Explaining the Dutch

[Nentsia]

I feel like writing about history a bit and this forum gives me an excuse to tell you a bit about Dutch history, since many here are from the US or some other semi-important country. This gives me an excuse to tell you about the history of a country that's not important, but thinks it is anyway. For this opening post I've ranted a bit about what everyone needs to know about Dutch history before you can get into the more detailed stuff, but next time I want to ramble about how the Netherlands went from being a Europoor backwater in the 1900's, to being one of the most prosperous European countries by the 1960's and beyond.

Before we start...Understanding Dutch history in a nutshell

Some of the basics must be explained here so this will be a boring number of facts about Dutch history before the 1900's. Contrary to popular belief, national myths, and what the Dutch Ministry of Education tells the students - the founder of this country was not ''William of Orange'' but Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon literally founded the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and put his brother on the throne. Prior to that it had been the ''Batavian Republic'', which was a regime under French occupation that was responsible for bringing the fruits of the French revolution with an iron fist under the local despot Rutger-Jan Schimmelpenninck (I challenge you all to pronounce that). The so-called ''Patriots'' seized power as the French troops occupied the country in the 1790's and proclaimed a republic - modelled both on the French Revolution and the American one. From this era dates our first constitution, although the Ministry of Education and national myth holds that it was in 1848 that we got our constitution (so they can ignore the fact that constitutionalism in this country was one of the fruits of foreign occupation, a coup d'etat, and despotism). History doesn't have to be complex at all.

Show ContentDictator of the Dutch:

So what existed prior to the 1790's and Napoleonic rule then? NOTHING. I kid. There existed what could be considered a confederation - often called the Dutch Republic, which is an anachronistic name - centered around the province of Holland, whose capital was Amsterdam. The ''United Provinces'', as the contemporary name was, was far from a single country. Each ''province'' was sovereign, independent, and cultural differences were vast. The southern provinces were Catholic, had a lot more ties to the other Flemish regions now considered Belgium, and for a long time didn't even belong to the ''Dutch Republic''. The Eastern provinces were piss poor, inhabited by a bunch of protestant gentry - who continue to own farms and castles in the region to this day. Further to the east, in what is now Germany, the Princes of Orange owned some territories as well. The northern provinces consisted mostly of farmers and fishermen.

The West consisted mostly of Holland and Zeeland. They were heavily into commerce and trade (the land on which they lived was created by the Dutch out of lakes, and so not very fertile for farming). The people who lived there were incredibly Calvinist (a radical branch of protestantism), or they were Arminians (a less radical form of Calvinism which is a radical branch of Protestantism... follow me?). The conflict between Arminians and Counter-Arminians ran so high that Prince Maurice of Orange (Counter-Arminian) led a coup d'etat against the Arminians and executed famous Dutch figures like Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (who concluded a crucial peace treaty with the Spanish while being in a disadvantaged position in 1609). Hugo Grotius (Dutch name = De Groot) was also arrested. He was one of the biggest philosophers in history in the area of Law and International Law - especially concerning the invention of ''International Waters''. Grotius climbed into his book case however, and some insiders used that to smuggle him out of the fortress where he was being held.

Politics in Holland, aside from religious quarrels, was divided along political lines as well. The merchant elites - at the same time also the religious elite - backed the policies of the ''Raadpensionaris'', which today roughly translates to the State Treasurer. The State Treasurer of Holland held the purse of the richest province, and Holland alone contributed to about 90% of the budget of the United Provinces as a whole. Most of that budget was used to fund wars and armies. Holland wanted to invest in the navy, to protect its merchant interests at sea. The eastern and southern provinces backed the line of the Prince of Orange, who favored spending more on land armies to defend ourselves against that lunatic in France and the Spanish. Holland considered England to be its mortal enemy, while the other provinces saw France as the biggest threat - and even considered Protestant England to be a potential ally. The Prince of Orange couldn't just force his will through however. He was merely a Prince of Orange - some town in France - and every province had a position of ''Stadhouder'', meaning Keeper of the City, a military commander. By tradition, every Province elected the Prince of Orange to that position. To make it more complex for you: not all provinces agreed on who was the true Prince of Orange and they ended up electing different people. Sometimes they elected no one at all (Stadholder-less periods). The State treasurer in his turn got into trouble in 1672. When, during a Stadholder-less era, the Holland State treasurer Johan de Witt conducted a pro-French and anti-English policy. But the French were a growing threat under Louis XIV, so he also concluded a treaty with the English against the French. When the French got wind of it, they bribed both the English and German principalities to start a war against the Provinces. When the English fleet arrived in 1672, the French king and German Bishops declared war as well. Suddenly, the future existence of the country was at stake.

Show ContentLouis XIV crossing the Rhine:

Feeling betrayed, an angry mob formed in Amsterdam and dragged Johan de Witt and his brother onto the streets where they beat them to death, lynched them, and then sold their organs as trophies. Recent historical research has brought up more evidence that the angry mob and lynching wasn't as spontaneous as the national myth long made us believe, and that it was an orchestrated affair by the Prince of Orange, William III, who used the war and the death of Johan de Witt to rise to dominance. He later also became king of England and formed an international coalition against France.

Show ContentDe Witt Lynching:

So when William, Prince of Orange, together with a bunch of nobles from the Spanish-Dutch provinces announced a noble revolt in the 1560's against the Habsburg rulers, the Dutch ministry of education will claim this as the founding myth of the Netherlands. Therefore, William of Orange's Protestant battle cry is now the Dutch anthem - the oldest in the world, and nobody even understands the lyrics (''The King of Spain, I have always honored, I am a Prince of Germannic Blood''). Or they will refer to the 1579 Treaty of Utrecht, when basically a few provinces (Utrecht and Holland most notably) formed a formal alliance in international affairs. Its the beginning of the United Provinces, but not of the Netherlands as a country. The divisions (linguistic, political, religious) within such a small territory are easily explained by its geography: The Western parts have remained underpopulated until the 15th century due to constant flooding. The South has been under constant influences from the Flemish and the Burgundians. The East has been the hunting ground of German Lords. This country is the cultural drain well of Western Europe. Dutch language too consists mostly of words that have German origin, followed by a lot of words with English origin, and then French, Latin and Greek influences.

This is also partly the reason why political nationalism in the Netherlands has historically been weak - and almost absent. First of all the Dutch are unsure about what aspect of Dutch culture is entirely unique to the Dutch. Usually the language is still being seen as a source of pride and cultural uniqueness to nationalists - who will often promote the unification of Dutch speakers by annexing Flanders (Belgium) and they want to stand up for the endangered Afrikaans language in South Africa, with is a Dutch language. Recent succesful Nationalist movements in politics (Fortuyn Revolt of 2002 and Geert Wilders nowadays) continue to stress the language problem with immigration. Dutch history also doesn't work well for Dutch nationalists, because our one Golden era (1602 - 1790's) wasn't really that glorious from a political view. It's been mostly associated with oligarchy, commerce, and material wealth - not exactly the things that nationalists like to focus on. The rest of our history we've been a European backwater. Not much glory there either.

