WWII Dutch NSB Nederland Allgemeine SS visor hat insignia (2563)

Party history
1931–1940
The NSB was founded in Utrecht in 1931 during a period when several nationalist, fascist and Nazi parties were founded. The founders were Anton Mussert, who became the party’s leader, and Cornelis van Geelkerken. The party based its program on Italian fascism and German Nazism: however, unlike the latter, before 1936 the party was not anti-semitic and even had Jewish members.

In 1933, after a year of building an organization, the party organized its first public meeting, a Landdag in Utrecht which was attended by 600 party militants. Here the party presented itself. After that, the party’s support began to grow. In the same year, the government forbade civil servants to be members.

In the provincial elections of 1935, the party gained eight percent of the votes and two seats in the Senate. This was achieved against the background of the economic hardship of the Great Depression. Mussert’s image as a reliable politician and his pragmatism allowed him to unite the different types of fascism and contributed to the party’s success. This was bolstered by the party’s strong organization and its political strategy, which was not oriented towards revolution but a democratic and legal take over of the country. By 1936, the party was holding annual mass meetings near Lunteren in Gelderland and, in 1938, it built the Muur van Mussert there, a wall which was supposed to be one element in a set of buildings and monuments inspired by the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg.

In 1936, under the influence of Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, the party became more radical and openly anti-Semitic. Rost van Tonningen began to question Mussert’s leadership, with the support of the German Nazi Party, increasing divisions within the party. This radicalization led to decreased support for the party and a strong anti-fascist reaction of the political parties, trade unions and churches. In the 1937 general elections, the party gained only four percent of the votes and four seats in the House of Representatives, although it increased its representation in the Senate to five seats. In parliament, the NSB MPs showed little respect for parliamentary procedures and rules. Many NSB MPs were called to order by the chairman of parliament for physical and verbal violence. In the provincial election of 1939, the party also gained four percent of the votes.

1940–1945
After the Second World War broke out, the NSB sympathized with the Germans and advocated strict neutrality for the Netherlands. In May 1940, 800 NSB members and sympathizers were put in custody by the Dutch government, after the German invasion. Supporters of the party in the Dutch East Indies were also interned at that time, and when a Japanese invasion of the colony began some of these were deported to Surinam and interned in the Jodensavanne internment camp. Soon after the Dutch defeat on 14 May 1940, the imprisoned European NSB members in the Netherlands were set free by German troops. In June 1940, Mussert delivered a speech in Lunteren in which he called for the Netherlands to embrace the Germans and renounce the Dutch Monarchy, which had fled to London.

In 1940 the German occupation government had outlawed all socialist and communist parties; in 1941 it forbade all parties, except for the NSB. The NSB openly collaborated with the occupation forces. Its membership grew to about 100,000. The NSB played an important role in lower government and civil service; every new mayor appointed by the German occupation government was a member of the NSB. On the national level, Mussert had expected he would be made leader of an independent Dutch state allied to Germany; in reality, however, the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart was in charge of an occupation government. He chose to work with the remaining establishment as he realized that the NSB lacked popular support and talented candidates for more important functions.

Mussert had in total five meetings with Adolf Hitler in which he pleaded for an independent Netherlands, but he was unsuccessful. Although Seyss-Inquart had proposed that Mussert should be made Prime Minister of the Netherlands, he was only given the honorary title ‘Leader of the Dutch People’, and he was allowed to build a marginal State Secretariat, but he was given little or no actual power. His influence in the party waned at the expense of Rost van Tonningen and other more pro-German members. Unlike Mussert, Rost van Tonningen was in favor of incorporation of the Netherlands into a Greater Germanic Reich. Beginning in the summer of 1943, many male members of the NSB were organized in the Landwacht, which helped the government control the population.

On 4 September 1944, the Allied forces conquered Antwerp and the NSB expected the fall of the Netherlands to come soon. On 5 September, most of the NSB’s leadership and many members fled to Germany and the party’s organization fell apart, on what is known as Dolle Dinsdag (Mad Tuesday). Mussert himself spent the winter of 1944–45 at the estate of Bellinckhof, near Almelo. In these final months of the war the movement fractured further and further, and Mussert ordered measurements against leaders who behaved ‘dishonorably’ in September 1944. In the beginning of 1945 he terminated the memberships of Rost van Tonningen and Van Geelkerken. However, at that time Musserts power was severely weakened by the war events and the fracturing of the NSB.

After the German surrender on 6 May 1945, the NSB was outlawed. Mussert was arrested the following day. Many of the members of the NSB were arrested, but only a few were convicted.