Fighting on all Fronts (26 page)

This turn of events spurred the CPN into new action. A communist pamphlet of July 1941 entitled
Comrades!
argued that “there have been two wars raging since 22 June 1941: an imperialist one between Germany and Britain, and a class war between Germany and the Soviet Union”.
De Waarheid
called upon all “Dutch, without distinction respecting faith or political revenue, for the decisive battle!” for a national war of liberation. Resistance activities intensified. The CPN established a Military Commission, forming sabotage cells in summer 1941. Workers with the experience of the February strike were part of their backbone.

Queen Wilhelmina expressed her solidarity with the fighting Russians by radio while “remaining loyal to our standpoint vis à vis bolshevism”. Despite the latter qualification,
De Waarheid
called for a public celebration of on the queen’s birthday on 31 August 1941, stating they were not sympathisers of the monarchy, but “had no special reason for animosity towards the queen either”.
⁷⁰
In November a communist group set a construction site in Fokker on fire, and launched a host of other attacks on transformers (shutting down the Hoogovens steel plant for a while), rail tracks and bridges, wagons and emplacements, German military equipment and NSB and Wehrmacht buildings.

In spring 1942 the Russian army was approaching exhaustion and foreign minister Molotov visited Britain and the US, asking for the opening of a second front. In March Seyss-Inquart introduced forced labour deportation to Germany. Henceforth the struggle against
Arbeitseinsatz
was central to the CPN. A brief regional metal strike took place against the planned deportations but was unsuccessful: in autumn 38,000 workers were shipped off.
⁷¹

The cadre of the CPN was depleted by arrests, leaving control in the hands of a triumvirate. Cells were run top-down out of necessity, but at the cost of democratic discussion, and Stalin’s voice was the main beacon. Communist calls for mass protests, demonstrations and sabotage went unheeded, and rows with the rightward moving SDAP embittered relations still further.
De Waarheid
stated that: “almost all social democrat council members and MPs work for the Nazis…” The SDAP hit back denouncing “Bolshevik totalitarianism”.
⁷²

A secret report of the
Sicherheitsdienst
in 1943 said: “Out of 140,000 Jews presently 102,000 are gone… The raid in Amsterdam was a big success. The Dutch population does not agree, but does not obstruct”.
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Jews were not the only scapegoats. An estimated 2,000 to 2,5000 travellers were deported to concentration camps, according to lawyer Lau Mazirel, who represented persecuted people in Nazi courts.
⁷⁴
On 19 May 245 travellers were deported to Auschwitz. Only 30 returned alive.
⁷⁵

Another though lesser target were gays. The police inspected (invaded) gay cafés, checking for licences and the presence of minors. In November 1943, 48 people were arrested during a raid in The Hague. Most were deported to Germany. General repression, however, was variable, ranging from acquittal to one-year probation. Of the more than 160 Dutch men who were convicted by the Nazis for homosexual acts, relatively few ended up in concentration camps. Koenders has estimated that “some dozen” homosexuals were persecuted and concluded that the occupier “only acted when one way or the other a German interest was involved”.
⁷⁶

Oppression was part of the ideological glue holding the occupier and its Dutch counterpart together. Even more important to both was dealing with the class enemy. This made the communists a particular target. Aided by lists from the Dutch CID “the Germans again arrested 120 pre-war communist officials who were locked up in Camp Amersfoort. On 15 October 1942, 10 of them were executed as a reprisal for resistance acts in Twente”.
⁷⁷
For the purpose of intimidation, news of executions was reported in all media.

Yet acts of popular disobedience continued. In May, Mussert visited Eindhoven prompting the NSB mayor to hoist the NSB flag over all public buildings. However, City Lyceum pupils refused to enter as long it was waving above their heads. But 1942 ended with the crowning of Mussert as “Leader of the Dutch people”.
⁷⁸
This nomination was qualified: “as long as the war lasted, corresponding competences could not yet be transferred to the NSB leader…”
⁷⁹
Mussert hoped that recruiting 25,000 volunteers for the Eastern Front would soften this stance.