That brings me to the second reason why Dutch nationalism has been weak, and to this day people will start laughing if you mention ''Dutch'' and ''Nationalist'' in the same sentence. When the Netherlands was actually founded as a country, in the 1790's, our founding-father-French-Puppet-Despot Schimmelpenninck described the new republic as an enlightened republic, but, also a ''small country''. The Dutch had a small country in relation to France, or England, or Austria. But... the Dutch could still be a great country by leading by example. Schimmelpenninck, the enlightened despot that he was, envisioned the Netherlands as a shining light of progress and freedom in Europe. Later 19th century historians have picked up this narrative and have perpetuated this idea that we, the Dutch, may be small and not so powerful, but we are morally right and therefore others will sooner or later listen to us anyway. This is the very essence of national myth-making: inventing a purpose for the existence of the country, and to give the people a reason to be loyal to it. What is the purpose of this new country, the Netherlands: moral leadership in the world. It continues to be the cornerstone of Dutch foreign policy to this day. It is related to that other myth, the Dutch being very ''tolerant''. This myth has been partly rooted in history, because in the 17th century this was a safe heaven for Portuguese Jews, French Hugenots, free printing - and thus a whole batch of religious and philosophical radicals - and although officially a Protestant country, Catholics were ''tolerated'' in the sense that they were allowed to practice their religion behind closed doors. We still have houses in Amsterdam that look like any other building, but inside its a cathedral. In the 19th and 20th century, this tolerance was used to consolidate the Dutch self-perception as being morally superior to other countries.

As a consequence however, when the entire Dutch national identity is resting upon the notion of being a weak and small country, political nationalism will find difficulty in finding many supporters because it contradicts the way that the population has been taught to think of itself and its country. On top of that, Dutch society - throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries - continued to be so divided and segmented along religious, regional, and political lines that there was no room for nationalist movements. By the 1900's this country entered a completely segmented stage: protestants voted for protestant politicians, read protestant newspapers, listened to protestant radio, visited protestant sports clubs, worked for protestant-owned businesses, sent their children to protestant schools, and joined protestant labor unions. The same goes for Catholics. But it wasn't just religion. The Liberals developed their own autonomous sphere. The Liberals voted VVD, they ran their own newspapers, associations, social events, etc. This group roughly played the quivalent of the ''bourgeoisie'' or upper middle class - but keep in mind all segments cut across class lines. The Liberals concentrated themselves of course in Holland - historically the province of the wealthy, the businessmen. To this day the Dutch elite lives in luxurious homes around The Hague. Take the train to The Hague and you'll notice immediately its much cleaner than trains elsewhere in the country. The rich take good care of themselves.

The Socialists emerged by the 1870's at earliest, but they consolidated their position after 1917 when universal suffrage had been introduced. They drew their support from the working classes (mainly dock workers and railway workers, the miners were working in the Catholic south and loyal to the catholic parties and associations). The Social Democrats voted Social Democrat, they read socialist newspapers, listened to Socialist radio, did not go to church, and they played football - rather than going to one of those Liberal rich boys tennis clubs.

Division had not only existed in the 17th century and 1900's. After Napoleon's defeat, the English thought it was a good idea to randomly merge the Belgians, Luxemburg and Netherlands together into a single ''United Kingdom of the Netherlands'', headed by a distant relative of the Princes of Orange, who as a German prince without a sovereign territory was desperate to rule some country. So the Kingdom was ruled, from Brussels and the Hague, by a restless autocrat who nearly bankrupted the country. Catholics and Liberals particularly resented this King - and these happened to coincide with Belgium. They revolted in 1830. The King sent his troops, even the Russian Tsar planned to dispatch some Cossacks (the Dutch heir was married to the Tsar's sister), had it not been for the Polish Uprising that began a few months later. The English forced the Dutch to accept the loss of Belgium finally in 1839, upon which the King abdicated. His heir, William II, was a Napoleonic war hero, a homosexual, and his reign was disturbed by waves of revolutions throughout Europe. The loss of Belgium, also meant a decisive blow to the idea of a ''Greater Netherlands'' and reinforced the public view of the Netherlands being a small and powerless country.

Show ContentKing William II:

The threat of revolution made the William II less hostile to proposals for a constitution by the Dutch Liberals, although when no revolution occurred here in 1848 he began to pull back again. He was probably blackmailed into accepting a constitution anyway, through his homosexual relationships, He died a year later. The adoption of a liberal constitution, without revolution, further reinforced a belief among Dutch politicians that the Netherlands - despite being small - could play a guiding role in Europe and lead by example. Dutch foreign policy became one of neutrality, choosing the moral high-ground while Germans, Russians, French, Ottomans and British quarrelled in Europe. When World War One broke out, the Netherlands - despite overwhelming sympathy for Germany - declared neutrality as well and opened its borders for millions of Belgian refugees. In a similar fashion, the Dutch government offered residence to Kaiser Wilhelm II when he was deposed in Germany in 1918. Despite international sanctions imposed on the Netherlands, as everyone wanted to put him on trial for being a war criminal, Kaiser Wilhelm resided here until his death in 1941.

This neutrality had also brought the Peace conferences to The Hague in the 1900's as international fears of war continued to grow. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, frightened of war after reading some detailed predictions of what modern warfare could do, took the initiative. It led to the creation of the International Court of Arbitration, and after WWII also got the International Court of Justice. Later the Hague also received the International Criminal Court, and has become the center of international law.

Especially amidst the Russian Revolution (and a failed attempt to imitate it here in 1919) and the rise of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, Dutch politicians began to more and more assert the democratic, tolerant, and morally superior nature of the Netherlands. A direct line is often drawn between the tolerant, ''peaceful'', Dutch merchant republic of the 17th century, the peaceful manner in which a constitution was adopted in 1848, and the stable democratic ''consensus-seeking'' political culture that emerged between Protestants, Catholics, Liberals and Socialists after 1917. And this inherent democratic culture that has supposedly existed since time immemorial means that the Netherlands has the ''responsibility'' in the world to show all the savages how to be a civilized country.

