Explaining the Dutch

[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.