Hope and Despair, But Victory for those who Wait

Written by Donavan N. Johnston

In a person’s life, there are times when they must take a moment to reflect on what is going on around them.  They might be biking out in a distant land and it might occur to them where they are, and what had happened on that same land many years previous.  When I lived in the Netherlands, I did a lot of biking.  One day in the spring of 1999, I was out biking along with a friend and we were about twenty miles from the German border.  As we were pedaling along, I stopped and looked around.  My friend asked me what was wrong.  I told him nothing was wrong and that I was thinking that more than fifty-five years previous a war was going on right most plausibly where we were.  He pointed out to me that might be so, but now it was peaceful and that the land has healed itself.  Right then I took a step back and realized where I was.  I had been in the Netherlands for over a year then and had been asking people I met about the Second World War, because I was curious.  However it was not until that moment that while biking near Germany that I figured out there had been a war, but the war was no more.

War can bring out the best and worst in people.  When Hitler invaded the Netherlands in the fall of 1940, his people brought war to a place that during the First World War had remained neutral.  This time, however, the Netherlands was in danger and the people of the Netherlands started to fear what was coming.  In the Netherlands, there was the embryo of a Fascist movement that was beginning to establish a foothold in the society.  Yet there was also a strong Antifascist movement before the Second World War.  When Hitler invaded the Netherlands, his Fascist movement became stronger and the Germans started to find allies among the Dutch people.  The fact of the matter is that a strong Fascist movement did occur in the Netherlands during the Second World War.  Ultimately however, the Antifascist movement in the Netherlands did prevail.  Its ultimate success came impart to the moral support shown by the Dutch Queen, the Dutch underground movement which saved the Jews, the assassination of key Fascists leaders, the conducting of Sabotage, and the help of the Western Allies.  Each side has their own goals, but in the end only one set of ideas and philosophy could win.

     The Fascist movement in the Netherlands was indeed quit strong.  Anton A Mussert founded the movement in 1931 under the name The National Socialist Movement of the Netherlands or N.S.B.  The party operated independently of the German National Socialist Party, even though the two organizations sometimes had common meetings and activities.  The number of members varied from 23,700 to 35,000 during its peak in the Second World War. One of the Part’s platforms included a statement in favor of freedom of religion, based on Christianity.  Hence the N.S.B accepted Jews in its ranks, although many N.S.B. members were anti-Semites.  Originally the ideas and principles of the N.S.B. were more closely related to those of Italian fascism with its restorative tendencies.  However, during the Second World War the Party increasingly drifted toward to the German Nazi ideology as it operated under Hitler’s control.[1] The Dutch Nazis numbered less then 30,000, yet they were strong in spirit.  So certain were the Nazis of having won the war that they began to sing songs of how England was next to be conquered.[2]

As the Dutch party was becoming more and more like Hitler’s, the invasion and occupation of the Netherlands seemed a logical next step.  Hitler wanted to obtain the Netherlands in part because he believed the Dutch were the best representatives of the Germanic race outside of Germany.[3]  Therefore the spread of German fascism came into the Netherlands because the people from Germany looked Dutch and vice versa. A second reason for Hitler’s invasion in the Netherlands was the land itself.  Most of the country was perfectly flat; virtually all the land was either built on or under cultivation.[4]  Parts of the Dutch country side had long distances were no trees or other impediments.[5]

The final reason why Hitler’s invasion was successful was that the Dutch government was not there to defend itself.  Queen Wilhelmina had departed the Netherlands in May of 1940, allowing Hitler to set the Dutch under a “Reichskommissar,” who under direct control of Berlin wielded the supreme power on the land.  However, there was not a policy excluding the possibility of the formation of a Dutch Nazi government later.[6]

Despite some domestic support, the German leaders and their followers soon upset the very nature and order of the Dutch society.  Within the first year of the occupation, the Germans dissolved such groups as the Masonic Lodges, the Rotary Club, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, and the Jehovah Witnesses.[7]  According to Dutchman Jan Ackerman, who was alive during the occupation of the Netherlands, “They tried to take away everything we enjoyed and thought was good for us.  The Fascists were trying to control us and none of us truly enjoyed being this control.[8]” The Germans were changing the Dutch people’s lives.  They were making their lives fit German needs. Ria, who also lived in the Netherlands during the occupation; stated that “We were forced to live and do as the Germans wanted, if we did not we would be shot to death.” She said that as a young woman she lived in fear that the Nazis would take her away for their purposes.  Her family always did was the Nazis expected of them.  Otherwise, they knew she would be taken away.[9]