[Soyabarian Empire]

The belgains hold of the roman empire for a while, we kicked the french out in 1302 until 1303 we kicked the austrians out in the 1700's did the british think the dutch could hold us? no in 1830 we started to kick their arses out (with help from the french)

btw in world war one, the belgains hold on to a part of belgium for four years and the germans could have it. and in the second world war the belgains hold out for 18 days, the dutch surrendered before that and the french surrendered not much later

[Arkiania]

Wat zyde gy tot my, gy kleine duyvelspecht? Ik beveel ge er kennis van te neemen dat ik met lof ende goedkeuring een kaapersbrief heb gehad van Willem van Oranje ende betrokken ben geweest by talryke geheyme offensieven tegen Alva en de zyne, en zelfstandig meer dan drie honderden Spanjolen heb omgelegd. Ik ben gehard by den Katergeuzen en ben den beste schutter onder den Nederlandsche vlag. Ge bent niet meer dan myn zoveelste doelwit. Ik zal u uyt myne gewest verwyderen met een nauwkeurigheid die de wereld nog nimmer aangechouwen had. Let op myn verdomde woorden! Gy denkt dat ge deze leuhgenpraat aan my kan verkoopen per postduyf? Gy had tweemaal moeten denken, cattengehspuys! In dezen tyd dat ik deze missive opstel, stuur ik opdracht naar myn geheymen samenstel van verspieders ende vloerduyven, verspreid door den Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden en wordt dezen postduyf gevolgd, dus ge kunt zich maar beter voorbereiden op den storm, rabaut. Den storm die het bedroevenden klyne ding dat gy uw leven noemt weg zal vaagen. Gy bent dood, kind. Ik kan overal, ten alle tyden zyn ende ik kan ge op zeven honderden wyzen doden, ende dat is slechts met myne bloten handen. Niet alleen zyt ik veelomvattend geoefend in den ongewapenden krygskunst, maar alsmede heb ik het voltallige arsenaal der watergeuzen ter myner beschikking ende ik zal dat benutten om uwer lamlendigen achtereinde van het vastenland te vagen, gy klynen schobbejak. Als gy had geweten wat voor eene goddelooze vergelding uw 'geestige' missive teweeg zou brengen, had ge misschien op uwen tong gebeten. Maar dat kon ge niet. Gy deed het niet ende nu zult ge de tol betalen, gy verdomde smeerkanis. Ik zal furie over u schyten en gy zult er in verzuypen. Ge zyt dood, hoerenzeune.

[Soyabarian Empire]

Een wijs man zei ooit (meer bepaald ik) dat men eerst moet leren spellen vooraleer men dreigementen maakt over het internet

[Jamzor the Jaxxor]

Zei bar spaken der Doochenstein.

[Seperallis]

y tho

[Soyabarian Empire]

because we can

[Nentsia]

(It accidentally reached a monstrous size, better to read this in several parts if you ever intended of reading it at all)



The single-most important and defining period in Dutch history, and in the memory of the Dutch people, is without a doubt the period 1940-1945, the years under Nazi occupation. Most of the people here on the forum come from countries that were never occupied by the Nazi's, so maybe you have a different ''memory'' of WWII in your country, and a different feeling with the subject. The Netherlands was occupied and it has left a deep mark on how this country was shaped in the 20th and 21st centuries.


The Rise of Fascism

Although the Dutch government likes to hold on to the myth of Dutch history showing an inherently ''democratic'', ''open'' and ''tolerant'' nature among the Dutch, this country too witnessed authoritarian tendencies in the 1930's. In that respect it was not so different from the rest of Europe. During the 1930's Dutch society reached the apogee of its segregated structure: Catholics, Protestants, Liberals, Socialists - all led completely separate lives in separate communities. Only in Germany and Austria, a similar situation existed, but never as extreme in the Netherlands.

The effect was however that the Dutch government often found its hands tied. Election results barely changed, as voters were extremely loyal, and every political party guarded the interests of its own community. As a result, some voices called for ''less democracy'' and more ''firm government''. Among them was the prime minister, Hendrikus Colijn, from the so-called ''Anti-Revolutionary Party''. The ARP was in fact the first Dutch political party, and was a very conservative Protestant party, founded by the Calvinist theologian Abraham Kuyper. An interesting fact is that Kuyper's writings had a lot of influence among the ''Boers'' or Afrikaners in South Africa - the descendents of Dutch settlers. Kuyper's ideas were later used to justify Apartheid and Afrikaner Nationalism. Colijn, meanwhile, admired Mussolini and Fascism in Italy, although he thought it was too un-religious. For that reason, he believed the Portuguese conservative authoritarian regime of Antonio Salazar as the best model to be imitated in the Netherlands.

In 1931 there was also the foundation of the NSB - Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging - or National Socialist Movement, an imitation of the movement of Hitler. National Socialism, as a political term, had its roots in the former Austrian Empire, where workers' movements became the vehicles of independence struggles among Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and so on. On top of that, especially in German Austria, pan-German and anti-semitic nationalist movements around the 1900's added terms like ''Social'' or ''Socialist'' to their name because Socialism was fashionable and on the rise in these years, and in practice ethnic nationalism often proved too narrow to appeal to a wide audience. Hence many nationalists increasingly adopted rather populist slogans against capitalism and bankers, especially Jewish bankers. Socialism was so fashionable in these years because on the one hand there were the growing number of industrial workers, often still without any kind of protection or rights. Then there was also the rise of ‘big capitalism’, with its automated industry, and the enormous warehouses that threatened the economic position of the little man – the shopkeeper and the artisan.

The early Nazi movement was such a typical inter-bellum movement, composed of German war veterans, whose goal was to restore the might of Germany. In their eyes, Socialists, politicians, Jews, and big capital had all conspired against Germany and the German people. They presented a program of 25 points that were supposed to clean up German society. To call a party ‘’National-Socialist’’ while being one of the most violently anti-Socialist and anti-Communist parties in Germany was even to some Nazi’s themselves awkward. But for figures like Hitler and Goebbels it made perfect sense. Their thinking was loosely based on some books by the German conservative philosopher Oswald Spengler, who argued that ‘Socialism’ was in fact a Prussian invention, and belonged naturally to the Prussians – as liberalism belongs to the British. Karl Marx ‘stole’ Socialism then to make it about class struggle, egalitarianism, revolution and collective ownership. This form of ‘Socialism’ was pure Bolshevism in the eyes of the Nazi’s, and Bolshevism was a conspiracy of Russian Jews to overthrow all monarchies in Europe and to create an absolute dictatorship to exploit the people.

National-Socialism, on the other hand, intended to reclaim ‘Socialism’ from Marxist hands. For a start, National-Socialism, had nothing to do with economic plans or ideas. For Oswald Spengler, ‘Prussian Socialism’ referred to the all-powerful bureaucratic state, a native Prussian invention in his eyes. He saw the Prussian ideal as a police state (Polizeistaat) that, to the smallest detail, regulates the life of its citizens. The Nazi’s however resented ‘’bureaucracy’’ and gave it another twist, believing in National Socialism as the total unification of the German people and the state, with the state being completely put in the service of the Germans, and the German people obeying every command of the state. This of course meant that the Nazi’s demanded the expulsion of foreign interests, (without explicitly mentioning the Jews), the demand of the unification of ‘’all Germans’’ within a ‘’Greater Germany’’, and they demanded that the ‘’State’’ should have the first priority provide a ‘’livelihood’’ for the Germans, and expel all non-Germans from its territory.

