Fighting on all Fronts (25 page)

The LO (
Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers
) was founded in mid-1942. It helped people to flee, providing food, IDs and other documents. In Haarlem the LO had an intelligence service spying on the police and established a clandestine telephone network. The LO became linked to the LKP (
Landelijke Knok Ploegen
) which arose in August 1943 from pre-existing local fighting squads. The LO in West and North Netherlands was dominated by Anti Revolutionary Party members, and in the south by Catholics.
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Together with the
Trouw
newspaper, this formed the “right wing” of the resistance.

The OD, though underground, was not a resistance group as such. Van Randwijk describes it:

Order Service. (Telling name! ORDER!), an organisation led by officers, who regarded themselves as the rightful continuers of the military authority proclaimed with the pronunciation of the State of Emergency, in the days before May 1940, when we still feared everything, hoped for everything and were wrongly or badly prepared for almost everything. The OD prepared military rule during occupation, devised laws and lawlets, appointed mayors in advance, etc etc, regarded itself as the lawful extension of the London government, threatening to arrest any politician and civilian [contesting power].
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One function of the OD is illustrated by the “Englandspiel”, in which German counter-espionage was able to capture British secret agents and a good number of OD members: they were involved in espionage (mapping German units, military infrastructure).
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Though this is a form of competition rather than “resistance”, the Nazi’s still were ruthless.

Vrij Nederland
(VN), edited by Henk van Randwijk, should also be mentioned. It became the voice of an educated, reformed youth who wanted “modernisation” of the pre-war setup, and were disaffected by the Catholic church and ARP. It grew to 80,000-100,000 copies weekly by the end of the war. The 1 December 1944 issue, with Colijn’s death on its front page, remembered him as a “great and honest patriot”,
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though unlike the ARP it would criticise intervention in Indonesia after the war.

In January 1941 the Catholic bishops repeated their prohibition on believers being members of the NSB—and socialist, communist and liberal parties. But whereas communists were refused the sacraments, reading Nazi papers and even membership of ultra-right organisations was allowed. The archbishop wrote to the priests on 15 September 1943 discussing membership of the Waffen-SS: “The Reverend Bishops have not deemed it necessary to speak out in public on this issue, because the number of Catholics that would want to join will of course remain small, and on the other hand because a certain idealism [ie struggle against Bolshevism] does not have to be a priori excluded”.
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On 28 October 1940 communists organised a protest of forced labourers from Amsterdam in Het Gooi. When a lengthening of the working day by half an hour or more was announced, workers took strike action that
lasted for weeks. On 1 November, 1,800 were locked out. “In the first half of November the streetscape was dominated by the struggle of forced labourers (
werkverschaffingsarbeiders
). The leadership and delegations of women were in touch with all sorts of institutions… Women had an active part in the actions of forced labourers, and certainly did not have the least dangerous tasks.” In January 1941 thousands of forced labourers protested again. The struggle paid off. In February an extra month of unemployment benefit was announced.
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On 12 February it seemed the creation of a Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam had begun, while the Jewish Council called on the Jews to surrender their arms. Three days later a protest march raised the slogans “Against the WA rascals!”, “Down with the NSB!” “For wage rises and state support!”
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On 17 February Amsterdam metal workers struck in protest against forced transfer to Germany. The same evening the CPN leadership met, and Lou Jansen argued that “partial action under German occupation irrevocably leads to defeat”. The Amsterdam leadership agreed on a general strike against repression and the prospect of a Mussert government. However, the success of the strike meant these plans were withdrawn and no arrests were made.
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The dam broke when WA member Koot died after a fight in Waterloo Square. German leaders Rauter (SS) and Seyss-Inquart (Reichskommissar) ordered the arrest of 427 Jewish men. The following day the famous CPN strike manifesto was distributed: “Protest against the awful persecutions of the Jews—Strike! Strike! Strike!” The strike call fed into much wider resentment over freedom of speech, increasing fascist terror and plans to deport workers to Germany.
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On 25 and 26 February workers in public transport and a host of other sectors walked out, an estimated 60,000 workers altogether. It was one of the few political strikes in the Third Reich and a clear act of solidarity with the Jews.

