When this poem was written, Europe was in the midst of a civil war between “hordes of beasts” (the Fascists) on one side and the anti-Fascists on the other, and its fate depended on the outcome of this conflict. The idea of a united Europe had been seized upon by both the Nazis and the Fascists in the period between the two wars, as well as during the war itself. Two examples of this are the Convegno Volta, a conference on Europe organized in 1932 under the auspices of the Fascist regime in Rome and the projects presented by Goebbels and Von Ribbentrop in 1942–3 for a “new Europe” to be united under Nazi dominion. Those who resisted the various types of Fascism and claimed to be “sons” of Europe could count on only a “frail myth”—if I may be allowed to extend Sereni's metaphor—and this myth projected a possible Europe and possible Europeanness into a completely uncertain future. At that time the sense of belonging to Europe was more of a wager than a reference to a given reality.

The tradition of a united Europe was centuries old, but the First World War had reduced it to ashes.