Today is Memorial Day in my country, and I thought it would be a good idea to tackle the controversial subject of the Dutch during the war. One of the late additions to my list of things you know you're Dutch by was: "You were a genuine war hero during the Second World War...", and that is one of the truer ones. If you listen to the stories even some elderly relatives of mine tell at times, they must have single-handedly liberated this country and delivered it to the Canadian First Army Battalion on a silver platter.
Of course there have been some epic heroics during the occupation, but there is no historical evidence to support the sheer number of resistance actions you'd come up with when you interview a handful of people at the right senior citizens home. While the Balcan region's Partizans chased out the Nazis themselves and the French were instrumental in the rapid progress of the allied forces after their landing in Normandy, the Dutch resistance only committed a few raids that they hadn't fully thought thru and which only led to bloodshed by the Nazis. A railroad strike in 1944 even led the Nazis to cut off the food supply to every part of the country they still occupied, and the Dutch were starved the entire winter. Only when the Canadians had already liberated half the country our resistance began to show its teeth, but only to bully the Germans who were still here. The only real heroics involves the people who risked their lives to save Jewish people from the Nazis.
Right after the war we sank to their level, in that we occupied a portion of Germany until the mid 1960s, and we had German POW getting rid of all the landmines, going straight against the Geneva convention.
Not only was our resistance nothing to speak of, in a lot of fields we actually helped the Germans. The boxcars used to transport Jewish prisoners to death camps? Made in Holland, pretty much all of them. The fuel needed by the Nazis for their warfare? The Dutch were only too happy to supply them with the canisters. Also, just before the occupation, when most of the government should have known Jerry was coming, they decided that we needed to have compulsory ID cards, that included all sorts of info including religion, as well as a centralized directory of every citizen, which made it very easy for the Nazis to capture our Jewish population. Even the Third Reich itself didn't have that sort of information on its people. Germany had to count on the Jews voluntarily registring themselves as Jews during the 1930's. It's a well-known fact that Hitler once said that no other nation cooperated as well with his plans as the Dutch.
A very recent study has even produced evidence, that after the war, the Dutch were instrumental in helping German war criminals flee to Argentina. There is some convincing evidence against our national airliner KLM, and members of the Royal Family.
For decades now, one of my country's most intense passions has been our dislike of Germans, always citing the war as the reason behind it. People made jokes like "I want my grandmother's bicycle back" (Jerry commandeered just about any bicycle with good inflated tires that they could get their hands on), picked fights with German tourists, etc. The funny thing is, however, that this has little to do with the war. In 1974 the final of World Cup Soccer was West Germany v the Netherlands. Throughout the tournament the Dutch had stunned the world with its attacking play, while the West Germans had just about bored the world to death. The Dutch thought our team had the divine right to win the World Cup, and only two minutes into the game we were 1-0 ahead. After that the Dutch players thought they could make fun of the Germans on the field just playing the ball around with no intention of scoring another goal. The German team got angry and beat us 2-1. That's why for decades we've hated the Germans.
The tide is turning, however. Recent surveys show, that today most Dutch people like the Germans, and that the people who still hate them are all over the age of 30.
No, I haven't returned to MySpace. This acquaintance goes back eleven years.
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You are Sandusky, OH
Loser! You are boring, have no sense of adventure, no sense of humor, you have no friends, in fact you're no good to this world. You are definitely Sandusky, OH!
Famous Sandusky, Ohio, residents: probably a few hockey players, but no one worth a second glance
* Soraya
