Apropos the Dutch - who have occupied a fair place in this thread - the constitutional system of constitutional monarchy had (by contrast with the French situation) been pretty stable since (ironically) Napoleon had erected one of his brothers as King of the Netherlands. With Napoleon gone, the dynasty of Orange-Nassau (which had ruled as “Stadthoulders” - albeit not without challenge or misfortune, since the 16th century) stepped into the new and newly-vacant throne with the support of the anti-Bonaparte “allies”, and had been there, on a reasonably stable basis, since then. Dutch politics showed relatively little of the polarization or instability that characterized French (even Belgian, once they had broken away) in the same period. It was therefore something of a misfortune for the Germans that the deliberate effort to capture the Queen and her government was badly botched, and that the heads of the Netherlands administration got to England largely as a result of a number of lucky breaks. (Another occurred when Queen Wilhelmina’s determination to join the main Dutch defensive forces in Zeeland was frustrated by the unexpectedly rapid arrival of the main German invasion force in the Dutch “national redoubt” with the result that major fighting broke out, persuading her British Royal Navy rescuers that it would be much safer for her and her ministers to be brought to England.) If the Royal Family had been captured, it would have removed one very irritating thorn from Germany’s side. At the same time, it is not clear that the Queen would have been willing to play the game of limited co-operation even to the limited extent exhibited by King Albert “the Handsome” of the Belgians. Maybe she would have been almost as bad a liability on their hands than she proved to be in London.
It is also only fair to say that Dutch forces fought bravely and, on occasion, effectively against the Germans. Their military capacity at the time, however, in terms of men, training and equipment, was generally conceded to be very, very limited. Their basic strategy of concentrating most of their military resources in a relatively small “national redoubt”, any German advance on which was supposed to be delayed by the flooding of the countryside in much of southern Holland, amounted to a concession of this by the Dutch themselves. Nonetheless, they did fight bravely. The attempt by German airborne infantry to capture the administrative capital, Den Haag, and with the Queen and government, was badly botched by the Germans but, once they had recovered from the shock, the Dutch Army resisted strongly. While they could not prevent the capture of Den Haag, they did delay and disrupt the German effort, eventually surrounding the hapless German forces who were only relieved by the Dutch surrender. Even in the “redoubt”, strong actions of resistance occurred, notably the one-day defence of Dordrecht which cost the Germans 20-30 panzers. Unfortunately for them, there were limits to the ability of an undermanned, undertrained, poorly equipped, immobile force to resist the German assault, even if the German forces and commanders involved did not make a very good job of it. When one criticizes the Netherlands forces, one should bear this in mind.
One consequence of the Queen’s absence was that the Germans were forced into what amounted to a form of direct rule (with increasingly marginal assistance from Dutch Nazis). In fact, it came close to a form of SS direct rule. In the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that most Netherlanders may (with the exception of the odd political strike) seem barely to have tolerated the new dispensation, and remained loyal to the government-in-exile as their lawful government, even showing this loyalty publicly (at considerable risk) at times. There was even a resistance movement from an early stage, in a country scarcely suitable from its geography for military resistance. That the Dutch resistance movement had a somewhat unfortunate history in some respects does not mean that it was some sort of waste of time. The Queen eventually returned as a heroine; unlike De Gaulle, she had never ceased to have such status.
Sorry for being a bit unhistorical - but I do admire the conduct of the majority of Dutch people during the war. Yours from the Count’s Stockade, JR.
