Dutch politics lop-sided for many years; it all started after 1945.

Submitted by Charles (Netherlands), Feb 2, 2010 at 05:11

Myth, you point out a painful past of the Dutch: nazi collaboration on a very large scale. I wrote about it on this blog before and your post nails it pretty much. Around 25.000 young Dutch men volunteerd for the elite waffen SS and became super troopers of the German armed forces. They fought in the east and later in the west. They automatically became German citizens and many never returned to the NL (or even alive). The ones that did, were imprisoned but later more or less 'coaxed' into joining the Dutch East-Indies arrmy who were battling it out between 1945-1950 in (the later) Indonesia. They also served in the Korean war. These old SS-troopers were expert fighters ofcourse and almost always the backbone of their unit in the Dutch army. It is not widely known, even in the NL. Only through study was I able to get more information on it. Some have later written books on their lives.

Of course Mr WIlders (or his family) has nothing whatsoever to do with all this nazism-stuff, but as I wrote before, post WW2 Dutch politics took a very strange turn and this was one of the biggest reasons why Dutch politics was so lop-sided for many years.

There are special websites regarding the specific history of the Dutch waffen-SS; here is one:

http://www.waffen-ss.nl/english.php

In the following short film on YouTube one can clearly see that nazism was promoted to all walks of life in the Netherlands. The songs on the background are originals from the period. They sing of the new order and the new future. national-socialism was the only way to go, fight for freedom etc. For many years these truths were muffled away in post Dutch society. The normal Dutch nationalisme (which has always existed) was slyfully matched with nazism and from then on seen as socialy not acceptable in post war NL. Politics of the right (which have also always existed in the NL) were seen as suspect. This led to a more or less schizophrenic situation in the NL which persists to even this day (albeit decreasing slowly now).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWoNzxFGB8Q

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