The Kingdom of the Netherlands During World War II

[1][2] The series was written by Loe de Jong (1914–2005), director of the Dutch Institute for War Documentation (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, or NIOD), and was published between 1969 and 1991.

Originally the government intended for the series to be edited by four professors of the four main Dutch politico-denominational pillars, who quickly realized that they would be unable to fulfill the task in addition to their regular obligations.

In 1987, the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sciences, in response to criticism, asked the NIOD to appoint an investigative committee to evaluate de Jong's thirteen volumes and write a fourteenth, which was to include the opinions of other historians.

He was later chastised for being overly concerned with his own image and reputation, a critique extended to his historical work—for instance, his cursory investigation in 1965 of the activities during World War II of Claus von Amsberg, then fiancé of crown princess Beatrix, was deemed insufficient and too positive (as opposed to his investigation in 1977 of politician Wim Aantjes, in which he too easily reached a negative conclusion, according to critics).

This myth dominated the view the Dutch had of themselves, supported in great measure by de Jong, until historians began publishing more critical studies.

Klein, then a historian at Erasmus University Rotterdam, severely criticized de Jong's work: His moralizing stance, his tone so full of pathos, the unverifiability of his statements, his chronicling approach, the lack of thematic analysis of structures and processes, his blindness toward the functioning of impersonal societal forces, his uneven treatment of the material—directed more by what happens to be known than by problem-oriented investigation—his verbosity, the lack of documentation, the ease with which he accepts sources as correct or incorrect, his limitless approvals and disapprovals, especially in regards to people: it is all fodder for historical criticism.