Marinus Post

The Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized by its prominent non-violence, peaking at over 300,000 people in hiding in the autumn of 1944, tended to by some 60,000 to 200,000 illegal landlords and caretakers and tolerated knowingly by some one million people, including German occupiers and military.

Dutch resistance developed relatively slowly, but the event of the February strike and its cause, the random police harassment and deportation of over 400 Jews, greatly stimulated resistance. The first to organize themselves were the Dutch communists, who set up a cell-system immediately. Some other very amateurish groups also emerged, notably De Geuzen, set-up by Bernardus IJzerdraat and also some military-styled groups started, such as the Order Service (). Most had great trouble surviving betrayal in the first two years of the war.

Dutch counterintelligence, domestic sabotage, and communications networks eventually provided key support to Allied forces, beginning in 1944 and continuing until the Netherlands was fully liberated. Some 75% (105,000 out of 140,000) of the Jewish population perished in the Holocaust, most of them murdered in Nazi death camps. A number of resistance groups specialized in saving Jewish children, including the Utrechtse Kindercomité, the Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers, the Naamloze Vennootschap (NV), and the Amsterdam Student Group.The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust estimates that 215–500 Dutch Romanis were killed by the Nazis, with the higher figure estimated as almost the entire pre-war population of Dutch Romanis.

The Dutch themselves, especially their official war historian Dr. Loe de Jong, director of the State Institute for War Documentation (RIOD, also known as NIOD) distinguished between several types of resistance. Going into hiding, at which the Dutch appeared to excel, was generally not categorised by the Dutch as resistance because of the passive nature of such an act; helping these so-called onderduikers was, but more or less reluctantly so. Non-compliance with German rules, wishes or commands or German condoned Dutch rule, was also not considered resistance. According to official publications, sabotage on an extensive scale must have appeared at those companies in the Netherlands that kept on working during the war (collaboration was rife in the country), but until recently this was not seen as resistance.

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Wikipedia