Dutch resistance 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 Bernard IJzerdraat and also some military - styled groups started , such as the Ordedienst ( ' 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 . Definition . The Dutch themselves , especially their official war historian Dr Loe de Jong , director of the State Institute for War Documentation ( RIOD , later renamed 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 " ( ' under divers ' ) 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 . Public protests of individuals , political parties , newspapers or the churches were also not considered to be resistance . Publishing illegal papers – at which the Dutch were very good at , with some 1 , 100 separate titles appearing , some reaching circulations of more than 100 , 000 for a population of 8 . 5 million – was not considered resistance per se . Only active resistance in the form of spying , sabotage or with arms was what the Dutch considered resistance . Nevertheless , thousands of members of all the ' non - resisting ' categories were arrested by the Germans and often subsequently jailed for months , tortured , sent to concentration camp s or killed . Up until the 21st century , the tendency existed in Dutch historical research and publications , not to regard passive resistance as ' real ' resistance . Slowly , this has started to change , also because of the emphasis the RIOD / NIOD has been putting on individual heroism since 2005 . The unique Dutch ' February strike ' of 1941 , protesting deportation of Jews from the Netherlands , the only such strike to ever occur in Nazi - occupied Europe , is usually not defined as resistance by the Dutch . The strikers , who numbered in their tens of thousands , are not named resistance participants . The Dutch generally prefer to use the term " illegaliteit " ( ' illegality ' ) for all those activities that were illegal , contrary , underground or unarmed . After the war , the Dutch created and awarded a Resistance Cross ( ' Verzetkruis ' , not to be confused with the much lower ranking " Verzetsherdenkingskruis " ) to only 95 people , of whom only one was still alive when receiving the decoration , a number in stark contrast to the hundreds of thousands of Dutch men and women who performed illegal tasks at any moment during the war . Prelude . Prior to the German invasion , the Netherlands had adhered to a policy of strict neutrality . The country had narrow bonds with Germany , and less so with the British . The Dutch had not engaged in war with any European nation since 1830 . During World War I , the Dutch were not invaded by Germany and anti - German sentiment was not as strong after that war as it was in other European countries . The German ex - Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands in 1918 and lived there in exile . The German invasion therefore came as a great shock to many Dutch people . Nevertheless , the country had ordered general mobilisation in September 1939 . By November 1938 , during the Kristallnacht , many Dutch people received a foretaste of things to come ; German synagogues could be seen burning , even from the Netherlands , ( such as the one in Aachen ) . An anti - fascist movement started to gain popularity – as did the fascist movement , notably the " Nationaal - Socialistische Beweging " ( NSB ) . < br > Despite strict neutrality , even going so far as shooting down British as well as German planes , the country ' s large merchant fleet was severely attacked by the Germans after 1 September 1939 , the beginning of World War II . The sinking of the passenger liner SS " Simon Bolivar " in November 1939 , with 84 dead , especially shocked the nation . It was not the only vessel . German invasion . On 10 May 1940 , German troops started their surprise attack on the Netherlands without a declaration of war . The day before , small groups of German troops wearing Dutch uniforms had entered the country . Many of them wore ' Dutch ' helmets , some made of cardboard as there were not enough originals . The Germans employed about 750 , 000 men , three times the strength of the Dutch army ; some 1 , 100 planes ( Dutch army : 125 ) and six armoured trains ; they managed to destroy 80 % of the Dutch military aircraft on the ground in one morning , mostly by bombing . Although the Dutch army was inferior in nearly every way , consisting mostly of conscripts , poorly led , poorly outfitted and with poor communications , the Germans lost over 500 planes in the three days of the attack , a loss they would never replenish . Also the first large - scale paratroop attack in history failed , the Dutch managing to recapture the three German - occupied airfields near the Hague within the day . Remarkable was the existence of privately owned anti - aircraft guns . No less surprising may be the fact that the Dutch army owned only one tank . Major areas of intensive military resistance were : After four days , it seemed as if the Dutch had stopped the German advance , although at that time , they had already invaded some 70 % of the country , excluding the urban areas to the west . Adolf Hitler , who had expected the occupation to be completed in two days ( in Denmark in April 1940 it had taken only one day ) , ordered Rotterdam to be annihilated , leading to the Rotterdam Blitz on 14 May