Fighting on all Fronts (27 page)

When Radio Orange incorrectly reported the liberation of Breda, the result was
Dolle Dinsdag
(Mad Tuesday), 5 September 1944. Rumours of German capitulation sparked spontaneous mass resistance. Crowds collected in city centres, decorating the streets with orange and the national tricolour flag. A wave of panic engulfed the NSB, with members destroying documents, insignia and uniforms. Scores started fleeing the country, leaving luggage, writing desks, typewriters and livestock behind on station platforms. NSB membership halved.
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The question of what would replace the Nazi regime now arose in an acute form. One answer to this had been developed by prominent individuals who, refusing to cooperate with the occupiers, were seized in successive waves and held in a camp at Sint Michielsgestel.
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Unwittingly, the Nazis provided the elite with an unelected shadow government plus think tank. Here businessmen and politicians elaborated plans for postwar economic and political organisation. The discussion did not exclude collaborators, either political or economic, and Philips took part, setting up a radio link to the camp. All the plans they devised were to be imposed from above.

Due to crisis and unemployment, the question of social and economic organisation had already been debated before the war. Now the argument raged between the idea of a planned economy and liberal and corporatist models. Crucially, the planned economy lost the final “debate”, as did possible forms of mass democracy. For these people the end of the war would not bring a new society but restore the old. Critics of these discussions spoke of anti-parliamentarian and anti-democratic manoeuvring, a point illustrated by the composition of the second Gerbrandy cabinet in exile (February 1945), the dictatorial approach of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) that took over as the Allies “liberated” the country, the postponement of elections and the prominent influence of Netherlands Union members.
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These suspicions were not without reason.

Ideologically the Catholics saw society as an organic whole. In this view class cooperation would replace class struggle. For the SDAP the reorientation was led by Christian socialist priest Dr Willem Banning. He argued that the “democratic corporative organisation sketched by us means
saying goodbye to class struggle
”, thus explicitly rejecting forms of direct democracy that could have limited arbitrary power from above. Van der Goes, chair of the SDAP, also rejected economic democracy, arguing that “social-economic interests would become too much a world of its own, the body elected would be too cumbersome, in which representation would be regulated only at random”.
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Banning saw himself moved by a religious socialism, defining his own task as “enlightening” the workers with knowledge. Banning campaigned against the idolaters of “temporary earthly powers like people, class, race, but also possession and science…”
¹⁰⁴
His solution was to unify all society in a corporatist style (inspired before the war by the Belgian De Man), campaigning for a united Protestant church and a united labour party with a Christian character.

The authoritarian plans of the Sint Michielgestel group were never fully implemented because of the pressure coming from below. Resistance groups had, in fact, created a shadow state, mirroring state administration with forgery, housing and food “departments” and the police with armed guerrillas. Most of all they controlled the only legitimate press, which had a mass circulation. The workers and intellectuals running these “enterprises” themselves would not accept more state censorship, or a continued fear of repression.

Thus the SDAP leaders’ plans clashed with those of
Vrij Nederland
and
Parool
. The two papers published a manifesto in April 1944 stating that “the old groups and parties, that already were out of touch with reality in 1940, are in no better a position regarding the reality which will confront us after liberation”. They therefore called for “radical renewal of our popular life in political, social, economic and cultural sense”.
¹⁰⁵
The Sint Michielgestel group and ex-Union members refused to sign this, and their attempts to launch their own Dutch People’s Movement (NVB) after the war failed to take off.

The CPN was wary of speculating on post-war arrangements as “now it first came down to expel the German occupier”. Indeed it had its hands full as one leadership after another fell to the Gestapo. Eventually a post-war strategy was elaborated in the People’s Programme (
Volksprogram
). This, sounding radical, argued: “Only when power gets into the hands of the working people, ie when democracy is actually realised in a practical sense…the communists deem a radical change of the social relations possible. This certainly gives the socialist workers’ movement the power to fight for democratic demands, of which the fulfilment must lead to the vanquishing of all resistance and the construction of socialism”.
¹⁰⁶

In reality this amounted to supporting the reconstruction of parliamentary democracy, with one party representing workers: “We are of the opinion that the dissolution of the Third International has greatly improved the prospect of restoring the unity of the workers’ movement on a socialist basis. For this unity we fight and for this unity we
gladly relinquish our party
”.
¹⁰⁷

However, the Dutch communist Koejemans sounded a note of alarm in
The Dutch Rebirth, Reaction or Progress?
:

Dutch big capital strives for concentration, it strives for national organisation, that is, limitation of internal competition to spread its wings all the wider in the area of international competition [with a] single purpose:
restoration of Holland as a colonial power and society led by strong men, undisturbed by unnecessary interference by parliament, an utter restriction of social policies at the behest of the “renewed national spirit”, suppression of class struggle.
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Discussions of a theoretical character were soon interrupted by practical issues. Two days before Mad Tuesday the government in exile appointed Prince Bernhard as commander of the Internal Combat Forces (
Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten
, BS). Bernhard, engaged to Princess Juliana in 1936, was the son of an impoverished German nobleman who had served as an army commander under the kaiser. In his youth Bernhard himself had: “served the SS and SA, worked for one of the most criminal companies of the Third Reich, IG Farben, and acted as liaison between the Nazis and the Falange in Spain”.
¹⁰⁹
Those right wing sympathies meant Bernhard was not credible as a liberator.

Bernhard instructed the RVV, LKP and OD to collaborate together by forming regional “triangles”. Both the RVV and LKP refused. When Jan Thijssen protested too much against this “order”, he was brushed aside. One day later he was arrested by the SD and executed. Such was the fate of more than one RVV leader.

