Charlemagne, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800, was a violent religious bigot whose imperial and religious ambitions led to the deaths of thousands. The European Union’s Charlemagne Mythology was cultivated by the Nazis and the Charlemagne Prize was launched after the war by “former” Nazis.
In contrast to the violent Charlemagne the English Christian, Boniface, from Crediton in Devon, set forth to Christianise the German tribes and unlike the merciless, murdering, empire building Charlemagne, he used only his bible and his persuasive powers as a man of God. He was murdered in what is now Holland and his bible which is today in the Cathedral city of Fulda, ostensibly bears the mark of the sword blow which killed him.
Charlemagne, on the other hand, was from the ‘Christianity by the sword’ school of diplomacy and born of a Frankish warrior aristocracy, which had been Christian since the 6th century. Having deposed his brother in 77I AD ‘Charles the Great’ (whose throne is still in Aachen) started his campaign of bloody conquest of Saxony, Bavaria and Lombardy. In 782 AD 4,500 prisoners were murdered by Charlemagne’s army in Northern Germany.
The Nazis certainly adopted a suitable model for their murderous ambitions, for Charlemagne also did not hesitate to slaughter those who refused to believe in his God or indeed believed in no God. Charlemagne’s edicts included:
“If anyone follows pagan rights, let him pay with his life.”
“If there is anyone of the Saxon people unbaptised let him die.”
“If anyone is unfaithful to our Lord let him suffer the penalty of death.”
So much for the religious figure whom the European Union chooses to name its principal political prize after! It is bestowed with great ceremony each year on Ascension Day in Aachen. The Eurofederalist class sustains and annually awards the Charlemagne Prize to politicians who forced the integration of Europe because that prize and that aim ostensibly contrasted with the past evils of European Fascism. That is a lie – for the Charlemagne Mythology was created by the Nazis and re-created after the second world war by those who had been political leaders under the Nazis.
From the ambition of Josef Retinger to create a central European Catholic empire (for which he was expelled as a war danger from both France and Britain during the First World War) to the 1940s religious exterminations of non Catholics in Yugoslavia by the Croatian Ustashe (puppets of the Nazis and Italian Fascists) to the 1990s ethnic cleansing of 300,000 Orthodox Serbs from Croatia and the massacres by Croats of Bosnian Muslims, the influence of Charlemagne has been sustained into the 20th and 21st centuries. The founder of modern Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, wrote in a 1989 book “Genocide is a natural phenomenon, it is commanded by the Almighty in defence of the only true faith”. Croatia, the most ethnically pure state in Europe, is called the “Jewel in the Crown of Roman Catholicism” by the Vatican!
CHARLEMAGNE PRIZE HOLDERS
Those honoured with the Charlemagne Prize include prominent European politicians, heads of state and government, amongst others Jean Monnet (after whom major Professorial Chairs at Universities all over Europe and the UK are sponsored), Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Vaclav Havel, Roy Jenkins, Edward Heath, Tony Blair, Donald “place in hell” Tusk and Bill Clinton.
The latter shows the extent to which the American Democratic Party has always pushed the destruction of European nation states. Joseph P Kennedy was a great supporter of Adolf Hitler and his son, John F. Kennedy, pushed MacMillan towards the EEC in the 1960s and the Obama administration urged the continued sacrifice of British democracy and sovereignty for the sake of US industry. (Standard Oil, General Motors and Ford inter alia greatly profited from collaboration with the Nazis in the 1930s and early 1940s – see my book Europe’s Full Circle)
NAZI ORIGINS
Those honoured by the Charlemagne Prize (the first was Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Founder of the Pan-European Union) are chosen by the “The Charlemagne Prize Society (Karlspreisgesellschaft), a circle of influential members of the Aachen establishment whose discussions are secret. It was re-established in 1949 by the efforts of the Aachen textile merchant, Kurt Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer, who had previously been a member of the Nazi Party and of five other Nazi organisations, maintained that he had always tended to a “fundamental belief in Europe”. The Charlemagne Prize Society was founded by him with the intention of awarding a “European prize which should be associated with the Imperial Ideal (Reichsidee) of the Emperor Charlemagne”.