that destroyed much of the city centre and killed about 800 people ; it also left some 85 , 000 homeless . The air attack was to be followed by every other major city if the Dutch people refused to surrender . The Dutch , having lost the bulk of their air force , realized they could not stop the German bombers and surrendered . The 2 , 000 Dutch soldiers who died defending their country , together with at least 800 civilians who perished in the flames of Rotterdam , were the first victims of a Nazi occupation which was to last five years . Initial German policy . The Nazis , who considered the Dutch to be fellow Aryans , were less repressive in the Netherlands than in other occupied countries , at least at first . Their main goals were the Nazification of the populace , the creation of a large - scale aerial attack and defence system , and the integration of the Dutch economy in the German economy . As Rotterdam was already Germany ' s main port , it remained so and collaboration with the enemy was widespread , stimulated by the flight of all the government ministers who had instructed their secretaries - general to carry on as if nothing happened . The open terrain and dense population , the densest in Europe , made it difficult to conceal illegal activities ; unlike for example , the " Maquis " in France , who had ample hiding places . Furthermore , the country was surrounded by German - controlled territory on all sides , offering few escape routes . The complete coast was forbidden territory for all Dutch people . The very first German round - up of Jews in February 1941 led to the first general strike against the Germans in Europe ( and indeed one of only two such throughout occupied Europe ) . If the Germans discovered people were involved in the resistance , they were often immediately jailed . It was the social democrats , Catholics , and communists who started the resistance movement . Membership of an armed or military organized group could lead to prolonged stays in concentration camps , and after mid - 1944 , to immediate death ( as a result of Hitler ' s orders to shoot resistance members on sight - the " Niedermachungsbefehl " ) . The increasing attacks against Dutch fascists and Germans led to large - scale reprisals , often involving dozens , even hundreds of randomly chosen people who , if not executed , died after being deported . Most of the adult males in the village of Putten for example , which had 600 inhabitants , shared this fate . The Nazis deported the Jews to concentration and extermination camps , rationed food , and withheld food stamps as a punishment . They started large - scale fortifications along the coast and constructed some 30 airfields , paying with money they claimed from the national bank at a rate of 100 million guilders a month ( the so - called ' costs of the occupation ' ) . They also forced adult males between 18 and 45 to work in German factories or on public work projects . In 1944 most trains were diverted to Germany , known as ' the great train robberies ' , and in total some 550 , 000 Dutch people were selected to be sent to Germany as forced labourers . Males over the age of 14 were deemed ' able to work ' and females over the age of 15 . Over the next five years , as conditions became increasingly harsh and difficult , resistance became better organized and more forceful . The resistance managed to kill high - ranking Dutch officials , such as General Seyffardt . In the Netherlands , the Germans managed to exterminate a relatively large proportion of the Jews . The main reason they were found so easily was that before the war , the Dutch authorities had required citizens to register their religion so that church tax es could be distributed among the various religious organizations . Furthermore , shortly after the Nazis took over the government , they demanded all Dutch public servants fill out an " Aryan Attestation " in which they were asked to state in detail their religious and ethnic ancestry . The American author Mark Klempner writes , " Though there was some protest , not just from the government employees , but from several churches and universities , in the end , all but twenty of 240 , 000 thousand Dutch civil servants dutifully signed and returned the form . " In addition , the country was occupied by the oppressive SS rather than the " Wehrmacht " as in the other Western European countries , as well as the fact that the occupying forces were generally under the command of Austrians who were keen to show that they were ' good Germans ' by implementing anti - Semitic policy . The Dutch public transport organization and the police collaborated to a large extent in the transportation of the Jews . Activities . On 25 February 1941 , the Communist Party of the Netherlands called for a general strike , the ' February strike ' , in response to the first Nazi raid on Amsterdam ' s Jewish population . The old Jewish quarter in Amsterdam had been cordoned off into a ghetto and as retaliation for a number of violent incidents that followed , 425 Jewish men were taken hostage by the Germans and eventually deported to extermination camps , just two surviving . Many citizens of Amsterdam , regardless of their political affiliation , joined in a mass protest against the deportation of Jewish Dutch citizens . The next day , factories