The Nazi logic was that if the state is entirely in the hands of Germans, and put to the service of the German people, then everything should be subjected to that German state so that it can serve the German people. The ‘’German people’’ however, was defined in terms of blood. Beneath the Nazi ideology was a pervading sense of inferiority and weakness, that the Nazi’s saw as the result of weak leadership in the form of democracy, corruption and decadence caused by capitalism which placed the individual above the nation, and more sinister internal enemies such as racial degenerates and communists plotting to subdue the German people. Nazi’s such as Hitler obsessed over racial purity because for them it was only a matter of time before the next war would come, and the biological ‘’health’’ of the Germans was essential to the chances of survival. This logic was all that mattered to Hitler, who would later admit that any other ideas that the Nazi’s promoted were entirely strategic to attract the masses. Everything was subordinate to the goal of purifying the German race. Even the use of the Swastika was purely chosen because it stood out from all other political symbols, and there was no further symbolic reason for using it. We are here getting to the essence of Nazism, which perceived the world as a life-and-death struggle between nations, dreaded the perceived German weakness, and considered that the means justified the end to purify Germany and to prepare it for the greatest military battle in history.

This is also why it is impossible to accurately pinpoint the Nazi or Fascist ideology. For as far as they had a programme written down, they ignored it themselves and often didn’t even bother to carry it out. Their message varied depending on the audience. Both Mussolini and Hitler would sometimes rile against the evils of capitalism, and the next time cooperate with the largest corporations and announce a crusade against Marxism. They were nihilists, ideas only interested them if they were capable of mobilizing the masses. The goal was always the same and Goebbels summarized it perfectly: ‘’In the new Germany we have only one commander: Adolf Hitler. Our regiment is called Germany.’’

Compared to the real Nazis (mostly battle-hardened war veterans and extremists), the Dutch NSB was a rather weak imitation. Their great leader, the aspired commander in chief of the Dutch-Germanic race, Anton Mussert, was not exactly an impressive figure. He was a civil servant, a law-abiding citizen, and his party was mostly a group of middle-class citizens who wanted national unity and order. The NSB blackshirts didn’t scare anyone. Their slogan was a bit tame and civil too – just like their members: Order and Discipline! Anti-Semitism was not an outspoken part of their program either. They didn’t even openly call for a dictatorship, merely for ‘’firm government’’. They tended to attract discontented people from all sections of Dutch society, particularly in the rich towns where the liberals used to be strong. As a political party that on the one hand rejected the political establishment, while at the same time being quite civil, the NSB managed to become something of a protest movement.

The NSB was never very effective in the elections, and stumbled upon the same problem as any nationalist movement would: the segregated nature of Dutch society along political-religious lines. Workers voted Socialist, urban middle class voted Liberal, Protestants voted ARP, Catholics voted on one of the many Catholic parties, and so on. Elsewhere in Europe, nationalist parties could focus their message on large groups of ‘lower middle class’ voters, or farmers in the rural regions, or industrial workers that had not yet been overtaken by Socialist parties, or even attract aristocrats and landowners.
On top of that, authoritarian tendencies in the Netherlands remained fairly small because unlike in other countries, the idea that democracy was in a crisis was not so strong. In Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Austria, all of East-Central Europe, they had a much more acute sense of political crisis, which reinforced their search for authoritarian solutions.

The solutions to the perceived failure of liberal democracy was slightly different from place to place. The first anti-democratic revolution occurred in Italy where the Fascists took over, who like the Nazis, had total war at the heart of their ideology, and resented the weakness of democratic and liberal politics. In Austria, street fighting between Communists and anti-Communists eventually led to a conservative military dictatorship under Engelbert Dolfuss, until he was overthrown by a conspiracy of Austrian Nazi’s and Nazi-Germany. In Spain a civil war broke out between Republicans, Anarchists and Communists on one side, and reactionaries and fascists on the other side. In Portugal a conservative catholic dictator rose to power, while Poland, the Baltics, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria fell prey to conservative authoritarian regimes that flirted with fascist groups. Only in Czechoslovakia democracy continued to function, until the country was occupied by the Nazis.

In France, the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium, fascist movements sprang up, but because democratic politics was functioning relatively good, there was never a powerful incentive to take any drastic measures, even though, for example, anti-Semitism was historically much more widespread in France than it had been in Germany.

After the Germans invaded Poland, a big war in Europe had become inevitable as the French and the British declared war. The Netherlands tried to adopt a position of neutrality once again. A series of diplomatic conflicts with Nazi Germany in the 1930’s however were a reason to fear the worst this time. Not only had a Dutch Communist been accused of the Reichstag Fire in 1933, the Nazi’s also resented the fact that a lot German Jews were given shelter in the Netherlands, including the family of Anne Frank. But above all, the Nazi’s wanted the Dutch coastline. They wanted to prevent the British from being able to quickly reach Germany’s industrial heart through the Netherlands, and they needed to occupy the entire west coast of Europe to impose a blockade on Britain.

The invasion came on May 10, 1940. Dutch soldiers rode to the front on their bicycles and put up some fierce resistance. After the War the myth was created that they were weak and easily overpowered, as part of the idea that the Netherlands is a small country and therefore incapable of the violence that is required in war.

The royal family and the government, under Prime Minister Gerbrandy (Protestant ARP), fled to the UK – but not before giving the Dutch chief of staff the instruction to fight to the death. While Stalin, in the Battle of Stalingrad, eventually withdrew his orders to shoot at retreating soldiers, the Dutch army actually did carry out such an order and fired at its own troops. This is one of the most unknown parts of Dutch history, and only known among Dutch military historians. As far as the Ministry of Education and public view is concerned, only the SS committed war crimes during the invasion.

Because the Dutch refused to surrender immediately, and the Nazi’s were in a hurry, Hitler authorized bombardments on Rotterdam and Amsterdam. When the royal family had arrived in the UK, the army surrendered to the Germans in order to avoid further unnecessary losses. For Rotterdam it was too late: the historical inner city was annihilated. Amsterdam however, was saved. To this day, some of the hostility between inhabitants of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and the rivalry between their football clubs, boils down to this war experience. Rotterdam is scarred, ugly, and was sacrificed. Amsterdam is being cherished, and being privileged.

After less than a week of fighting, the Nazi’s could take over the country relatively unhindered. The government had fled, prominent Dutchmen moved to their houses in the colonies (Indonesia), while bureaucrats used what little time they had to burn important government files and documents. Hitler appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart, an Austrian Nazi confidant, as Reichskommissar of the Netherlands. Hoping to win the hearts and minds of the Dutch population, the Nazi’s kept the Dutch civil administration in place, instead of installing a Nazi-led military regime as they had done in Poland. The Poles were destined for annihilation, but the Dutch might be persuaded to join their Germanic brothers.