The Nazis legitimised their plans for a European New Order with heavily emphasised allusions to Charlemagne. The post war image of Charlemagne as “Unifier of the Christian West” was preceded by his Nazi portrayal as “Unifier of the German tribes”. Charlemagne was compared with Hitler, his Reich and Greater Germany. The Nazis identified his policy with the Germano-centric New Order of Europe and cited his campaign against the Avars in support of their own war of annihilation in the East.
The then Gauleiter , Josef Grohe, declared at a celebration (Feierstunde) on the twelve hundredth anniversary of Charlemagne’s birth in April 1942 that Aachen was the “starting point for the formation of the German people”.
The Charlemagne Prize Proclamation of 1949 and the official speeches of the Aachen burgomasters of the early Fifties are heavily stamped with national (“voelkisch”) thinking. They show the Charlemagne prize had become associated with the folk-myth of Charlemagne and the German Reich.
This is clearly exemplified by the career of the Aachen Professor of Philosophy, Peter Mennicken, (who took over the professorship previously occupied by an expelled Jew) who had authoritative influence over the symbolism of the Charlemagne prize and the “liturgy” of its award ceremonies. Mennicken joined the SA (Storm Troopers) in 1933 and the Nazi Party in 1937. He used his lectureship at the Technical High School of Aachen in the service of expansionist “Western research” and worked for two so-called “societies for (international) understanding” which were informal offshoots of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, used for German propaganda in the Netherlands and Belgium.
This would serve as a bridge into the post war era. Mennicken succeeded in making a clerical-conservative new edition of his “Aachen mysticism” after 1945.
CHARLEMAGNE HOUSE IN SUSSEX
During the 1999 elections to the European Parliament the organisation which spent vast sums of money praising the wonders of the European Commission and the European Union was called “The Charlemagne Group of Companies”. It was based at “Charlemagne House” in Hove, Sussex.
I suppose it is possible that British recipients of this prize like Tony Blair, Edward Heath and Roy Jenkins had no idea who Charlemagne was and what he did and therefore what significance he has for those on the continent whose aim it is to destroy the self-governing nations of Europe.
After a German radio station’s listeners complained that a prize devoted to the ‘peaceful integration of Europe’ could be awarded to Blair who had killed over 2,000 Serb civilians (including 60 Albanian Kosovans) and had deliberately bombed and killed journalists in a Serb television station, a spokesman for the Charlemagne prize told the London Evening Standard “the prize does not refer to peace in the strictest sense of the word”!
The reason why this prize to promote European integration is not called the Hitler Prize or the Napoleon Prize is firstly because people can remember the evil deeds of these two ‘European leaders’ and secondly because their attempts to ‘unite Europe’ failed. Charlemagne on the other hand was crowned Holy Roman Emperor long before the printing press and long enough ago for even historians never mind voters to remember his deeds. Charlemagne did succeed – for a while – in creating a European superstate.
Charlemagne’s bloody conquest of most of central and western Europe having been achieved in the name of Christianity, he was advised by the eminent English theologians – in particular Alquin – that killing people was not a very good way of converting them. Inspired by the intellectual liberalism of Bede and the theological centres of Jarrow and Lindisfarne, Charlemagne officially renounced violence in 789 and he turned to education through monastic teaching.
(The European Union, now that the democratic constitutions of the nations have been destroyed took to propagandising in British Schools and Universities but such Saul to Paul conversions are never convincing).
This latter, educational phase of Charlemagne’s empire building cannot of course erase his original murderous conquests. Nor can such politicised ‘education’ (so akin to that practised today by the European Union) be regarded as a harmless activity. That today, among the new Charlemagnes of the ‘integrating’ European Union, such a man can be revered, the Nazi origins of the prize be so ignored and that a British Prime Minister could be honoured to receive a ‘Charlemagne Prize’ is extraordinary.
It is no surprise that the latest extreme political expression of hatred for the UK should come from Donald “a special place in hell” Tusk, President of the European Council and recent winner of the Charlemagne Prize.
This article is taken from chapter 9 of “And into the Fire – fascist elements in post war Europe and the development of the European Union” and chapter 4 of “Fascist Europe Rising” both available as ebooks from Amazon or direct as physical copies from [email protected]