in Zaandam , Haarlem , IJmuiden , Weesp , Bussum , Hilversum and Utrecht joined in . The strike was largely put down within a day with German troops firing on unarmed crowds , killing nine people and wounding 24 , as well as taking many prisoners . It was significant because opposition to the German occupation intensified as a result . The only other general strike in Nazi - occupied Europe was the general strike in occupied Luxembourg in 1942 . The Dutch struck four more times against the Germans : the students ' strike in November 1940 , the doctors ' strike in 1942 , the April – May strike in 1943 and the railway strike in 1944 . No other country showed such overt refusal to cooperate with the occupiers . The February strike was also unusual for the Dutch resistance , which was more covert . Resistance in the Netherlands initially took the form of small - scale , decentralized cells engaged in independent activities , mostly small - scale sabotage ( such as cutting phone lines , distributing anti - German leaflets or tearing down posters ) . Some small groups had no links with others . They produced forged ration cards and counterfeit money , collected intelligence , published underground papers such as " De Waarheid " , " Trouw " , " Vrij Nederland " , and " Het Parool " ; they also sabotaged phone lines and railways , produced maps , and distributed food and goods . One of the most popular activities was hiding and sheltering refugees and enemies of the Nazi regime , which included concealing Jewish families like that of Anne Frank , underground operatives , draft - age Dutchmen and later in the war Allied aircrew . Collectively these people were known as " onderduikers " ( ' people in hiding ' or literally : ' under - divers ' ) . Corrie ten Boom and her family were among those who successfully hid several Jews and resistance workers from the Nazis . The total amounted to over 300 , 000 people up to September 1944 , tended - to by some 60 , 000 to 200 , 000 landlords and carers . Reprisals under Operation " Silbertanne " . After Hitler had approved Anton Mussert as " " Leider " of the Netherlands " in December 1942 , he was allowed to form a national government institute , a Dutch shadow cabinet called " " Gemachtigden van den Leider " " , which would advise " Reichskommissar " Arthur Seyss - Inquart from 1 February 1943 . The institute would consist of a number of deputies in charge of defined functions or departments within the administration . On 4 February Retired Geeral and " Rijkscommissaris " Hendrik Seyffardt , already head of the Dutch SS volunteer group " Vrijwilligers Legioen Nederland " , was announced through the press as “ Deputy for Special Services ” . As a result , the Communist resistance group CS - 6 under Dr . Gerrit Kastein ( for their address , 6 Corelli Street , in Amsterdam ) , concluded that the new institute would eventually lead to a National - Socialist government , which would then introduce general conscription to enable the call - up of Dutch nationals for the Eastern Front . However , in reality the Nazi ' s only saw Mussert and the NSB as a useful Dutch tool to enable general co - operation , and further Seyss - Inquart had assured Mussert after his December 1942 meeting with Hitler that general conscription was not on the agenda . However , CS - 6 assessed that Seyffardt was the first person within the new institute eligible for an attack , after the heavily guarded Mussert . After approval from the Dutch government - in - exile , on the evening of Friday 5 February 1943 , after answering a knock at his front door in Scheveningen , Den Haag , Seyffardt was shot twice by student Jan Verleun who had accompanied Dr . Kastein on the mission . A day later Seyffardt succumbed to his injuries in hospital . A private military ceremony was arranged at the Binnenhof , attended by family and friends and with Mussert in attendance , after which Seyffardt was cremated . On 7 February , CS - 6 shot fellow institute member " Gemachtigde voor de Volksvoorlichting " ( Attorney for the national relations ) H . Reydon and his wife . His wife died on the spot , while Reydon died on 24 August of his injuries . The gun used in this attack had been given to Dr . Kastein by " Sicherheitsdienst " ( SD ) agent Van der Waals , and after tracking him back through information , arrested him on 19 February . Two days later Dr . Kastein committed suicide so as not to give away Dutch Resistance information under torture . Seyffardt and Reydon ' s deaths led to massive Nazi Germany reprisals in the occupied Netherlands , under Operation " Silbertanne " . SS General Hanns Albin Rauter immediately ordered the murder of 50 Dutch hostages and a series of raids on Dutch universities . By accident the Dutch resistance had attacked Rauter ' s car on 6 March 1945 , which in turn led to the killings at De Woeste Hoeve , where 117 men were rounded up and executed at the site of the ambush and another 147 " Gestapo " prisoners were executed elsewhere . A similar war crime occurred on 1 – 2 October 1944 , in the village of Putten , where over 600 men were deported to camps to be killed in retaliation for resistance activity in the Putten raid . ' England - farers ' . A little more than 1 , 700 Dutch people managed to escape to England and offered themselves to their Queen Wilhelmina for service against the Germans . They were called the " Engelandvaarders " ( ' England - farers ' , named after some 200 who had traveled by boat across the North Sea , most of the other 1 , 500 went across land . Two major figures are noteworthy : Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema , who performed spy duties with some successful visits to the Netherlands masterminded by Peter Tazelaar , whose life was described in his book and made into a film and a musical : " Soldaat van Oranje " ( ' Soldier of Orange ' ) , and Bob or Bram van der Stok , who became a squadron leader in No . 