The appointment of Seyss-Inquart was a big disappointment to Anton Mussert, the leader of the Dutch Nazi party. Mussert had hoped that Hitler would recognize him as the natural leader, the native Fuhrer, of the Dutch people. But this shows how poorly Mussert and the NSB understood what Nazism was about. Their fate left the Nazis cold, and the Nazi’s did not believe in the existence of any ideological allies. All that mattered to Hitler was the German triumph, and the NSB was useless. The NSB was considered a band of traitors by many Dutch people and the party was unpopular, so the Germans kept their distance from them in order not to alienate the Dutch population.


Years of Accommodation: 1940-1942
In the initial days after the Nazis had taken over, they tried to behave civilized and the Dutch population therefore cautiously tried to carry on with life, hoping that not too much would change. Many people simply wanted to sit it out, and hope for better times.

The civil administration on one hand carried out the laws that the Germans implemented, while at the same time they tried to negotiate with the Germans to ameliorate the German laws and orders. For a while, this was quite effective.

The first things that the Dutch noticed of German rule were the German troops marching through the capital, NSB blackshirts proudly strutting around, Jewish people being harassed on the streets, and bright red Nazi banners covering the facades of government buildings.

The Dutch resistance had also been anticipating on this scenario for a while. Fishermen burned the ships down to prevent them from falling into German hands. Others used them to help people escape across the Channel to England, and came back with weapons. Some members of the Dutch resistance helped to transport the trapped French troops in Dunkirk to England. Others stayed in England, such as Prince Bernard (the husband of the Dutch queen), who joined the RAF and fought the Germans from the skies. Throughout the War, Dutch resistance fighters continued to escape to the UK by boat, with intelligence about the Germans and they returned as RAF pilots above France.

Three groups in particular were attracted to the Resistance. Dutch royalists, in solidarity with the royal family, tended to accompany them to England and seized every opportunity to fight the Nazis. Then there were the Communists, who already knew they were going to die in German hands anyway. They set up underground newspapers, gave intelligence to the English, attacked German soldiers, blew up infrastructure, and destroyed government buildings used by the Nazis. Finally there was the Catholic church, but also other people, who often for moral reasons chose to hide people that were hunted by the Nazis – Jewish families for example. Initially though, many Jews did not go into hiding.

Initially, the Nazi’s banned most political parties and newspapers. Only the media that were willing to play by the rules of the Nazis were allowed to operate. The Nazi’s did tolerate the creation of a new political party, the so-called ‘’Dutch Union’’. It was a movement that had as its intention to function as a mediator between the Dutch people and the Germans. It neither opposed nor supported the Nazi occupation, but simply aspired to make it as less painful as possible. Within weeks it had 600.000 members and became one of the largest mass movements in Dutch history. The Nazis hoped they could use it as a tool to gradually win over the people, while many Dutch politicians hoped it was a tool to protect what little Dutch autonomy the Nazi’s were willing to give.

But the real face of the Nazi’s soon began to present itself. Newspapers were being banned, the parliament was suspended, political parties were disbanded. Civil servants were required to sign an ‘’Aryan declaration’’, putting Jews out of their jobs. The death penalty was introduced for any form of resistance. At the same time, the Dutch economy began to grow under Nazi occupation as the industry was put to the service of the German military, and employment began to rise.

But the Germans ran out of patience with the Dutch. ‘’You have to negotiate about everything with them’’, Seyss-Inquart complained to Hitler in a letter. The Dutch population, in its turn, was fed up with the street bullying of Jews. Anti-Jewish measures were increased, Jews were registered, intimidated, and attacked by street gangs.  The Jews formed their own street gangs and managed to kill a member of the NSB blackshirts in 1941. Upon that incident in Amsterdam, the Jewish neighbourhood was closed off by the Nazi’s and turned into a Ghetto, as they had already done in Warsaw. The Germans also created a ‘’Jewish Council’’, another tool to control the Jewish population.

Because the Netherlands had been such a segregated society in the 1920’s and 1930’s, it was a habit of the Dutch government to register the religious affiliation of its citizens. No country in Europe had such detailed information on its own population. The Nazi’s used the Dutch archives to find out exactly who was Jewish. One can imagine why, to this day, A Dutchman will be quite appalled upon hearing it is normal in America now that people are registered with the government by their race. The right to be anonymous, to be no one, to be unknown to the government, remains to this day a right that is important to those who have experienced Nazism.

From then on the Nazi troops frequently raided Jewish homes and shops, ‘’Razzia’s’’, and contrary to popular belief, the Jewish owners defended themselves violently. The Germans responded with ever more force, arresting 400 people in one move, and deporting them to concentration camps. We still do not know how or why, but it resulted in a mass demonstration in Amsterdam in February 1941. Workers put down their work and assembled; together with the Communist resistance organized a massive strike. The entire city came to a grinding halt, and other cities followed suit. The Dutch people, for the first time, openly protested the Nazis. The Germans, feeling betrayed by the friendly Dutch, responded with bullets. The Dutch Union too was banned. The gloves were coming off.


(''Jewish Neighbourhood'')

Repression, Resistance & Liberation: 1942 - 1945
As the Germans had given up on winning the hearts of the Dutch, and the Eastern Front began to drain the German resources, the character of the occupation hardened drastically.

The Nazi’s began to exploit the Netherlands for their war efforts. A shortage of fuel of coal emerged, food rations were implemented, and Dutch men were summoned to work in Germany. Many men went into hiding to avoid this forced labor. Goods like soap, shoes, and clothes became almost impossible to come by. In the summer of 1942, the Germans even ordered the people to hand in their bicycles. To make the Americans understand: the bicycle was used by everyone on a daily basis. Especially in the countryside and in the narrow streets of the cities, it was the only available means of transport. The Germans confiscated them because they were in need of iron and metal.

Along the coastline hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes because the Germans were constructing their defensive lines against an allied invasion. While this led some Dutch men to hide or join the resistance, thousands of others instead volunteered for the SS and were sent to fight at the Eastern Front.

From July 1942 the Nazis had also begun with their operations for the systematic deportation of all Jews. They told the Jewish Council that the Jews were supposed to work in the East, and even allowed them to decide who was sent to the East. This was a false method to give the Jewish population a false hope that they would be treated somewhat decently. Most of the Jewish families were deported to Camp Westerbork, a Dutch concentration camp, and most of them were put on direct transport to Auscwitz where they were murdered upon arrival. Many Jewish families hid their children with other families, or in some cases entire families went into hiding.

In this period for example, Anne Frank went into hiding together with several families in Amsterdam. In August 1944 they were discovered and deported. For long it was believed after the War that they had been betrayed, but recent historical research strongly indicates that they were in fact discovered by accident by an Amsterdam police officer and that there was no planned operation. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to return as a survivor. Nowhere in Europe has the Nazi destruction of the Jews been so complete as in the Netherlands: 107.000 Jews out of 140.000 ‘’Full Jews’’ were deported to concentration camps, 24.000 Jews went into hiding, 16.000 of which survived. 75% of the Dutch Jews were killed, against 25% in France and 40% in Belgium.

