Netherlands in World War I
The country's neutrality was based on the belief that its strategic position between the German Empire, German-occupied Belgium, and the British guaranteed its safety.
In addition to providing a credible deterrence, the army had to house refugees, guard internment camps for captured soldiers, and prevent smuggling.
[2] Representatives of 26 nations conferred on the limitation of certain types of weapons, including poison gas, hollow point bullets and aerial bombardment from hot air balloons.
[9] However, in Dutch Protestant or Neo-Calvinist circles, there was sympathy for the German cause, which was partly inspired by the memory of the Second Boer War (1899-1902), in South Africa.
[1] In the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia at 11 a.m. on 28 July 1914.
The deadliest incident occurred on 30 April 1917, when a Royal Naval Air Service pilot mistakenly dropped eight bombs on the town of Zierikzee, damaged several houses and killed a family of three.
After initially denying the incident, the British government apologized and agreed to compensate the Dutch for damage and loss of life.
[15] German Zeppelins carrying out bombing raids against the UK frequently violated Dutch airspace because of weather conditions such as wind or fog.
It is unclear whether Dutch fire was responsible for the downing of the Zeppelin LZ 54, which came down in the North Sea and led to the King Stephen incident, in which the captain of the British fishing trawler King Stephen, William Martin, refused to rescue the crew of LZ 54, resulting in them drowning.
The Netherlands were not included in the allied blockade of Germany, and thus offered a conduit to overseas trade for the Central Powers.
[1] Dutch vessels used a channel from their coast via the Dogger Bank to the North Sea, which both the British and Germans pledged to keep safe.
The majority was due to German attacks, with around 150[18] merchant and fishing ships sunk by U-boats, the largest being the passenger steamer SS Tubantia on 16 March 1916.
[19] In February 1917 the Germans announced a renewed campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare with neutral ships bound for Britain now deliberately targeted.
As a result the majority of Dutch shipping was left idle in port while the NOT attempted to negotiate with the Allies to relax the inspection requirement and allow their trade to bypass the German danger zone.
[21] Most were cargo ships, but they also included the ocean liners Rijndam, Koningin der Nederlanden, and Zeelandia, which the USA converted into troopships.
[26] The United Kingdom also seized Dutch merchant ships, including Prinses Juliana and Goentoer, which were converted into troopships.
[16] The Allies agreed to be more lenient towards the Netherlands while Germany declared that it would no longer recognise the neutrality of Dutch ships, and would sink them even outside the war zone.
MI6 had a station in Rotterdam under the command of Richard B. Tinsley, who handled several important spy networks in Belgium, such as La Dame Blanche.
[30][page needed] On 31 July 1914, the Dutch government ordered the full mobilization of its conscript armed forces of 200,000 men, including reserves and regional militias.
The chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Cornelis Snijders, was promoted to full general and commander-in-chief, a position that existed only in wartime.
The third pillar was the Veldleger, or mobile field army, which would operate outside the Waterline in the rural eastern and southern provinces.
The prohibited border areas were expanded during the war to fight espionage and to restrict the access of suspect individuals.
Some Dutchmen volunteered for service in the French, British, German or Austro-Hungarian armies, but exact numbers are unknown.
Some immigrants from the Netherlands to Canada and a few who lived in the United States served with various regiments of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
From 1914 to 1915, English nurse Edith Cavell, who was based in German-occupied Belgium, helped 200 Allied soldiers escape from Belgian soil to the Netherlands.
Wounded Allied soldiers as well as Belgian and French civilians of military age were hidden from German occupational troops and provided with false papers by Prince Réginald de Croÿ at Bellignies, his château near Mons, Belgium.
Her execution provoked outrage among both the Allies and neutral countries, and was represented as an act of German barbarism and moral depravity in British propaganda.
Estimates of per-capita, inflation adjusted economic growth between 1913 and 1921 are 2.4 percent, higher than the western Allies, Germany, and most neutral powers, but not the US.
[38] Later, fearing a revolution led by socialist leader Pieter Jelles Troelstra, Dutch would adopt a strongly pro-Allied policy under the September 1918 Beerenbrouck government.