322 Squadron RAF . He is the most decorated man in Dutch history . Van der Stok was one of only three successful survivors of ' the Great Escape ' from Stalag Luft III . Radio . A major role in keeping the Dutch resistance alive was played by the BBC and " Radio Oranje " , ( Radio Orange ) , the broadcasting service of the Dutch government - in - exile . Listening to either ( and any other foreign , non - Nazi ) programme was forbidden and after about a year the Germans decided to confiscate all Dutch radio receivers . About half of all sets were taken , the rest went underground . Press . The Dutch managed to set up a remarkably large underground press that led to some 1 , 100 titles . Some of these were never more than hand - copied newsletters , while others were printed in larger runs and grew to become newspapers and magazines some of which still exist today , such as " Trouw " , " Het Parool " , and " Vrij Nederland " . Organization . As early as 15 May 1940 , the day after the Dutch capitulation , the Communist Party of the Netherlands ( CPN ) held a meeting in order to organise their underground existence and resistance against the German occupiers . It was the first resistance organisation in the country . As a result , some 2 , 000 communists were to lose their lives in torture rooms , concentration camps or by firing squad . On the same day Bernardus IJzerdraat distributed leaflets protesting against the German occupation and called on the public to resist the Germans . This was the first public act of resistance . IJzerdraat started to build an illegal resistance organisation called " De Geuzen " , named after a group who rebelled against Spanish occupation in the 16th century . A few months after the German invasion , a number of Revolutionary Socialist Worker ' s Party ( RSAP ) members including Henk Sneevliet formed the Marx – Lenin – Luxemburg Front . Its entire leadership was caught and executed in April 1942 . The CPN and the RSAP were the only pre - war organisations that went underground and protested against the antisemitic action taken by the German occupiers . The most important resistance act , as said above , in the Netherlands was hiding and moving people . The first people who went into hiding were German Jews who had arrived in Holland before 1940 . They were not duped by the German attitude just after the Dutch capitulation . In the first weeks after the surrender , some British soldiers who could not get to Dunkirk ( Duinkerken ) in French Flanders hid with farmers in Dutch Flanders . In the winter of 1940 / 1941 many French escaped prisoners of war ( POWs ) passed through the Netherlands . One single family in Oldenzaal helped 200 men . In total about 4 , 000 mainly French , some Belgium , Polish , Russian and Czech ex - POWs were aided on their way south in the province of Limburg . According to Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) historian Stewart Bentley , there were four major resistance organizations in the country by the middle of 1944 , independent of each other : CS 6 . Another , but more radical group was called ' CS 6 ' ; it was probably named for the address where they were based , 6 Corelli street in Amsterdam . According to Dutch official state war historian Dr . L . de Jong , they were by far the most deadly of the resistance groups , committing some 20 assassinations . Having been started in 1940 by the brothers Gideon and Jan Karel ( ' Janka ' ) Boissevain , the group grew quickly to some 40 members and made contact with the Dutch communist and surgeon Dr . Gerrit Kastein . They targeted the highest ranking Dutch collaborators and traitors , but duly became the victim of the most dangerous Dutch traitor and German spy , Anton van der Waals . Included in the list of their victims was the Dutch general Seyffardt , who was used by the Germans to head the Dutch SS - legion . They also managed to murder an assistant minister , Reydon , and several police chiefs . CS 6 are , according to De Jong , rightly recognised for their crucial role in the deportation of Jews and general terror and suppression . The planned assassination of the best known Dutch traitor and collborator , Dutch Nazi - part leader Anton Mussert , was delayed and could never never be accomplished . Their activities in eliminating Dutch collborators prompted the 1943 ' Silbertanne ' covert murder reprisals by the Dutch SS . By 1944 treason and strain had decimated their ranks . NSF . In addition to these groups , the NSF ( " Nationale Steun Fonds " , or National Support Fund ) financial organization received money from the exiled government to fund operations of the LO and KP . It also set up large - scale scams involving the national bank and the tax service that were never discovered . The principal figure of the NSF was the banker Walraven van Hall , whose activities were discovered by chance by the Nazis and who was shot at the age of 39 . Because of Van Hall ' s work , the Dutch resistance was never short of money . Van Hall is considered to be the most important Dutch underground worker by national war historian Dr L . de Jong ; he finally got his monument in Amsterdam in September 2010 . The number of people cared for by the LO in July 1944 is estimated to be between 200 , 000 and 350 , 000 . That is one out of 40 inhabitants of the Netherlands . 