As the Germans came and grew in number in the Netherlands their movement increased.  Some of the Nazis began to regulate what the Dutch could and could not do.  Being in late 1940 the National flag was forbidden to be displayed, so were the orange flags of the royal house.  The Dutch population, which has to live for weeks under constant artillery and air bombardment when the Nazis invaded, suffered heavy casualties.  People lived in cellars and basements without electricity, often without water.[10]  In late 1940 the Nazis also began to regulate the distribution of food.[11]   By the end of 1940 the Dutch had and were nothing except for hope, but at times this even seemed to be fading.

The first hope the Dutch had was in their Queen Wilhelmina.  While she was exile in Great Britain, the Dutch people found hope and comfort in hearing her voice when they could. For a nation that was vanquish and harassed the messages she gave on the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) radio were like rays of hope for the Dutch people’s future.[12]  In her first public address to her nation from Britain Queen Wilhelmina characterized that there was as a struggle between the forces of good and evil.  In other words, there must be no compromise with Hitler and his gang of fellow criminals.[13]  The fact that the Queen’s mother, husband and son-in-law were of German descent did not stop her from contemptuously call the Germans the Huns.  Once she called for her people to “beat them on their heads.[14]”  Another example of resistance she encouraged was a simple one.  In the summer of 1940, she and the Dutch people used their simple greeting of hello, or hallo in Dutch, as an acronym.  In that summer, and the ones to follow, this simple word took on the meaning “Hang alle landverraders op,” which means “Hang all Traitors.[15]”

While in exile, the Queen set her own goals and standards for her people.  Although General Eisenhower refused to accept a Dutch Commander-in-Chief, the Allies named a Dutch general head of the Military Administration.  The Queen also helped and supported the Dutch underground movement, even inviting its members to come to London to discuss postwar political arrangements.[16]  The Queen tried to show her support and did what she could to give her people hope.  She tried to rally her people and show them she was not giving up.  Though she had German blood in her veins, to her people she was pure Dutch.  She has her ideas and philosophy, and she might have not gotten all she wanted, but she made her points known.  Her attitude may have represented one of the drops of rain to beat down the Antifascist movement, but it helped to wash away the Fascist from her land.

Another factor that helped remove the Fascists from the Netherlands during the Second World War was the Dutch underground movement.  The underground Antifascist movement came from the people and their commitment to be free.  One of the reasons the Antifascists were successful was the failure of the Fascist movement.  As one author put it, “The Dutch are and have always been a very sectarian nation, and even the comparatively small percentages of outright Fascists were split into three groups.[17]”  This splintering of groups made it easier for the Antifascist people to overcome their Fascist rulers.

The Dutch underground was also very well organized.  One way they got their message across was by organizing massive strikes.  The first strike by the citizens of Amsterdam in February of 1941 was to protest the persecution of their Jewish co-citizens. The second strike came in the spring of 1943 the Germans announced that all members of the Dutch armed forces would have to report or be shipped to prisoner-of-war camps in Germany.  The third strike of railway men occurred in September of 1944.[18] These strikes helped cripple Germany and gave the people hope that the sun would soon come out.

The underground movement used three other main tactics in their work of ridding the Netherlands of Fascists. The first was the most commonly known method of hiding the Jews.  The famous stories of Anne Frank and Corrie ten Boom are very insightful, but they do not explore the whole story.  The Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Ouderduikers, or L.O. as they commonly called it, was one of the largest organizations of the Resistance.  Founded by a homemaker in 1942, this group helped Jews and others escape into hiding.  These groups also helped by placing Jewish infants and children with local Christian families.[19]

Another way the resistance movement worked to rid the Fascists from the Netherlands came from the assassination of key German and Fascist leaders.  Starting in 1943, there was a wave of assassinations, chiefly of Dutch National Socialist dignitaries.  The Counsel of Resistance also carried out executions and liquidations of German agents and Dutch traitors.  After the previously mentioned strike of 1943, the number of assassinations increased and by September of 1943 more than forty members of the Dutch Fascist party had been executed.  In 1944, more than 300 political assassinations occurred.[20]

The last technique the Dutch people used in fighting the oppressors was sabotage.  Many acts of sabotage began to occur soon after the capitulation of the Netherlands, but by the summer of 1940, the groups were small and underground.  The reason was most of these groups were found and arrested by the Germans before they could accomplish much of their work.

