Fighting on all Fronts (24 page)

Possibilities for struggle were shown in the aftermath of the 1934 revolt when women took the initiative and organised a large-scale rent strike in Rotterdam, which made small gains.
De Tribune
wrote: “Women are fighting on many fronts, but do not get the respect that they deserve”.
¹⁵

It was into this charged atmosphere that Dutch fascism now stepped. Later it was suggested this was “alien to Dutch nature”. But the reactionary ideology and organisation composing Dutch fascism were overwhelmingly home-grown. The right prepared the ground, blaming the current malaise on parliamentary democracy. The liberal
Haagse Post
wrote for example: “The best elements of the people are waiting for a Man that will liberate the Netherlands from the tyranny of party politics”.
¹⁶

The National Socialist Movement (
Nationaal Socialistische Beweging
, NSB) was founded in November 1932. Its lack of overt anti-Semitism has led some to doubt the NSB’s initial fascism, suggesting it used the “Italian model”. This not only underplays the violence of Mussolini’s movement but crucially the omnipresence of anti-Semitism in Dutch society.

Jews were always a tiny minority—65,000 in Amsterdam around 1930. When Jewish refugees arrived from Germany, however,

the image of the Jew as other was re-polished until it shone with a glare more striking and venomous than before… In the Protestant and Catholic press ambivalent feelings towards the anti-Semitism in the Third Reich predominated. On the one hand systematic banishment of the Jews from German society and anti-Jewish violence and persecution were severely denounced. But on the other hand those newspapers stressed more than once that the Jews had brought their misfortune upon themselves because of their unbelief and assimilation, their disproportional presence in the press and in the economic and financial world.
¹⁷

Although some Jews were NSB members, they were generally seen as second-rate citizens. Hence anti-Semitism was not a “selling point” at the start. The NSB embraced corporatism. Mussert created a veritable
leadership cult and paraded in a black military outfit. What made it fascist from the start were the NSB’s organised gangs of thugs, the WA (
Weerbaarheids Afdelingen
), modelled on Hitler’s paramilitary SA. The NSB’s message was mainly directed at a petty bourgeois and peasant audience.
¹⁸
While efforts to recruit workers led to nothing—many unions expelled NSB members—no organised counter-movement developed.

The monarchy did not distance itself from the Nazi movement. An important though symbolical gesture was when Queen Wilhelmina appeared on the balcony when on Budget Day (
Prinsjesdag
) 1932 Nazis from various organisations marched in front of the palace with their arms raised.
¹⁹

However, the establishment did not embrace fascism either. Rather they were content to keep it in reserve. For example, in the 1933 election Colijn rejected a formal alliance with the NSB, and only included them in a list of bodies civil servants were prohibited to be members of under pressure—the others on the list were left organisations. Colijn stated that if his government failed, “the terrain is free for National Socialism, in our country too”, adding: “Under the condition of good leadership, it would be possible to work with them”.
²⁰
The ban on fascists being members of the Civil Guard (
Burgerwacht
) was not upheld, and NSB mass rallies, so-called “Land Days”, took place under police protection.

The pre-war high water mark of the NSB was the 1935 provincial elections, when high unemployment and political crisis helped the NSB gain 8 percent
²¹
and grow to 50,000 members. However, the NSB then went into decline, attracting a mere 4 percent of the vote in the 1937 parliamentary elections. Membership plummeted and prominent members left. This was partly because of German events. Hitler’s suppression of churches led Dutch bishops in February 1934 to issue a Permanent Mandement formally forbidding Catholics Nazi membership. The Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, in which Hitler murdered almost the entire SA cadre, showed the violent face of fascism, while in 1936 Mussolini brutally attacked Abyssinia.

The NSB, once propelled by the “successes” of Hitler and Mussolini, now found them to be a liability. Everyone from left to right accused the NSB of “betraying their country”. Furthermore, the worst part of the economic crisis was over by 1936. The need for radical change seemed less urgent for the petty bourgeoisie and fears of revolution were subsiding. Anti-communism consolidated the social divisions and swept all behind the elite and the monarchy. Mussert was put aside by all forms of Dutch nationalism—but neither completely nor for good.

