Dutch resistance
The Dutch resistance to the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized as non-violent. The primary organizers were the Communist Party, churches, and independent groups. Over 300,000 people were hidden from German authorities in the autumn of 1944 by 60,000 to 200,000 illegal landlords and caretakers. These activities were tolerated knowingly by some one million people, including a few individuals among German occupiers and military.
The Dutch resistance developed relatively slowly, but the February strike of 1941 greatly stimulated resistance. The first to organize themselves were the Dutch communists, who set up a cell-system immediately. Some other very amateurish groups also emerged, notably, De Geuzen, set up by Bernardus IJzerdraat, as well as some military-styled groups, such as the Order Service. Most had great trouble surviving betrayal in the first two years of the war.
Dutch counterintelligence, domestic sabotage, and communications networks eventually provided key support to Allied forces, beginning in 1944 and continuing until the Netherlands was fully liberated. Of the Jewish population, 105,000 out of 140,000 were murdered in the Holocaust, most of whom were murdered in Nazi death camps. A number of resistance groups specialized in saving Jewish children. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust estimates that 215–500 Dutch Romanis were killed by the Nazis, with the higher figure estimated as almost the entire pre-war population of Dutch Romanis.
Definition
The Dutch themselves, especially their official war historian Loe de Jong, director of the State Institute for War Documentation, distinguished among several types of resistance. Going into hiding, was generally not categorized by the Dutch as resistance because of the passive nature of such an act. Helping these so-called onderduikers, people who were persecuted and therefore hid from the German occupiers, was recognized as an act of resistance, but more or less reluctantly so. Non-compliance with German rules, wishes or commands, or German-condoned Dutch rule, was also not considered resistance.Public protests by individuals, political parties, newspapers, or churches were also not considered to be resistance. Publishing illegal papers – something the Dutch were very good at, with 1,100 separate titles appearing, some reaching circulations of more than 100,000 for a population of 8.5 million – was not considered resistance per se. Only active resistance in the form of spying, sabotage, or with arms was what the Dutch considered resistance. Nevertheless, thousands of members of all the 'non-resisting' categories were arrested by the Germans and often subsequently jailed for months, tortured, sent to concentration camps, or killed.
Until the 21st century, the tendency existed in Dutch historical research and publications to not regard passive resistance as 'real' resistance. Slowly, this has started to change, in part due to the emphasis the RIOD has been putting on individual heroism since 2005. The Dutch February strike of 1941, protesting the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands, the only such strike to ever occur in Nazi-occupied Europe, is usually not defined as resistance by the Dutch. The strikers, who numbered in the tens of thousands, are not considered resistance participants. The Dutch generally prefer to use the term illegaliteit for all those activities that were illegal, contrary, underground, or unarmed.
After the war, the Dutch created and awarded a Resistance Cross to only 95 people, of whom only one was still alive when receiving the decoration, a number in stark contrast to the hundreds of thousands of Dutch men and women who performed illegal tasks at any moment during the war.
Prelude
Prior to the German invasion, the Netherlands had adhered to a policy of strict neutrality. The country had strong bonds with Germany, and not so much with Britain. The Dutch had not engaged in war with any European nation since 1830. During World War I, the Dutch were not invaded by Germany and the anti-German sentiment was not as strong after the war as it was in other European countries. The German ex-Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands in 1918 and lived there in exile. The German invasion, therefore, came as a great shock to many Dutch people. Nevertheless, the country had ordered general mobilization in September 1939. By November 1938, during the Kristallnacht, many Dutch people received a foretaste of things to come; German synagogues could be seen burning, even from the Netherlands,. An anti-fascist movement started to gain popularity – as did the fascist movement, notably the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging.Despite strict neutrality, which implied shooting down British as well as German planes crossing the border into the Netherlands, the country's large merchant fleet was severely attacked by the Germans after 1 September 1939, the beginning of World War II. The sinking of the passenger liner SS Simon Bolivar in November 1939, with 84 dead, especially shocked the nation.