Three reasons are usually mentioned for this unusually high figure. First of all the Dutch population registration was so accurate that the Nazi’s had much better information to work with. Secondly, because the civil bureaucracy remained intact, and wasn’t replaced by a military regime, the Dutch authorities – operating under the instructions of a German overlord – were far more efficient than the SS-led regimes elsewhere in Europe, who were mostly incompetent, corrupt, and faced far more resistance. On top of that, Arthur Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi, like Hitler and Eichmann – the Holocaust organizer. He brought with him an entourage of Austrian SS members and they were all part of that network with Eichmann. They constituted some of the most zealous anti-Semites in the entire Nazi apparatus. Aside from that, in a segregated society as the Dutch one, the Jews had little connections outside their Jewish community to seek help or places to hide.

From 1943 onwards the climate further hardened. The Nazis began to purge the entire system, removing civil servants and mayors across the country. Resistance grew more violent, especially in the countryside, to which the Nazi’s often retaliated by executing entire village populations. Among those death squads were often Dutch collaborators, as an increasing number of Germans was required in the East. The Queen tried to keep the spirits of the Dutch people high through radio speeches from overseas, making use of the BBC. The Germans meanwhile forced everyone to darken the windows to confuse the British and American bombers on their way to the West-German industrial heartland. This resulted in some accidental allied bombings that hit East-Dutch towns.

Anne Frank wrote in her diary over the terrifying nights during these days. Flashes and thunders rocked the country from the bombardments, but news of Allied landings in Italy at the same time fuelled hope that it would soon all be over.

The Dutch were so longing after liberation even, that when they got wind of the long-awaited Allied invasion of the Netherlands, people spontaneously assumed Nazi-Germany was now defeated and went out to celebrate the victory. In 1944 the Allies had tried to liberate the Netherlands prematurely: British, American, Canadian, Dutch, and Polish airborne troops landed in Nijmegen and Arnhem in Operation Market Garden, behind German lines. But the operation was too complex, too risky, and the German resistance too strong.
Many Dutch collaborators, and NSB members, thinking it was all over, quickly packed their bags and fled to Germany. It went down in history as the ‘’Mad Tuesday’’ of September 5th, 1944. The longest days still had to come though.


The Nazi’s were rapidly losing ground, but they had no intention of giving up the Netherlands easily and allowing the Allies free passage to the industrial Ruhr area. In retaliation for ‘’Mad Tuesday’’, the Nazi’s cancelled food transports to the country. They intended to starve the population. All forms of transport were banned. In the winter of 1944 and 1945 thousands of people living in the cities scavenged the countryside in search of food.The Allies tried to support the population with dropping food packages from the sky, but 20.000 people starved to death.

Show ContentDutch Resistance fighters in 1945:

Resistance fighters engaged in open gunfights with the remaining Nazis and collaborators in the country. Prince Bernhard was appointed by General Eisenhower as commander in chief of the Dutch Armed Forces, including the Resistance. Bernhard operating from England and having worked as a spy against the Germans, bribed an English RAF commander with a bottle of scotch to allow him to fly. Prince Bernhard succeeded and was one of those RAF pilots who bombed the Germans back to Germany above France.

By March 1945 the Allies had begun to liberate the entire southern half of the country. In a final and desperate attempt of the Nazi’s to slow their advance down, they blew up the dykes and flooded the country. Some 120.000 remaining German troops threatened to destroy everything they came across if the Allies would fight them. After negotiations, and after Nazi Germany capitulated in May 1945, they surrendered too.

Show ContentWelcoming the Liberation:

The Allied troops were hailed as heroes in the Netherlands. Entire villages lined up besides the roads with flags and presents for the Allied soldiers. A record number of Dutch women emigrated to Canada, to pursue the love of their life, and some Canadian soldiers stayed here. Girls who had in fact gone to bed with German soldiers were publically shamed, with their heads being shaven in public. Resistance members came out to assassinate the people they hadn’t caught yet, collaborators simply vanished, and others were arrested and sentenced to death for treason. Anton Mussert was executed in 1946. Arthur Seyss-Inquart was tried in Nuremberg, found guilty, and executed in 1946. By then the Dutch survivors from Indonesia were coming back as well, who had gone through Japanese occupation where they had been put in concentration camps. 5.000 Jewish survivors returned from the East. The Queen returned as well, as did the government from exile. But for the next twenty years, nobody would speak about what happened.

The Dutch post-war society was split along different lines now: there were those were on the ‘’wrong side’’ during the War, who often lived in silence until they were gradually exposed by journalists and historians from the 1960’s onwards. More than a 100.000 people had joined the NSB. Thousands of others served the German army. There were heroes of the Resistance, whose heroic stories slowly but steadily instilled a sense of national pride. Many Dutch people liked to think that the Resistance showed how the Dutch defied Nazi crimes, despite their relative powerlessness. But some Resistance heroes were Communists, and by the 1950’s, in light of the Cold War, it was forbidden to commemorate them.

The Jews were seen as victims, but some Jews – such as the ones who had served on the Jewish Council – were almost seen as collaborators. The victims and survivors of the Japanese horrors in Indonesia were treated as attention-seekers, people who hadn’t ‘’really suffered’’. Such accusations came out of ignorance and of course the inability of a population to deal with its own role. Prince Bernhard’s heroic role was increasingly challenged later in the 20th century as evidence showed up that in the early 1930’s, he had in fact been a member of the German Nazi Party.

But above all, this country was ever more dedicated to the cause of freedom and democracy after 1945. The Dutch prided their democratic culture amidst the rise of Fascism in the 1930’s, and after 1945 they were more than ever ready to teach other countries that Dutch moral lesson: only in a democracy, everyone’s rights are protected. The lesson of Nazi-Germany was that democracy is the only way forward. The Netherlands became one of the most loyal allies of the US in the Cold War, resumed its consensus-seeking political tradition, and was more than ever committed to civil liberty and human rights. More than ever before, the Netherlands wanted to lead the globe by example. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, if the Americans or the UN called upon a country for a humanitarian mission, the Dutch government was often the first to respond. In the same spirit this country always opened the gates for refugees from all over the world: Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, Indonesians, Spaniards, Greeks, Turks, Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Kosovars, Czechs, Hungarians, Russians, Chechens, Afghans, Iraqi’s, Argentines, Lebanese, Iranians; the War strengthened the Dutch belief in it has always stood for tolerance, and that it should always stand for tolerance.

So ‘’tolerant’’ even, that until the late 1970’s even the slightest criticism of immigration was seen as a sign of closet-fascism. A politician named Janmaat, who dared to express a critical attitude of immigration, was accused of being a Nazi, and attacked by rioters. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s then that a debate on immigration began to emerge. Pim Fortuyn, who led a populist movement that was critical of immigrants’ behaviour, was quickly compared to Mussolini (because he was bald too) and eventually assassinated a week before the 2002 elections by a radical leftist.