When Hitler invaded on 10 May 1940, the country was militarily weak. The German army took just five days to conquer the country, the bombing of Rotterdam hastening an already certain surrender. The invasion cost the lives of 2,200 soldiers and sailors and 2,159 civilians.
²²
The whole Dutch army were made prisoners of war. Most officers were released on their “word of honour” that they would not take part, “directly or indirectly”, against German rule. While the army was dismissed, 60,000 remained—they were unemployed. Of those, 500 were allocated to Germany’s
Organisation Todt
and 3,000 soldiers plus 500 officers went to the “
Waffen SS
and such”.
²³

The response of different sections of the population depended on wealth and politics. Queen Wilhelmina fled to London to save her possessions and the colonial empire from Nazi control. She became the central figurehead for Dutch nationalism. General Winkelman remained in place as deputy head of state. He was previously a military adviser to Philips, a central Dutch industrial enterprise. Winkelman introduced martial law in April 1940, arresting NSB members but also people on the left.
²⁴

Before the invasion all state civil servants received a secret directive:

The authorities would strive, in the interest of the population, to continue performing as good a job as possible under the changed circumstances. The government-issued directive assumed that the tenure of office was in the interests of the population. The associated disadvantage that “partly… they serve the interests of the occupier” was in general “considered less than the greater disadvantage that could arise for the population from the non-operation of its own administration”. If, however, the official remaining in function would prove such services to the enemy, that this may be considered greater than the benefit connected for the population to his staying, then he will have to leave his post.
²⁵

The latter caveat proved a dead letter. In June 1940, when the general secretaries of the departments worried about “incorrect behaviour towards German citizens”, they instructed the police to act forcefully. “Endangering cooperation between German authorities and Dutch authorities, that was also, as much as possible, pursued from the German side, was at odds with Dutch interests”.
²⁶

Hitler’s reasons for occupying the Netherlands were mainly military, but there were economic benefits too, both for the Nazi regime and a
minority of Dutch. The German war economy had a growing demand for food and it was hoped that Dutch agricultural surpluses would go to Germany, though due to the Allied blockade and labour shortages production declined.
²⁷
Already in 1940, 99,600 Dutch workers were working in Germany. On 1 April 1942 Duty to Work (
Arbeidsdienstplicht
) was introduced, the same year 162,800 workers were deported for work. On 25 August a 72-hour working week was introduced.
²⁸
“The country was ransacked: factories were dismantled and shipped to Germany. Metals, clothing, textiles, bicycles, food and produce, cattle and livestock, all were sucked into the German war machine”.
²⁹
The 1942 large-scale defence works against possible British invasion pushed labour conditions back to semi-slavery. In March a regulation was introduced that any Dutch inhabitant could be demanded to work outside the country. In 1943 young men had to report for
Arbeitseinsatz
.

Not all wealth was exported. The German empire needed the Dutch economy, mainly for agriculture but also for industrial products (including military products). This demanded at least some economic return. “The value of exports to Germany grew from 159.2 million guilder in 1938 to 313.1 million in 1940…497.1 in 1941…peaking at 523.3 million in 1943. At the same time the value of German exports to Holland rose from 308 million in 1938 to a peak of 500 million in 1941, whereafter it declined again to pre-war levels”.
³⁰
The mid-war change in export balance and worsening labour conditions would bring the Nazis into increasing conflict with social groups. But before occupation ended, alas, blood had to flow. In the Netherlands the years 1940-1945 would cost an estimated 209,648 lives.
³¹

The Jewish population was targeted early on. From October 1940 all employees in government and local administrations and public institutions such as schools and universities were required to complete an “Aryan declaration” (
Ariërverklaring
) indicating whether they or their spouses had “Jewish blood”. Refusal to sign was one of the first acts of disobedience, but few refusals occurred.
³²
Most alarmingly, 12 out of 17 members of the Supreme Court signed and its Jewish president was removed without one voice being raised. From June 1942 onwards “the Germans began a systematic deportation of Dutch Jews.” They succeeded in murdering 105,000 out of 140,000, “a higher percentage than any other western European country”.
³³