German invasion
On May 10, 1940, German troops started a surprise attack on the Netherlands without a declaration of war. The day before, small groups of German troops wearing Dutch uniforms had entered the country. Many of them wore 'Dutch' helmets, some made of cardboard as they did not have enough originals. The Germans deployed about 750,000 men, three times the strength of the Dutch army; some 1,100 planes and six armoured trains. They destroyed 80% of the Dutch military aircraft on the ground in one morning, mostly by bombing. The Dutch army, a cadre-militia consisting of professional officers and conscript NCOs and ranks, was inferior to the German Army in many respects: it was poorly equipped, had poor communications, and was poorly led. However, the Germans lost some 400 planes in the three days of the attack, 230 of them Junkers 52/3, the strategically essential transport for airborne infantry and paratroopers, a loss that they would never replenish and thwarted German plans for attacking England, Gibraltar and Malta with airborne forces.The Dutch forces succeeded in defeating the Germans in the first-ever large-scale paratrooper-airborne attack in history and in recapturing the three German-occupied airfields surrounding the Hague at the end of the first day of the attack. Noteworthy were the privately financed but Army-operated anti-aircraft guns, positioned on suspected approach routes that would overfly the industries that put up the money for them. The Dutch Army Cavalry, which did not have operational tanks, deployed several squadrons of armoured cars, mainly near strategic airfields. The German follow-up attacks overland were three-pronged and were all stopped either fully or long enough to allow the Dutch army to demolish the German air-mobile divisions and mop up the lightly armed paratroopers and airborne troops around The Hague. That circumstance, together with the anti-aircraft guns, of which German intelligence had not been aware because they had been purchased by civilians, contributed to the failure of the German units of paratroopers and airborne infantry to capture the Dutch government and force a quick surrender.
Instead, the Dutch government and queen managed to escape, and the Germans succeeded in imposing only a partial surrender. The Dutch state remained in the war as a combatant and immediately made its naval assets available for the joint allied war effort, starting with the evacuation from Dunkirk. During the Battle of the Java Sea in 1941, the British, American and Australian Navies were led by a Dutch naval officer: Rear Admiral Karel Doorman.
The major areas of intensive military resistance were:
- The Hague and the area to the north of it. Dutch forces succeeded in decimating the two German airborne divisions that had landed with the task of capturing the Dutch government. These hostilities are known as the Battle for The Hague. This unexpected setback caused panic in the German military leadership, which ordered the undefended city center of Rotterdam to be wiped out in order to force an off-the-battlefield solution and stop the effective resistance by the Dutch forces. Before this terror bombardment, the Royal Netherlands Navy managed to ship some 1300 captured German shock troops to England, providing their allies with first-hand intelligence about this novel type of airborne warfare.
- The Grebbe line, a north-south line some east of the capital Amsterdam, from Amersfoort to the Waal, fortified, with field guns, and extensive inundations. The Dutch only surrendered after three days of hard fighting, known as the Battle of the Grebbeberg, with heavy losses on both sides. Having taken the Grebbeberg, the German forces were confronted by the next setback: during the battle the old Dutch Water Line had been inundated and thus reactivated.
- Kornwerderzand, with a bunker-complex that defended the eastern end of the Afsluitdijk connecting Friesland to North Holland and was held until ordered to capitulate. Dutch Army troops repelled wave after wave of German attackers, with support from the Royal Netherlands Navy cruising offshore on the North Sea. A small force of some 230 infantrymen stopped a complete German cavalry division in what become known as the Battle of the Afsluitdijk. The exposed stretch of dam leading to the bunker-complex became known among the Germans as the Totendam.
- Rotterdam, the bridges over the Maas River. Two school companies of Royal Netherlands Marines managed to keep a complete German army at bay until the bombardment of Rotterdam forced the commanding officer, General Winkelman, to accept a partial surrender. Elsewhere, Dutch forces stayed in the war; in Europe the fight continued from Zeeland to Dunkirk, where a Dutch Royal Navy officer, Lodo van Hamel, assisted in the evacuation of allied troops. Van Hamel was first to parachute back into the Netherlands a few months later, with the mission to set up the resistance in the Netherlands. He was captured, tried and executed.
The 2,000 Dutch soldiers who died defending their country, together with at least 800 civilians who perished in the flames of Rotterdam, were the first victims of a Nazi occupation that was to last five years.