These underground sabotage groups were not alone in their fight again the Nazis.  The Allies supported the Dutch in their sabotage work and tried to help them out as they could.  Even the Soviet Union encouraged the Dutch to engage in partisan work, even sending one or two agents to help the Netherlands. 

The final group that helped the antifascists was the Western Allies.  The sabotage work that was done help the Allies find success in liberating the Dutch and the work hastened to help the troops liberating them.[21] By the fall of 1944, the Western front had reached the Dutch boarder.  The operation of freeing the Dutch people began in October of that year.  The fighting was slow and tedious and the offensive often came to a standstill.  When the Western Allies entered the Netherlands, their goal was to take Southern Holland, and work along the Maas and Waal Rivers.  One of the issues facing the Allied advancement was the famine that struck the Netherlands in the winter of 1944-1945 also know as “The Hunger-Winter.[22]”  This famine delayed any chance for the Allies to free the Netherlands before the end of the winter.  In the summer of 1944 Winston Churchill suggested that the Allies not free the Netherlands, favoring a plan that made the Ruhr and northern German plains the main objective.  According to this plan the loss of the Ruhr valley would automatically lead to the collapse of the Reich and Holland, Denmark and Norway would fall without further fighting. Yet with the capture of Arnhem, a Dutch border city in January of 1945, the plans of the Allies shifted back to liberating the rest of the Netherlands.[23] Four years previously Hitler’s invasion of England seemed inevitable, yet now the Allies stood at the gateway to a battered Third Reich.[24]

The Battle of Arnhem has been commemorated in the Holtz Word film, and is referred to as “A Bridge too Far.”  If there was a turning point in the Western Allies liberation of the Netherlands from both the Germans and the Nazis this was it.  After the West had liberated the Belgium City of Antwerp, the commanders had one goal in helping to liberate the Netherlands from the Fascists.  This goal was to go from Antwerp to Eindhoven and from Eindhoven to Nijmegen and then to Arnhem.[25] The thought behind this was that those three Dutch cities lye on the Maas and Waal Rivers and would stop any German traffic coming into the Netherlands. The original plan to take the city was to ”grab the bridges with thunderclap surprise.[26]” With the first attacks on the City of Arnhem occurred in September of 1944 and with the onset of the hunger-winter; the city came under siege for a period of five months. As the attack on Arnhem continued and the siege lay in, the Dutch in the inner city were aware that liberation would not come easily.[27]  Again, according to Dutchman Jan Ackerman who lived in Nijmegen during the War, “The Allies were trying to fight the Germans of that winter.  However, the famine and hunger that occurred did not allow my parents and other Dutch citizens to help or support the Allies.[28]”  Finally in the spring of 1945 after much fighting, the Western Allies were able to push the Germans out of Arnhem.  Soon after the fall of Arnhem the rest of the Fascist party’s strongholds were removed from the Netherlands.  By May of 1945, the Kingdom was free.

The Fascists in the Netherlands was a strong movement.  Before the War, the leaders of the Nazi party were gaining support, and after Hitler invaded in 1940, the number of people supporting the Fascists grew.  The Dutch people looked like Germans.  Their Queen had German blood in her and it seamed that is should have been easy for the Germans to waltz in and establish complete control over the Dutch, but that did not happen.  Their Queen, in exile in Britain, kept fighting, while the underground anti-Fascist movement went about doing its part. Through strikes, assassinations, and sabotage the underground did their part.  They also helped their Jewish friends out by hiding and taking care of their children.  Finally, the anti-Fascists received support from the Western Allies.  All three elements contributed to the liberation of the Netherlands, and each was vital in removing the Fascists from that land.