Dutch resistance

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Members of the Dutch Eindhoven Resistance with troops of the US 101st Airborne in front of the Eindhoven cathedral during Operation Market Garden in September 1944.
Members of the Dutch Eindhoven Resistance with troops of the US 101st Airborne in front of the Eindhoven cathedral during Operation Market Garden in September 1944.

The Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation during World War II developed relatively slowly, but its counterintelligence, domestic sabotage, and communications networks provided key support to Allied forces beginning in 1944 and through the liberation of the country.

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[edit] Conditions

The Netherlands fell to military pressure within five days of the initial German invasion on May 10, 1940. Queen Wilhelmina, the royal family, and a core group of about 5,000 government officials and military evacuated to Great Britain.

The Nazis considered the Dutch as fellow Aryans and were less repressive in the Netherlands than in other occupied nations, at least at first. The country's terrain, lack of wilderness and dense population made it difficult to conceal any illicit activities, and it was completely surrounded by German-controlled territory, offering no escape route. Discovery by the Germans of involvement in the resistance meant an immediate death sentence.

Most Dutch accepted the occupation for the short term. As in Germany, most of the initial resistance came from Social Democrats, Catholics and Communists.[citation needed] Some Dutch were avid collaborators.

The Nazis deported Jewish populations to concentration camps, rationed food, and withheld ration cards as punishment. The Nazis also enslaved adult males between 18 and 45 to work in German factories or public-works projects. In the next five years, as conditions became increasingly harsh and difficult, resistance grew more organized and forceful.

[edit] Activities

Early on, on February 25, 1941, the Communist Party of the Netherlands called for a general strike, the February strike, in response to the first Nazi razzia on Amsterdam's Jewish population. The strike was unique in the history of Nazi-occupied Europe, although it was quickly suppressed.

It was also atypical for the Dutch resistance, which was more covert. Resistance in the Netherlands took the form of small-scale, decentralized cells engaged in independent activities. Some small groups had absolutely no links to others.These groups produced forged ration cards and counterfeit money, collected intelligence, published underground newspapers, sabotaged phone lines and railroads, prepared maps, and distributed food and goods.

One of the riskiest activities was hiding and sheltering refugees and enemies of the Nazi regime, Jewish families[citation needed] like the family of Anne Frank, underground operatives, draft-age Dutch, and others. Collectively these people were known as onderduikers ('under-divers'). Later in the war this system of people-hiding was used to protect downed Allied airmen. Reportedly resistance doctors in Heerlen concealed an entire hospital floor from German troops[citation needed].

In February 1943, two operatives of a Dutch resistance cell called CS-6 (for their address, 6 Corelli Street, in Amsterdam) rang the doorbell of 70-year-old retired Lieutenant-General Hendrik A. Seyffardt in the Hague. After he answered and identified himself, they shot him twice in the abdomen. He died a day later. This assassination of a lower-level official triggered a cruel reprisal from SS General Hanns Albin Rauter, the killing of 50 Dutch hostages and a series of raids on Dutch universities. By accident the Dutch resistance attacked Rauter's car on March 6, 1945, which in turn led to the killings at De Woeste Hoeve, where 116 men were rounded up and executed at the site of the ambush and another 147 Gestapo prisoners executed elsewhere. A similar war crime happened on October 1 and 2, 1944, in the village of Putten, where over 600 men were deported to camps to be killed in retaliation for resistance activity.

[edit] Organization

Only a few months after the invasion, a number of Revolutionary Socialist Worker's Party (RSAP) members including Henk Sneevliet formed the Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front, a major force behind the February strike. Its entire leadership was caught and executed in April 1942.

According to CIA historian Stewart Bentley, by the middle of 1944 there were four major resistance organizations in the country, completely independent of each other:

  • the LO ('Landelijke Organisatie voor hulp aan onderduikers', or National Organization for Help to Onderduikers)
  • the KP ('Knokploeg', or Assault Group), with 550 members conducting sabotage operations and occasional assassinations
  • the RVV ('Raad van Verzet' or Council of Resistance), engaged in both sabotage and protection of onderduikers
  • and the OD ('Orde Dienst' or Order of Service), a group preparing for the return of the exiled Dutch government, and its subgroup the GDN (Dutch Secret Service), the intelligence arm of the OD

In addition to these groups, the National Steun Fonds (NSF) financial organization accepted money from the exiled government to fund operations of the LO and KP. The principle figure of the NSF was the banker Walraven van Hall, whose activities were discovered by the Nazis, and who was shot to death at age 39.

[edit] After Normandy

With the Normandy invasion in June 1944, the Dutch civilian population was put under increasing pressure by Allied infiltration and the need for intelligence, the German military defensive buildup, the instability of the German position, and active fighting.

Portions of the country were liberated as part of the Allied Drive to the Siegfried Line; the port of Antwerp was liberated on September 4, 1944. The Allied paratrooper disaster of Operation Market Garden, an attempt to secure eight bridges and transport lines around Arnhem in mid-September, failed partly because British forces refused to accept intelligence offered by the Dutch resistance regarding German strength of forces. They believed those sources had been compromised.

While the south was liberated, Amsterdam and the rest of the north remained under Nazi control until their official surrender on May 6, 1945. For these eight months Allied forces held off, fearing huge civilian losses, and hoping for a rapid collapse of the German government. When the Dutch government-in-exile asked for a national railway strike as a resistance measure, the Nazis stopped food transports to the western Netherlands, and this set the stage for the 'Hunger winter', the Dutch famine of 1944.

Some 374 Dutch resistance fighters are buried in the Field of Honor in the Dunes around Bloemendaal.

[edit] Figures in the Dutch resistance

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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