council of Europe – especially its Committee of Ministers, where foreign ministers of member states meet – is “very intergovernmental”, as Wassenberg puts it. At the same time, federalists initially hoped that the parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg – where elected representatives from the countries gathered to discuss – could be used to create something more resembling a “United States of Europe”.

Wassenberg sees the 1951 formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) with six member states as a “counter-reaction” to initial conflicts, disappointments and differences in the Council of Europe. “People wanted to found something else that might have a better prospect of developing into a federal Europe,” says Wassenberg.

Ultimately, the ECSC, which – unlike the Council of Europe – had very concrete economic goals – provided the basis for the emergence of the EU, which today has 27 member states.

The hesitation of neutral countries

The Council of Europe, for its part, now has 46 member states – and, since 2024, a Swiss Secretary General for the first time: Alain Berset. Many these days know the Strasbourg-based organisation because of the European Court of Human Rights, which has existed since 1959. According to Wassenberg, the Council of Europe’s focus on human rights and democracy was inherent from its beginning. “After the end of the Second World War, people were convinced that, in addition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a special convention was needed in Europe – to prevent another Holocaust from ever happening again,” she says.

Churchill’s visit to Zurich was a major event which also drew crowds outside the university while he made his speech. UZH Archiv / Julius Aichinger

As envisaged in Churchill’s speech, the Council of Europe acted as a complement to the UN in its early years. “There was always more competition between the Council of Europe and the later EU than with the UN,” says Wassenberg. Today she sees major differences in the objectives of the EU and the Council of Europe, and these have enabled the Council of Europe to retain its relevance.

And although the Council of Europe once aimed to position itself as neutral in the Cold War, neutral states initially held back on joining, Wassenberg adds. Finland only joined in 1989. As for Switzerland, it signed up in 1961: 15 years after Churchill’s Zurich speech, but at least over 40 years before it joined the UN.

Edited by Marc Leutenegger/gw