1943 began as depressingly as the previous year had ended. The Final Solution for the Dutch Jews was one ghastly feature. Police Summary Justice (Politiestandrecht) was another. Then Hitler announced “
Totalkrieg
” (total war). However, Stalingrad (February 1943) proved a turning point. Realisation that Nazi rule was ultimately doomed inspired increasing attacks on state authority. Another resistance group, CS-6, began to operate. It was composed of Amsterdam students and intellectuals, many with communist sympathies. Its “actions were about liquidation of political opponents, a kind of public execution”.
⁸⁰

The Nazis responded with raids on the universities and streets, arresting thousands of youth and deporting them to the Vught concentration camp or to Germany. From London Radio Orange denounced “vigilantism”, and
Trouw
criticised “political murder”.
⁸¹

In April and May the Germans asked businesses to hand over personnel lists. While the majority refused, according to Van Randwijk it was actually a “cunning little German plan”. “The employers could ask for dispensation! It could hardly be better, since now all men of 18 to 35 years were effectively driven to become slaves for their employer…”
⁸²
The upper age soon became 45.

The ambiguity in the situation was shown, however, by a railway strike that, in effect, was staged by the Dutch government-in-exile and bosses after the Nazis took more soldiers into war captivity in April. The strike spread beyond the Limburg mining district, and Philips’ production was disrupted for ten days.
⁸³
But when the local resistance threatened to take the movement out of management hands, the latter produced leaflets calling for a return to work as the action was “the work of communists”. The aftermath was disastrous. The Nazis murdered 200 people in reprisals.
⁸⁴
Nevertheless, new layers were drawn into struggle as Germany’s insatiable thirst for labour continued and labour service was extended to the countryside.

Despite continuing repression, in the spring of 1943 an important new group was founded, the Resistance Council (RVV), by former army officer Jan Thijssen, an ex-OD member who had broken with their strategy taking with him the illegal radio and intelligence service. This group, which the communists joined, forged close links with the Dutch London Information Bureau, the secret service of the government. The RVV demanded from the exiled government the right to retaliate against Nazi attacks, but this was refused.
⁸⁵
Yet more forces joined, including the LO
and Combat Forces (
Knokploegen
, LKP). From then onwards the RVV grew to about 1,000 members. Other than the LO-LKP it was the biggest resistance organisation.
⁸⁶

The resistance professionalised creating an Identity Card Central (
Persoonsbewijzencentrale
) and the National Support Fund (
Nationaal Steunfonds
, NSF). The NSF, which became the “resistance bank”, initially questioned whether the communists were “good Dutchmen” but relented, offering the CPN support from January 1945.
⁸⁷
Fake IDs had a mass circulation, causing their value to rise. Warnings against registering with the authorities now gained momentum, with
Trouw
and
Het Parool
calling on people to refuse registration or destroy the registration systems.
⁸⁸

The authorities counter-attacked. From May onwards the political information service (PID) was extended to many cities. It was led by a new layer of Nazis and supported by an increasing group of NSB policemen. In The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and elsewhere the police played a crucial role in the persecution of communists.
⁸⁹
All resistance was persecuted relentlessly throughout the year, by either the Germans or the Dutch police on their own initiative. Initially being tried according to German military law, partisans were sentenced to long sentences or even death.

From 1943 onwards repression was “on the cheap”. Following acts of sabotage and liquidations, partisans and random individuals were taken hostage or executed in public. Between September 1943 and September 1944 the murder gang code named
Silbertanne
committed 54 extrajudicial murders and attacks.
⁹⁰
A civil war raged in the streets, fought by all available means; a war the Nazis. Mussert publicly denounced the resistance, saying: “assassination, under all circumstances, is cowardly and mean… These crimes are therefore committed by a small gang of dislocated elements that by and large do not understand they are at the service of Moscow”.
⁹¹
With his own castle crumbling, Mussert played his trump card—anti-communism. It would not help him.

