Dutch resistance
Dutch counterintelligence, domestic sabotage, and communications networks eventually provided key support to Allied forces, beginning in 1944 and continuing until the Netherlands was fully liberated.
Publishing illegal papers – something the Dutch were very good at, with 1,100 separate titles appearing, some reaching circulations of more than 100,000 for a population of 8.5 million – was not considered resistance per se.
[citation needed] Nevertheless, thousands of members of all the 'non-resisting' categories were arrested by the Germans and often subsequently jailed for months, tortured, sent to concentration camps, or killed.
Noteworthy were the privately financed but Army-operated anti-aircraft guns, positioned on suspected approach routes that would overfly the industries that put up the money for them.
During the Battle of Java Sea in 1941, the British, American and Australian Navies were led by a Dutch naval officer: Rear Admiral Karel Doorman.
The Dutch military leadership, having lost the bulk of their air force, realized they could not stop the German bombers but managed to negotiate a tactical, instead of national, capitulation, unlike France a few weeks later.
The open terrain and dense population, the densest in Europe, made it difficult to conceal illegal activities; unlike, for example, the Maquis in France, who had ample hiding places.
[11] Membership of an armed or military organized group could lead to prolonged stays in concentration camps, and after mid-1944, to summary execution (as a result of Hitler's orders to shoot resistance members on sight – the Niedermachungsbefehl).
The increasing attacks against Dutch fascists and Germans led to large-scale reprisals, often involving dozens, even hundreds of randomly chosen people who, if not executed, were deported to concentration camps.
They started large-scale fortifications along the coast and built some 30 airfields, paying with money they claimed from the national bank at a rate of 100 million guilders a month (the so-called 'costs of the occupation').
[13] They were found more easily because before the war the Dutch authorities had required citizens to register their religion so that church taxes could be distributed among the various religious organizations.
Furthermore, shortly after Germany took over the government, they demanded all Dutch public servants fill out an "Aryan Attestation" in which they were asked to state in detail their religious and ethnic ancestry.
The American author Mark Klempner writes, "Though there was some protest, not just from the government employees, but from several churches and universities, in the end, all but twenty of 240,000 Dutch civil servants signed and returned the form.
As early as 15 May 1940, the day after the Dutch capitulation, the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) held a meeting to organize their underground existence and resistance against the German occupiers.
IJzerdraat started to build an illegal resistance organization called De Geuzen, named after a group who rebelled against Spanish occupation in the 16th century.
[17] A few months after the German invasion, a number of Revolutionary Socialist Worker's Party (RSAP) members including Henk Sneevliet formed the Marx–Lenin–Luxemburg Front.
According to CIA historian Stewart Bentley, there were four major resistance organizations in the country by the middle of 1944, independent of each other: Another, more radical group, was called 'CS-6 [nl]'.
Having been started in 1940 by the brothers Gideon and Jan Karel ('Janka') Boissevain, the group grew quickly to some 40 members and made contact with the Dutch communist and surgeon Gerrit Kastein.
The strike was largely put down within a day with German troops firing on unarmed crowds, killing nine people and wounding 24, as well as taking many prisoners.
They produced forged ration cards and counterfeit money, collected intelligence, published underground papers such as De Waarheid, Trouw, Vrij Nederland, and Het Parool.
One of the most widespread resistance activities was hiding and sheltering refugees and enemies of the Nazi regime, which included concealing Jewish families like that of Anne Frank, underground operatives, draft-age Dutchmen and, later in the war, Allied aircrew.
On 22 September 1944, members of the LKP, RVV and a small number of the OD in the southern liberated part of the Netherlands became a Dutch army unit: the Stoottroepen.
The third battalion from Brabant was incorporated into a Polish formation of the Canadian 2nd Army[verification needed] on the front line on the islands of Tholen and Sint Philipsland.
[28] On February 4, retired General and Rijkscommissaris Hendrik Seyffardt, already head of the Dutch SS volunteer group Vrijwilligerslegioen Nederland, was announced through the press as “Deputy for Special Services”.
As a result, the Communist resistance group CS-6 under Gerrit Kastein, concluded that the new institute would eventually lead to a National-Socialist government, which would then introduce general conscription to enable the call-up of Dutch nationals for the Eastern Front.
[28] After approval from the Dutch government-in-exile, on the evening of Friday 5 February 1943, after answering a knock at his front door in Scheveningen, The Hague, Seyffardt was shot twice by student Jan Verleun who had accompanied Kastein on the mission.
[28] On 7 February, CS-6 shot fellow institute member Gemachtigde Voor de Volksvoorlichting (Attorney for the national relations) H. Reydon and his wife.
Van der Stok became one of only three successful escapees of 'the Great Escape' from Stalag Luft III, and the only one to succeed in returning to England to rejoin the fight as a fighter pilot.
[34] Some of these were never more than hand-copied newsletters, while others were printed in larger runs and grew to become newspapers and magazines some of which still exist today, such as Trouw, Het Parool, and Vrij Nederland.
The unsuccessful Allied airborne Operation Market Garden liberated Eindhoven and Nijmegen, but the attempt to secure bridges and transport lines around Arnhem in mid-September failed, partly because British forces disregarded intelligence offered by the Dutch resistance about German strength and position of enemy forces and declined help with communications from the resistance.