In today’s debates the War continues to play a role. Some say the War taught us the lesson that we should help the Syrian refugees. Among them are Holocaust survivors. Others in particular point to the threat posed by ‘’Islamic Fascism’’ and the rise of Anti-Semitism. Especially Jewish communities nowadays require permanent protection by their synagogues. How then can we reconcile the lessons of WWII, of saving war victims, while also protecting ‘’our’’ Jews? What is tolerance in this case?

Almost everything in Dutch politics, somehow builds on our memory of WWII. Because WWII taught us that we need to know where we stand: in the hour of need, on whose door can you knock and ask to hide? Who is on the side of freedom, and who is on the side of survival, and who is on the side of the enemy? Dutch people will regularly ask themselves this question and wonder what they would do.

[Nentsia]

Few people realize it, not even the Dutch themselves, but the Netherlands is a hotspot of international organized crime. We keep war criminals here (both in jail and as asylum seekers), but Rotterdam is a crucial port for drugs from the America's and it serves as a link with the criminal markets in the UK. On top of that there are motor gangs like the Hells Angels, Satudarah, No Surrender, and the Bandidos that don't shy away from trying to assassinate local politicians from small rural towns where they like to control things, Italian mafia leaders often come to the Netherlands to hide (typically living and working here as an ordinary shopkeeper), the Italian mafia is heavily involved in the Dutch flowers and tulip business (money laundering purposes), Eastern European gangs operate in the countryside of the country, forcing farmers to make their farms available to hide or produce illegal drugs, and of course - because of the number of internet servers in this country - virtually all websites in the world selling illegal stuff (from child pornography to weapons and drugs) is located on a Dutch server.

Amsterdam in particular is an important European center of organized crime. Historically, Dutch crime gangs in Amsterdam were known as the ''Penoze'', a word coming from Amsterdam street language that was born out of a mixture of Dutch, Yiddish and Gypsy words. Many of its words have now become very common in Dutch and transcended their slang status. But the Penoze of the early 20th century was petty theft compared to the sort of crime that globalization in the 1970's and 1980's brought to the city of Amsterdam. The ''revolutionary'' 1960's played a key role in undermining police and political authority in the country, paved the way for a policy of toleration towards soft drugs, and the amount of prostitutes in the Amsterdam Red Light district expanded dramatically. In the name of Dutch tolerance, the young radicals argued, the Netherlands should tolerate everything and everyone. Everyone should be able to do as he pleased. And the authorities, frightened of the riots and knowing it couldve been worse after seeing the violence in Paris and Germany, quickly caved in and used the same argument: the Netherlands has always been a tolerant country, and we shall lead by example.

Dutch youths, ''Provo's'' (from Provocateurs), tried to imitate their English and American peers in every possible way. Jeans, driving motors, organizing music festivals to imitate Woodstock, and opposing the Vietnam War. By 1970 the first Coffee Shops opened up and soft drugs and LSD were exchanged, against the law, at such music festivals. We even got our share of 1970's Leftist terrorism here when the German Baader-Meinhof group in the 1970's, hiding out in the Netherlands, shot a Dutch police officer when he pulled them over. Immigrants from our former Dutch colony, Indonesia, also began to commit terrorist attacks. They were so called Moluccans, an ethnic minority living on a few Indonesian islands that were promised independence by the Dutch government in 1947. Based on that condition, they fought with the Dutch colonial army (KNIL) against the Indonesian nationalists. When Indonesia was finally given independence, the government broke its promise to the Moluccans, who fled along with the Dutch colonials to the Netherlands. Their younger generation, in the 1970's, organized themselves politically and took hostage several trains and schools to demand independence for the Moluccans. The Dutch government, always so tolerant, sent the air-force.



The new gangsters of Amsterdam
Amidst this increasingly individualistic ''I-can-do-whatever-I-want'' and ''f*ck the authorities'' mentality of the 1960's and 1970's, a group of Amsterdam street boys grew up. One of them was Cor van Hout, born in 1957. By the 1970's he earned his money by helping companies to evict squatters from their buildings, usually with a lot more force than the law permitted. Together with a bunch of fellow thugs from Amsterdam, they noticed how easy it was to travel to the mediterranean by boat, and pay a visit to countries like Lebanon, where they bought guns. With guns, they began a series of bank robberies in Amsterdam. By the early 1980's they got the plan to kidnap the richest Dutch businessman: Freddy Heineken, owner of the Heineken beer company. But to make their plan work, they needed one extra member. Cor van Hout brought in a young guy, no criminal experience. It was Willem Holleeder. Holleeder grew up in the heart of Amsterdam, took several beatings from his father in his youth, and was in need for money and sex. He was most of all an adventurist.

In 1983 the gang kidnapped Freddy Heineken and his driver and locked him up in a barn in the harbor of Amsterdam. It was the biggest story of the year in the country, especially because it happened in brought daylight, in front of Heineken's office. Men in balaclava's ran at him with guns, dragged him out of his car into a white van, and knocked down the driver and took him with them as well. This was a kind of crime the Dutch police had only seen in American TV series like Miami Vice - or not, since that started in 1984. But you get the point. One of the kidnappers quite enjoyed the attention for the crime, and would brag in his usual Amsterdam cafe that he was leaving to ''feed Heineken''. The people laughed, thinking it was a joke.

The kidnappers demanded 35 million guldens, roughly 16 million euro, in 200,000 banknotes from 4 different currencies. After a month, the ransom was finally paid, the money carrying the money was emptied near a bridge and the money placed in different cars that smuggled it out of the country to France. Heineken was found several days later by the police. Because the barn was property of one of the kidnappers, the police quickly figured out who was behind all this. By 1984 the French police arrested them. Cor van Hout hired the best and most famous Dutch lawyer there was: Max Moszkowicz, Patriarch of a law family firm that would continue to have close ties to the Amsterdam crime world until the 2000's.

But France couldn't extradite the Dutch criminals to the Netherlands (these were pre-EU days), but didn't want to keep them in France either. So they sent them to a French colony in the Caribbean, where both men spent their days relaxing on a beach while the Dutch police couldnt get to them. When they were finally taken back to France, there was an extradition treaty. Cor van Hout and Willem Holleeder were given sentences of 11 years in 1987, but the time they spent in French jails and waiting for extradition was deduced from it. By 1992 they were out again. But this time they had millions of ransom money at their disposal, which they had hid away before getting arrested. Cor van Hout and Willem Holleeder used their infamy and money to seize control of the Amsterdam underworld.