However, some Jews were too useful to deport such as Hirschfeld, general secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry. In 1939 the Dutch authorities wondered about keeping a Jew in such an elevated position, but Germany’s Nazi minister Funk had already honoured him:

Once Winkelman was removed and interned, the path was cleared for the
Rüstungsinspektion
Niederlande, an institution that brought harmonious cooperation between Dutch business and the Wehrmacht. In four months, the summer of 1940, the Wehrmacht signed contracts worth ƒ 740,000,000 for arms supplies with Dutch businesses. And that was just the beginning. The Dutch business community has, led by Hirschfeld, performed armament orders for Germany throughout the war… Didn’t aircraft manufacturer Fokker in Amsterdam also repair the wings of German Junkers-52 bombers and, after all, didn’t that pride of the nation—the famous Philips Company of Eindhoven—supply transmitters and radio receivers to the Luftwaffe of Nazi Germany long before the war?
³⁴

As Jan Rogier wrote, Hirschfeld:

could cover up all economic collaboration, knew how to break illegal sabotage and trade and—being a great admirer of Saint-Simon, moved by the “needs of the great masses”—strove for close collaboration with the occupier. And the man that called protesting against the Jews “a waste of time”, though he was one of the first in the Netherlands to know about the mass executions in Eastern Europe, dares tell Lou De Jong in 1961 that he thought the board of the Jewish Council were “naïve people”. No, Hirschfeld was not naïve, he was criminal.
³⁵

Hirschfeld was not an isolated case. Leaders of the Jewish Council such as Abraham Asscher and David Cohen administrated the persecution and deportation. They had their own class interests. Asscher, who owned a diamond factory, said: “Let’s be honest, in the vicinity of Waterloo Square there are plenty of little men that are no jewel to the Jewish people and many youngsters idle where strict labour duty would do good”.
³⁶
Asscher and Cohen, however, would still be deported themselves, but survived the camps to stand trial later.

The right-wing media, even underground, went along in the anti-Semitic current. “In practice,
Trouw
voiced the views of the ‘illegal’ ARP”.
³⁷
Trouw
was originally orthodox Protestant, but with a “Christian national” profile. It wrote that among Jews in hiding there was “a large percentage of weaklings and nervous, egoistic, dishonest and inferior individuals”.
³⁸
Aiding them despite that was top-down “charity”, not
solidarity.
Vrij Nederland
took a more liberal view—“The poison of propaganda has affected us unknowingly”—adding “of course there are evil elements amongst Jews, just as non-Jews [but] given the shocking number of Dutch staying aside and waiting, there is no single reason to position ourselves above the Jews”.
³⁹

Although they had largely ignored the Jewish question, Communist papers paid more attention to the pogroms and deportations than all other media combined. On 24 June 1942
De Tribune
called upon Jews to participate in the national struggle. The editorial of the first
De Waarheid
(“The Truth”) declared: “No fascism in the Netherlands! No racial hatred or anti-Semitism with which the Nazis want to poison our people!”
⁴⁰

The structure of the Dutch underground partly mirrored the pre-war social divisions. Communists, religious activists and others formed cells, distributing their own literature and collaborating where there was mutual trust. Groups operated on a provincial scale, rather than locally. Originally the number of resistance fighters amounted to a couple of hundred. After the turn of the war in 1943 the resistance grew reaching 25,000 in September 1944.
⁴¹

The underground consisted of three main groups: the communists (CPN), later part of the Resistance Council (RVV), Fighting squads (
Knokploegen
, LO-LKP) and Order Service (
Ordedienst
, OD).

With around 9,000 members in 1940 the Communist Party had already developed illegal structures and took to operating in their preferred five-strong cells.
⁴²
The core of the organisation was formed by the unemployed and industrial workers. After Hitler attacked the USSR, communist cells carried out attacks on buildings killing Nazi chiefs and collaborators and distributed
De Waarheid
, which had a print run of 12,000.
⁴³