According to the Großraumtheorie (theory of greater space) developed by the German legal scholar Carl Schmitt in 1939, international law has been subject to dramatic changes since the end of World War I. Schmitt argues that greater spaces have evolved on the international plane, all of which being dominated by the leading political role of a Reich. Although not losing its legal personality, the State has been displaced by the Reich as the decisive subject of international law. Additionally, Schmitt draws a comparison to the well-known Monroe-doctrine by saying that every Reich is under an obligation to refrain from intervening in the greater space of another Reich. Pursuant to Schmitt, the reason for the formation of greater spaces is to be seen in the incipient transboundary character of distant power supplies and inter-state economy. Technical improvements in those fields have made it inevitable for supranational structures to take over States' functions.

Against this background a legal view has emerged in modern times that the European Union is in its origins a product of national socialist ideology and that it is about to develop into a greater space. Amongst others this view has strongly been advocated by the British author John Laughland in his book "The Tainted Source". According to Laughland, Germany and France use the process of European integration as a pretext to build up a central-European greater space in which the two nations will hold supremacy. Laughland argues that European integration does not only tie in with European ideas developed in the Third Reich but also implements these ideas on today's association of sovereign States. The present essay deals with Laughland's reasoning against the background of the Großraumtheorie. It comes to the conclusion that albeit remarkable parallels with national socialist thinking on Europe, the European house does neither rest on the Großraumtheorie in particular nor on totalitarian ideology in general.