King of Amsterdam

Cor van Hout invested his money in the many prostitution houses and night clubs in Amsterdam, where girls from Eastern Europe, kidnapped by Eastern European gangs, were being exploited to make money. Van Hout restored his contact with some old bank robbers he knew, Sam Klepper & John Mieremet, who were selling their services as contract killers. They also worked for an Amsterdam drug lord, Klaas Bruinsma who established a global drug trafficking network in the 1970's. Willem Holleeder followed Van Hout after prison and bought the night club Casa Rosso in the Red Light district. Holleeder too hired the services of Klepper and Mieremet, and gradually began to see Van Hout as a rival businessman. In 1996 Van Hout survived an attempt on his life, and in 1997 the Justice department discovered another plot to kill him. They arrested him, put him behind bars for a few years, but in 2000 Van Hout was released again.

He was barely out of prison when the bullets flew around his head again, but once more he escaped death. Finally, in 2003, a man on a motorcycle drove past Van Hout and a friend of his. A man on the back of the motorcycle, probably a Yugoslav contract killer, aimed a weapon and shot both men. The motorcycle appeared stolen, and was later dumped in a lake. It was the beginning of a wave of high profile assassinations of major figures in the Amsterdam crime world. Sam Klepper had been killed in 2000 already, and at his funeral a lot of Hells Angels' attended, a motor gang he intended to join. Holleeder proceeded to blackmail Klepper's wife, threatening that her little son would have the same fate as his father.

Holleeder now also began to collaborate with the Dutch-Surinamese criminal Dino Soerel. Soerel was a typical Amsterdam street thug, who beat people to death with his fists in the late 1980's. By the 1990's he got involved in drugs, together probably working as something of a bodyguard or enforcer for drug lords. When they got arrested, Soerel took over their business. By the 2000's he was one of the most feared men in Amsterdam, known for his volatile temper, his influence, and his willingness to kill people over nothing. Willem Holleeder and Soerel understood that their criminal reputation could be lucrative: they began to extortion rich people in Amsterdam. Nobody would dare to refuse ''protection money'' to those two. Their main victim was Willem Endstra, a man dealing in real estate. They forced him to pay them and to invest their crime money in real estate. The media revealed Endstra as the ''Accountant of the Crime world''. When Holleeder and Soerel discovered Endstra was talking to the police, Willem Endstra was assassinated beside his car in broad daylight.



(Endstra left, sitting on a bench talking to Willem Holleeder)

After Endstra, Holleeder and Soerel went after Mieremet. Mieremet was one of the thugs they had both worked with to kill Cor van Hout and to control the crime world in the 1990's, but Soerel and Mieremet had become enemies. Mieremet had also become a nervous guy after his buddy Klepper had been killed. He might go to the police one day. In 2002 Mieremet was shot but he survived. In 2004 he eventually fled to Thailand. But in 2005 his legal adviser and lawyer was assassinated. Later that year Mieremet was shot in the head in his office in Thailand. That same day, in Amsterdam, a contract killer hired by Soerel and Holleeder, assassinated Kees Houtman - Mieremet's partner in crime. In 2006 Thomas van der Bijl is assassinated, a long-time friend of Cor van Hout and thus also on Holleeder's death-list for quite some time.

Downfall and Anarchy
The hunt for Willem Holleeder intensified due to all the Wild West shootings in Amsterdam. In 2006 he was finally arrested again, accused of 25 murders and extortion. Key evidence in the case are the so-called ''Endstra Tapes'', recorded by the police and Endstra in secret where he tells how he is being extortioned by Holleeder and Soerel, shortly before his death. Holleeder's lawyer? Bram Moszkowicz, son of the previous one, and known to be a flamboyant media figure, who liked to show off his wealth and to associate himself with the wrong figures. But as the accusations grew that Moszkowicz himself was a maffioso, he put down the job. Holleeder was eventually found guilty of extortion and given a sentence of 9 years in 2009. In 2012 he was released after serving 2/3rds of is sentence. Because he had become such a media hype, he initially appeared in a lot of tv and radio shows and even wrote some articles for a newspaper. In the background however, dark clouds formed above Holleeder's head as he feared he was on many hit lists, and there was still a trial running against him for the 25 murders.

Holleeder began to surround himself with new friends like the Hells Angels. In 2014 Holleeder was arrested again because he threatened a crime journalist at his house. He was arrested to serve the rest of his sentence. Meanwhile, the murder trial took a new turn as Holleeder's own sisters turned up as crown witnesses, with recordings of conversations they had with him. They claimed that for decades they lived under his tyranny, that he is a psychopath who uses a mixture of charm, intimidation, and murder to control people. They referred to him as a serial killer who must be stopped, even if it will cost their own lives - since no enemy of Holleeder ever got away alive. Soerel, Holleeder's co-mastermind, was eventually arrested by a SWAT (well Dutch variant) unit in Amsterdam. Three weeks ago, he was convicted to life imprisonment for his role in the 25 murders.

But the downfall of Holleeder and Soerel hasn't made things better. For Amsterdam is now undergoing the so-called ''Mocro War''. Mocro is slang for Moroccan, an immigrant community in the Netherlands. And with the big boys cleared out of the way, its the Moroccan, Turkish and Antillian street gangs from the poorer neighbourhoods of Amsterdam and Rotterdam that have taken over the drug trade. This went well until 2012, when a cargo of 200 kilo's of cocaine was lost in the harbor of Antwerp. A small gang of Amsterdam Moroccan gangsters had arranged for the cocaine with a lot of small investors, so they were indebted to a lot of people. They group that was supposed to collect it couldn't find it, probably because the police had intercepted it - but didn't publish it. The Moroccan group began to fall apart as they suspected each other of having made secret deals behind their backs.

Gwenette Martha, the leader of one clan, was assassinated with more than 80 bullets in 2014. It was a retaliation for Martha's attempt to kill a man named Benaouf, who led the other clan. Benaouf survived. Not much later a Moroccan is shot as he leaves a Moroccan shisha bar in Amsterdam. During a party in a Maritime museum in Amsterdam, another gang member is shot and killed. Allegedly he was Benaouf's right hand.

The assassinations get more and more insane every month. Assassination attempts took place before the windows of a primary school, middle of the day. Bullets were fired in the middle of Amsterdam, penetrating the windows of busses and trains, with passengers inside. Several innocent people, of whom the killers thought they were their targets, got accidentally assassinated. Bullets ended up in baby rooms of surrounding homes as assassinations took place in residential areas. The wife of a criminal was assassinated in front of her child. In 2016, a message was even delivered when the head of a decapitated Moroccan was placed on the sidewalk in Amsterdam before a Moroccan shisha bar, known to function as the headquarters of some major criminals. The poor boy had no criminal role, he happened to be a personal friend of one. The idiotic part is that these ''major criminals'' are mostly 20-year old Moroccan kids with kalashnikovs, and no shooting experience. The bullets end up everywhere, half the time the victims manage to escape, while innocent people die.

I can really recommend you all to visit Amsterdam.