Women played a pivotal role:

On the strike day they had an important role in turning out the smaller companies…[such as] the metal company Jonker… It was difficult to get the strike going Tuesday morning… [The women said,] well, then we will take care of that. And those women stormed inside and started to yell at those guys. Tools flew around, and then the whole bunch started running. And that was it.
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The Nazi reply was a wave of repression. Four communists were executed, along with 15 members of the Geuzen resistance group. “In the months after the strike, about 500 communist resistance fighters were
arrested. A quarter of the original number! The Noorderlicht groups in Groningen and Friesland were almost entirely wiped out.” A fascist regime would not tolerate open mass resistance. After the strike the leadership grappled with the experience, as was made clear in
De Waarheid
: “The tone has become more sombre. Again and again there are calls for solidarity with the prisoners of the strike and the razzias. There is virtually no information about industrial action, not even small strikes like those regularly occurring at the start of 1941”.
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The Nazis considered the Dutch “Aryans” and planned to integrate them into the Reich. Though this foundered due to increasing exploitation and resistance, it is worthwhile examining the role of the Dutch administration early in the occupation. In early May Dutch provincial authorities heavily armed the civil guards to “retain order” and the state wanted to expand the police force with army military police. Though this largely failed, in July and August 1940, 456 state patrolmen (
Korps Rijksveldwachters
) and 1,170 police became available.
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Some policemen quit their positions during the war, and a few dozen joined the resistance or used their position to provide intelligence. Of 1,671 members of LO-LKP killed in 1940, 123 were police. It should be noted, however, that most of these only went underground later, during the call for
Arbeitseinsatz
(1943) and liberation of the south (in the autumn of 1944), when they risked being found on the losing side. But the apparatus as a whole and most of its personnel were loyal to right wing ideas and very willing to cooperate. “Serving the public cause” they lent assistance to the German security police (
Sicherheitsdienst
, SD) in political arrests. A minority of NSB members increasingly determined the agenda so that “the Dutch police hunted on a large scale for communists, Jews in hiding and resistance groups”.
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From September 1941 onwards the city councils were disbanded and the mayors became solely responsible for order in towns and cities. The margins for cooperation without openly embracing fascism became near zero, even for convinced nationalists.

In this situation two groups competed for state positions: the old bosses’ representatives and the NSB. On 3 July 1940 ARP leader Colijn published a pamphlet,
On the Border of Two Worlds
(
Op de grens van twee werelden
), saying Dutch democracy was obsolete and that we had to “reckon with a German teacher politically, economically and socially” and “work along in that direction”.
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He criticised the queen for fleeing to London. Colijn called all parties together on 24 July 1940 “for resolute work for the preservation and strengthening of the fatherland and the community”, founding
the Netherlands Union (
Nederlandse Unie
), that promised “to work in a loyal relationship” with the German Reichskommisar.