1 , 671 members of the LO - LKP organisations lost their lives . Of the 12 , 000 to 14 , 000 participants in the LO , 1 , 104 were killed or died in prison camps . 514 members of the LKP also died . The number of members of the LKP is rather precise - 2 , 277 , since their members were registered after the war . 2 , 277 was their number in September 1944 . 1 / 3 were members before this time . Only one of the top LKP members survived the war - Liepke Scheepstra ( a . k . a . Bob ) . Mrs . Helema - Rietberg , one of the founders of the LO , was betrayed and died in Ravensbruck concentration camp . On 22 September 1944 , members of the LKP , RVV and a small number of the OD in the southern liberated part of the Netherlands became a Dutch army unit : the " Stoottroepen " . This was during Operation " Market Garden " . Three battalions , without any militairy training , were formed in Brabant and three in Limburg . The first and second battalions from Brabant were involved in guarding the frontline along the Waal and Meuse rivers with the British 2nd Army . The third battalion from Brabant was incorporated into a Polish formation of the Canadian 2nd Army on the front line on the islands of Tholen and Sint Philipsland . The second and third battalions from Limburg were included in the 9th American Army and were involved in guarding the front line from Roosteren to Aix La Chapelle ( Aachen / Aken ) . During the Battle of the Bulge ( December 1944 ) , they were repositioned on the line Aix la Chapelle to Liege ( Luik ) . The first battalion from Limburg was an occupational force in Germany in the area between Cologne ( Köln ) , Aix La Chappelle and the Dutch border . The second and third battalions from Limburg accompanied the American push in March 1945 up to Magdeburg , Brunswick and Oschersleben , which was deep into Germany . Women also served as typists and nurses . When the unit was brought into the regular Dutch army after the war the women had to leave . Churches . Both the Dutch Catholic and reformed churches ( the latter in all its several forms ) , were agreed on their total but cautious denial of Nazism and the occupation . Both cooperated with many illegal organizations and made funds available , for instance to save Jewish children . Many priests and ministers were arrested and deported ; some died , such as father Titus Brandsma , a professor of philosophy and an early outspoken critic of Nazism , who eventually succumbed to illness in Dachau concentration camp . Monseigneur De Jong , archbishop of Utrecht , was a steadfast leader of the Catholic community and a clear but wise opponent of the German occupiers . The Catholic stance on the protection of converted Jews , amongst others Edith Stein , a philosopher who was then also a nun in a Dutch convent , led to special prosecution of those Jews , sister Stein being deported . After the war , captured documents showed that the Germans feared the role of the churches , especially when Catholics and Protestants worked together . After Normandy . Following the Normandy invasion in June 1944 , the Dutch civilian population was put under increasing pressure by Allied infiltration and the need for intelligence regarding the German military defensive buildup , the instability of German positions and active fighting . Portions of the country were liberated as part of the Allied Drive to the Siegfried Line . The Allied airborne disaster of Operation " Market Garden " did liberate Eindhoven and Nijmegen , but the attempt to secure bridges and transport lines around Arnhem in mid - September failed , partly because British forces disregarded intelligence offered by the Dutch resistance toward German strength of forces ; they were right in believing that the sources had been compromised . The Battle of the Scheldt , aimed at opening the Belgian port of Antwerp , liberated the south - west Netherlands the following month . While the south was liberated , Amsterdam and the rest of the north remained under Nazi control until their official surrender on 6 May 1945 . For these eight months Allied forces held off , fearing huge civilian losses , and hoping for a rapid collapse of the German government . When the Dutch government - in - exile asked for a national railway strike as a resistance measure , the Nazis stopped food transports to the western Netherlands , and this set the stage for the " Hunger winter " , the Dutch famine of 1944 . Some 374 Dutch resistance fighters are buried in the Field of Honor in the Dunes around Bloemendaal . In total , some 2 , 000 Dutch resistance members were killed by the Germans . Their names are recorded in a memorial ledger " Erelijst van Gevallen " , kept in the Dutch parliament and available online since 2010 .