Die Internationale der Konservativen. Transnationale Elitenzirkel und private Außenpolitik in Westeuropa seit 1945. By Johannes Großmann . Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014. Pp. 651. Cloth €84.95. ISBN 978-3486765076.

Abstract

Conservatives in postwar Western Europe were excellent networkers and frequent border crossers. This is the key insight of Johannes Großmann's major study of transnational networks of conservative politicians, businessmen, and intellectuals. Großmann has sifted through documents from more than thirty archives in eight countries to "reconstruct" a "comprehensive picture" (4, 13-14) of four conservative organisations: Comité International de Défense de la Civilisation Chrétienne (CIDCC), Centre Européen de Documentation et d'Information (CEDI), Institut d'Études Politiques Vaduz, and Le Cercle, a discussion forum initiated by the Parisian lawyer Jean Violet-and the subject of the book's strongest chapter. These organizations operated, to some extent, like secret societies: they were removed from public view, but they provided transnational spaces of communication for conservatives in Western Europe and beyond. The geographical and chronological scope of the study is impressive, covering France, Spain, (West) Germany, and many other countries, and encompassing the entire period from 1945 to the post-Cold War era. Großmann offers a wealth of information about why these organizations were formed, how they were financed, who their leaders and members were, when and where they met, which topics were discussed at their meetings, as well as what functions they performed for their stakeholders. Over a nearly fifty-year timespan, more than 3,500 people were involved in their activities, with, for example, 15-20 per cent of CEDI members drawn from the aristocracy. Judging by the book's extensive index, well over a thousand individuals make an appearance here, some of them in the form of short, lexicon-style biographies. This does not always make for exciting reading-the exotic allure of some of the venues that hosted meetings, such as El Escorial in Madrid, notwithstanding. But the result of Großmann's painstaking research is a well-structured and clearly presented