Europe’s Liberation 80 Years On: The Netherlands
The official narrative of the Dutch resistance downplayed the role of the Left in the struggle against Nazism, but it also served as a barrier against the legitimation of far-right ideas. With the far right now in power, that barrier has collapsed.
Commemoration of those who died during World War II at the National Monument at the Grebbeberg Military Field of Honor on May 4, 1951. (Sepia Times / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
On May 4, 1945, British field marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery accepted the unconditional surrender of the German forces in the Netherlands, almost exactly five years after Nazi Germany invaded the country.
Around a quarter of a million Dutch people died in the war. Its memory became a political and moral touchstone in Dutch society. Few questions were more important than whether someone had been “right” or “wrong” — whether they had resisted the occupation or collaborated with the Nazis.
Prewar fascism was a relatively small movement in the Netherlands, with the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB) receiving just over 4 percent in the last elections before the war. After liberation, being called an NSB member was one of the worse possible insults, while there was no greater honor than recognition as a former member of “the resistance.”
Many members of the Dutch resistance had been conservative Christians, as one might expect in a country that was still deeply religious. Patriotic and monarchist, they fit well in the postwar myth of a unified nation that had heroically resisted foreign occupation.
Myths of National Unity
There were always problems with this narrative. Over 100,000 Dutch Jews, three-quarters of the Jewish population, had been murdered. In no other West European country had the Nazi murder campaign against Jews been so deadly. Part of the reason for this was that Dutch officials conscientiously carried out their instructions, including those for the arrest and deportation of entire families.
Another obstacle to the national resistance myth was the role of radical leftists. Socialists had played a disproportionately large role in resistance activities, but the postwar Netherlands was a deeply conservative country. During the Cold War, Communists in particular were ostracized.
One of the first underground organizations in the Netherlands was the revolutionary socialist Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front of Henk Sneevliet. The much larger Communist Party played an instrumental role in resistance activities, including the 1941 February strike, a rare example of mass protest in occupied Europe that was triggered in part by anger over the persecution of the Jews. For years, there were separate commemorations of the strike, one supported by the authorities and one supported by the Communists.
Hannie Schaft was one of the few women in the armed resistance. She was also a Communist. When the Communist Party organized the first commemoration for her in 1952, the government banned the demonstration and police moved in, backed by tanks, to disperse the crowd.
When the Cold War started to wane, Communists like Schaft received more mainstream recognition. But this came at the price of erasing their politics. Commemorating the war and the resistance had become a ritual, dedicated to vaguely defined principles of “freedom” and “tolerance” that were supposedly characteristic of the postwar Netherlands.
The New Far Right
However, the memories of Nazi rule could hardly be completely neutral. There was no escaping the fact that Nazism was an expression of the most extreme forms of racism and far-right ideology. Those who in some ways associated themselves with it marginalized themselves.
For five decades after the war, an effective tactic for undermining the potential appeal of far-right ideas was to link them to Nazism and its horrors. Until the late 1990s, far-right political parties remained marginal, unable to shake the label of “fascist.”
Yet the Netherlands has hardly been immune from the worldwide growth of the far right. Geert Wilder’s far-right Freedom Party (PVV) is now the largest force in parliament. When it joined the current government in 2024, it was the first time a far-right party entered a government coalition.
The Dutch far right reinvented itself around the turn of the century, claiming to champion values of freedom and even tolerance against the supposed threat coming from migrant communities. While fascism had come to stand in for a stereotyped image of absolute evil, this new media-savvy far right, originating from within the mainstream right, came without the baggage of links to the historical fascism that embodied that stereotype. Attempts to “unmask” the new far right as essentially fascist failed.
In fact, the far right even went on the offensive by turning the charge around, claiming for example to be opposing “Islamo-fascism.” In 2010, Martin Bosma, a PVV member, published a book claiming that the Nazis were leftists and part of the socialist tradition, while pushing typical far-right ideas about a “great replacement” of the Dutch people by immigrants. Today Bosma is president of the House of Representatives and as such was invited to attend the 2025 commemoration of the February strike. After some people protested, Bosma decided to skip the event.
Socialists always saw war and fascism as political phenomena that result from the contradictions of capitalist society. We should remain true to this insight. Today’s far right is not the same as historical fascism, but that does not mean it lacks common features with it. Rather than repeating old slogans, socialists should be aware of what has changed. We honor yesterday’s fighters best if we make their memory relevant to today.