Years of war took their toll and by early 1944 conditions were “near intolerable. The Dutch economy had been stripped bare and the only available foods were potatoes, mealy bread and beets. Children were beginning to show signs of malnutrition while diseases like diphtheria and typhus had begun to break out”.
⁹²
Liberation of the southern Netherlands in September 1944 actually exacerbated problems elsewhere.

On 17 September the government-in-exile called for another national rail strike to support the failed Operation Market Garden. As traffic had already been disrupted, the ensuing strike of 30,000 rail workers stopped transport almost completely.
⁹³
It took the struggle up yet another gear. As it exposed thousands to possible vengeance, all 30,000 train staff had to go into hiding. Resistance groups took increasing risks to fulfil their growing tasks.

On 15 November 1944 the KP Almelo carried out what is probably the biggest robbery in bank history. Days later, however, they were caught by accident and had to reveal the location of the loot to protect other activities. They died in Neuengamme:
⁹⁴

Thinking liberation was at hand, the Dutch railway workers had gone on strike, and in retaliation the Germans cut the gas, electricity, water and food supplies into these parts of Holland. Throughout the cold winter of 1944-45 the situation of the Dutch trapped in this pocket became desperate… The Red Cross lobbied to transport food into the area, but Churchill remained as unwilling as ever to feed European civilians trapped behind German lines. He argued that the food would just be eaten by the Germans. The American government was also concerned that the Soviets may be antagonised if any food transported into the area by the allies fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht. The Soviets were in no mood to countenance feeding German soldiers while still spilling blood trying to defeat the Wehrmacht in the east. Reports began reaching Britain that the Dutch were dying in the streets of Amsterdam. In the end the death toll reached 22,000 people. The Dutch prime minister in exile informed Churchill that his people would hold him responsible for the deaths, and General Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces, pointed out that he did not want to send Allied troops into an area where people were already starving.
⁹⁵

Food was but one element of the general crisis:

According to the Dutch government’s assessment, stocks of bread grains would run out by the end of October; the occupied territories had but three weeks of potatoes left; there was no milk; and most calamitous of all, military operations had disrupted coal shipments into the cities so that the gas and electric works, as well as bakeries and factories, could not function. Coal stocks would be gone by mid-October, Dutch sources reported. The country was on the verge of total collapse.
⁹⁶

On 2 November the British Chiefs of Staff finally allowed Swedish ships to deliver to Amsterdam, but far too little to avert a mass famine. There had been another option: using the Kiel Canal. This, however, was blocked by the British Chiefs of Staff on 14 February 1945. As one writer put it:

The ugly truth is that the liberation of north-western Holland was simply not a strategic priority for the Allies. The Anglo-American armies hit the Germans along the Siegfried Line in Belgium and France, and in spring 1945 pushed eastward into Germany proper. This left a large contingent of German soldiers effectively cut off in Holland, though still in command of much of the country. A gruesome sideshow ensued: the doomed German occupiers pursued a policy of vengeance against the citizens of the Netherlands, and deliberately allowed them to starve.
⁹⁷

While the Nazi machine was gearing up for a final confrontation, the Allied powers were of very little help. Because Dutch industry and labour were fully integrated into the
Reich
, both increasingly drew Allied bombing. Caught in the crossfire for half a year, popular anger with the Nazis grew—and with the Allied powers and exiled government and queen. This would be one element in the crisis of authority in 1945. A secret service report in June 1944 said that people “were becoming increasingly anti-American and anti-British because of the reckless bombardment”.
⁹⁸

The masses were not passive, particularly in the struggle for more food. CPN members gave an excellent lead here, despite doubts expressed by the CPN’s own leadership that mass protest was “too risky”. In the autumn of 1944 women in Rotterdam organised a petition and demonstration against hunger. In Amsterdam, in February 1945, they petitioned the mayor. Mien de Vries recounted: “When I think if it now I don’t understand how we dared do that, with all the responsibility you had for your kids. But it was precisely that responsibility that made you do it”.
⁹⁹