Fortress Europe (German: Festung Europa) was a military propaganda term from the Second World War which referred to the areas of Continental Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, as opposed to the free United Kingdom across the Channel. It was used by both sides, but, due to their respective geographical locations, in a very different sense.
In British phraseology, Fortress Europe meant the Battle honour accorded to Royal Air Force and allied squadrons during the Second World War, but to qualify, operations had to be made by aircraft based in the British Isles against targets in Germany, Italy and other parts of nazi-occupied Europe, in the period from the fall of France to the Normandy invasion.
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World War II defenses
Simultaneously, the term Festung Europa was being used by Nazi propaganda, namely to refer to Hitler's and the Wehrmacht's plans to fortify the whole of occupied Europe to prevent invasion from the British Isles. These measures included the construction of the Atlantic wall, along with the reorganization of the Luftwaffe for air defense. This use of the term Fortress Europe was subsequently adopted by correspondents and historians in the English language to describe the military efforts of the Axis powers at defending the continent from the Allies.
Modern times
Outside of Europe, the phrase is sometimes used in the popular lexicon as a euphemism for the alleged impenetrability of European culture and government.[citation needed]
Within Europe, the most common use is as a pejorative description of the state of immigration into the European Union. This can be in reference either to the attitudes toward immigration, or the system of border patrols and detention centers used to make illegal immigration into the European Union more difficult.[1]
Since would-be immigrants are most often of non-European ethnicity, the phrase Fortress Europe is frequently used by proponents of permeable borders as a polemic reference to Nazi racial ideology and the violent history of European nationalism.[2]
See also
References
- ^ Indymedia.org: Autonomous rear Entrances to Fortress Europe?!
- ^ Phil Marfleet: "Nationalism and internationalism in the new Europe", International Socialism Journal, No. 84 (1999)
Their 'Fortress Europe' in fact draws upon ideas which earlier underpinned Europe's rival nationalisms. It has encouraged racism in general and helped to provide rationales for the extreme right, where the vocabulary of Nazism has reappeared in the form of demands for 'living space' and talk of the 'European home'.
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