This thesis analyses the European Postal and Telecommunications Union, founded in Vienna in October 1942 under the leadership of the Axis powers. Both technocratic internationalism and the propaganda term ‘New Europe’ found points of contact there. The German postal administration authority used the union to extend Germany’s domestic postal system to intra-European postal services and to ensure German supremacy in the new postal Europe. After the war, a respective regional postal organisation was founded in both the Eastern and Western European blocs in the late 1950s. The content of the standardisation envisaged through this measure did not differ much in both blocs, but the way in which the standardisation was carried out did.
International infrastructure cooperation and technocratism
The New Europe’ propaganda
From propaganda to concrete projects: conflict or cooperation?
The German actors: between life-long public servants to fast climbers in the profession
Setting the agenda to create a European postal union within the Reichspostministerium (1940-1941)
Presenting the project to the world outside the Reichspost
The European Postal and Telecommunications Union as an Axis project – From a working group for European telecommunications to a European postal union (1940-1941)
Bilateral agreements as a tool of integrating the occupied and dependent countries into the EPTU
Opening the envisioned union to the rest of Europe: Successes and failures