Running alongside the BS was the College of Trust (
College van Vertrouwensmannen
, CvV). This was an unelected interim government designed to prevent a power vacuum. It was chaired by Willem Drees and included representatives from the pre-war government, opposition parties and the newly reorganised resistance.
¹¹⁰
However, when Queen Wilhelmina asked for a delegation from the resistance to visit her, Communists and Social Democrats failed to agree to the composition of the delegation. They also found it difficult to reach a deal with
Trouw
, which rejected communism in particular.

Although the left clearly had varying views on post-war society there was, at least, some common ground. It shared a belief in “such an organisation and control of economic life by the organs of a democratic state, and the abolition of mass unemployment and disparity in wealth between groups in society”, as well as a new union with Indonesia on the basis of equality. Moreover, the left resistance as a whole refused to hand in the few arms they had as required by the CvV, “to avoid situations such as in Belgium and Greece”. The left was indignant that its loyalty should be questioned in this way.
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These early political skirmishes were but the prelude to larger conflicts. Soon the resistance would be faced with an establishment backed
by Allied armies moving in from the south. On 20 September these forces had reached Nijmegen. Rather than restore democracy immediately, the SHAEF, a military authority, ran the liberated zone. It freed the 270 remaining prisoners in Sint Michielsgestel in September 1944 and immediately helped catapult them into high positions. This supplemented the activities of the circle around the queen. After the Gerbrandy cabinet dissolved in January 1945 “new, fresh” figures were selected for government.
¹¹²
This move has been characterised as follows:

The most important reasons for the authoritarian pattern of Bernard, and of Drees, Schermerhorn, Romme, De Quay, Kruls, Schouten, and of course the liberals, must be sought in the fact that they, at any rate, wanted to eliminate the influence of the resistance movement and its leaders. You can say that has completely succeeded. After having the Resistance Council RVV seemingly play a role in conversations regarding the liberation of our country, the ties between old powers and parties were forged again, with no other intention than to liquidate the RVV and return to the order of the day.
¹¹³

The strategy was clear in the way the left press was treated.
De Waarheid
was critical of the SHAEF, nepotism and the labour situation in Philips, the mines and other industries. The authorities restricted allocation of paper to
De Waarheid
and banned the Brunssum edition for a period.
¹¹⁴
Although secret police reports of communist meetings expressed fear of an armed rising, “
De Waarheid
…accepted the role of being part of the Western armies.” It wrote: “Mistrust every rumour and trust…the broadcasts of the BBC and Radio Orange”.
¹¹⁵
Despite such statements the communists in the “liberated” south were excluded from all influence.

In January 1945 Dutch press criticism of the Allies increased when they managed, at last, to move sufficient food—to their soldiers. Famine was not restricted to the north; the “liberated” south also suffered. Though it was known that people were on the verge of dying, the “SHAEF refused to delegate the job to the Dutch government itself while the region was still part of an unstable military front”.
¹¹⁶
Only in February, when General Montgomery intervened, did stocks in Britain scheduled for the emergency relief of the
north western
Netherlands get shipped to feed the liberated south.

Then the CvV started negotiations with Seyss-Inquart, which left
De Waarheid
outraged: “Food and freedom. Dutch resurrection cannot be the result of haggling.” On 29 April, just a week before official liberation, the first bomber convoys started to drop food supplies.
¹¹⁷
Malnutrition in the Netherlands persisted for months. In May in Utrecht there were 50,000 cases of “extreme starvation” and possibly 50,000 in Amsterdam. Hospitals were overcrowded with patients with hunger oedema (15,000 in Amsterdam, 10,000 in Haarlem). Some people were hardly able to walk.
The Times
of 7 May 1945 reported that “horrors comparable to those of Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald appear to have been enacted”.
¹¹⁸
One commentator has even argued:

If this course of action is taken in conjunction with the earlier request of the CvV for the underground to hand in arms immediately after liberation, it strongly suggests the College was striving to evoke as much passivity as possible in the Dutch population regarding its liberation.
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This impression is confirmed by William Hitchcock, who quotes a police intelligence report to SHAEF: “There is a strong element of communism among them because now they have nothing and communism offers them at least a share-out of what remains.” The report concludes: “should a man with a really strong personality arise in the western Netherlands and go over to the Communists or present a radical program, the bulk of the people would be with him”.
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The Allied command’s fears were reinforced by contemporary events in Greece, and even closer, in Belgium. Allied troops took Brussels on 3 September. On 11 September the Pierlot government arrived from London but the resistance, dominated by communists, publicly refused to hand in their arms. On 25 November a demonstration was called, which was suppressed by the Belgian police. Gabriel Kolko writes: “The revolution now seemed imminent, for the FI (
Front de Indépendence
) then called a strike for the 29th.”

If this strike had not failed because “the leaders were able to re-establish control”, the alternative according to Churchill would have been “bloody revolution”.
¹²¹
He did not hesitate from bloodily suppressing two other revolts: Greece and Indonesia. Thus on 4 December British troops fired on a mass demonstration in Athens, behaving—in Churchill’s own words—as if “in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress”.
¹²²

The spirit of revolt even infected the German
Wehrmacht
. Five battalions of “East troops” (
Osttruppen
) had been despatched to the
Netherlands in the summer of 1943. Their choice had been between concentration camps or serving in the Nazi army. In North Holland they met the Communists and discussed the possibility of handing over arms and joining the resistance. After the Georgians were relocated to Texel in September 1944, the Nazis demanded that they fight. Their uprising, on the night of 5-6 April 1945, was crushed. With liberation just around the corner, 570 Georgians were bloodily murdered along with 89 inhabitants of Texel. The leadership of the BS refused to support the rebels, a decision that was defended by the CPN leader, Wagenaar.
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