The Union, which advocated abolishing political parties, grew from 250,000 to 800,000 in February 1941, pulling in members from across the right wing and social democratic spectrum. It instructed members that “a loyal attitude to occupation authorities is a precondition and that members must keep to this”.
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Formally it was corporatist without anti-Semitism. The Union approved of Nazi state schemes like
Winterhulp
and
Arbeidsdienst
, and eventually purged itself of Jewish members. Colijn’s attitude drew venomous criticism from within his own ARP prime minister Gerbrandy calling him “the Dutch Pétain”.
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The Germans, however, were “not interested in allowing any independent expression of Netherlands’ patriotism… The Netherlands Union failed to become a new Vichy, not for want of trying, but because the occupation authorities did not think they needed it”.
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This caused a U-turn. The ARP published a pamphlet,
We Build On, But On What Basis?
(
Wij bouwen verder, maar op welken grondslag?
) which was forbidden by the authorities.
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For his part NSB leader Mussert went out of his way to please Hitler, in an attempt to gain a higher position. While “the NSB was not regarded as their party by the German occupier”, it hurried to throw itself into their arms. Individual NSB members acting as Hitler’s loyal servants gained rapid promotion. Another NSB official, Rost van Tonningen, was appointed to high office: he became the president of the Nederlandsche Bank and was ordered to establish an SS-Standarte “Westland”. In his diary Mussert noted: “talk about the relation between Netherlands and Germany as two brothers of the German race. It turned out the highest SS leadership sees the Dutch people as a German people. This is disastrous… If the NSB adopted this stance propaganda for Dutch National Socialism would be pointless and we would certainly be accused of treachery.” However, Mussert’s doubts did not last long. Soon he was praising Hitler as a “prophet”, “struggling for the construction of a new Europe”. Now his own dream was “Netherlands from the Dollart to Calais, with India, with the Congo, a friend of South Africa, closely collaborating with the German brother”.
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This was precisely what “non-Nazi” general secretary Hirschfeld was actually working for in his ministry.
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An increasing number of appointed mayors were NSB members or pro-German.
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Street gangs were given free rein. The uniform ban was lifted in 1940, and after December 1941 the NSB was the only legal party. The WA and Youth Storm were allowed to march without a permit.
Though the police had formal instructions to tolerate no violence, even by NSB members, they were above the law. During riots they would simply call for the help of German soldiers.
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The NSB grew to 100,000 strong, about 1 percent of the population. When persecution of the Jews became a branch of industry, NSB members ran seized enterprises and worked at “robbing banks” (
roofbanken
). The active collaboration of the Dutch state machine, including homegrown and German Nazis, combined legal and illegal repression in the most arbitrary and brutal regime the Netherlands had ever known.

One of the most important Dutch enterprises, Philips, had prepared itself for the occupation. It split into three entities based in New York, London and Eindhoven. “That way…nowhere was Philips hostile to capital and everywhere one could earn from the war”.
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Philips and the Germans did not always see eye to eye, however. For example, when Philips himself held his 50-year jubilee on 23 May 1941, he gave a day off to the workforce that turned into a pro-royal manifestation in the company town of Eindhoven. When NSB and WA thugs intervened, a violent confrontation developed. A battalion of Grüne Polizei placed machine guns around the market, threatening a massacre. At the last minute the company convinced the Nazis there was no “revolt”, and nobody was shot. But 400 people were arrested and Philips himself was forced into hiding.

But the business continued to thrive. Thus Philips solved its labour shortage by using forced labour in the thousands, many of them Jews and women from the concentration camps. “Industry paid through contributions to the public treasury for the exploitation of the camps, and kept a neat profit for itself”, Ad Teulings wrote. Philips took this step on condition that: “The Philips’ command had to be under supervision of Philips; the supervisors needed to have unlimited access to the camp; the supervisors decided which prisoners would be added to the Philips command; the prisoners got an extra hot meal—‘Philiprak’—and wages are paid to relatives.” Yet a former prisoner remembered: “in the end, the SS was the boss and not Philips”.
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Incidentally, Philips’s forced labourers were never compensated for their suffering.

The situation changed with Hitler’s invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941. Two days later “400 prominent communists were arrested of all people by Dutch police, and on the basis of Dutch data. By the end of August 175 communists would be added to that. Besides some dozens of people from circles left of the CPN were arrested”.
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De Jong wrote:

The names and addresses of the persons to be arrested were derived by the
Sicherheitspolizei
from data collected in the ’20s and ’30s by the Dutch secret service, the Central Intelligence Service. In many cases, these were supplemented by information from the municipal police forces. The arrests mainly took place on the night of 24 and 25 June. In Amsterdam, where 75 persons were arrested,
“100 Mann Holländische Polizei”
were involved, some of whom, however, helped some of those who sought to escape. In Friesland the people to arrest were
“ausgesucht in Verbindung und Zusammenarbeit mit den Bürgermeistern und dem Generalstaatsanwalt”
(selected in contact and cooperation with the mayors and attorney-general).
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