Offers a comprehensive and insightful account of the history of the Netherlands and its neutrality in the First World War, taking into account domestic and international implications.
Kees van Dijk examines how in 1917 the atmosphere of optimism in the Netherlands Indies changed to one of unrest and dissatisfaction, and how after World War I the situation stabilized to resemble pre-war political and economic circumstances.
Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known as much for her role as UNICEF ambassador as for films like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Several biographies have chronicled her stardom, but none has covered her intense experiences through five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. According to her son, Luca Dotti, "The war made my mother who she was." Audrey Hepburn's war included participation in the Dutch Resistance, working as a doctor's assistant during the "Bridge Too Far" battle of Arnhem, the brutal execution of her uncle, and the ordeal of the Hunger Winter of 1944. She also had to contend with the fact that her father was a Nazi agent and her mother was pro-Nazi for the first two years of the occupation. But the war years also brought triumphs as Audrey became Arnhem's most famous young ballerina. Audrey's own reminiscences, new interviews with people who knew her in the war, wartime diaries, and research in classified Dutch archives shed light on the riveting, untold story of Audrey Hepburn under fire in World War II. Also included is a section of color and black-and-white photos. Many of these images are from Audrey's personal collection and are published here for the first time.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, a combination of coastal defence for the homeland and fleet defence for the East Indies became the established naval strategy for the Royal Dutch Navy and set the template for the world wars. Battleships were too expensive to build and maintain, so after World War I, there was significant investment in submarine development and construction. A handful of modern light cruisers and a new class of destroyers were also constructed during the interwar years to serve as a small Fleet-in-Being in the East Indies, as well as to support the actions of the navy's submarines. The light cruiser HNLMS De Ruyter and the Java-class light cruisers were the most powerful units of the new fleet whilst the backbone of the destroyer fleet was the Admiralen-class and the Tromp-class of destroyer leaders. Beginning in December 1941, the Dutch Navy played a very active role in the defence of the East Indies against the Japanese during World War II. The Battle of the Java Sea at the end of February 1942 crushed Dutch naval power in the East Indies, sinking the cruisers Java and De Ruyter and killing Admiral Karel Doorman. However, several Dutch surface warships and submarines continued the fight against the Axis powers alongside the Allies until the end of World War II, including a pair of British-built destroyers, Van Galen and Tjerk Hiddes. This beautifully illustrated book from a leading scholar on Dutch military history provides a comprehensive guide to the Royal Netherlands Navy of the World War II period, complete with detailed cutaways and battleplates of the fleet in action.
WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018 'A masterpiece of history and memoir' Evening Standard 'Superb. This is a necessary book - painful, harrowing, tragic, but also uplifting' The Times __________________________________________________ Little Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents in the Hague - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in the provinces during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why. His account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences - so crucial in defining us - can also be redefined. ___________________________________________________ 'Luminous, elegant, haunting - I read it straight through' Philippe Sands, author of East West Street 'Deeply moving. Writes with an almost Sebaldian simplicity and understatement' Guardian 'Sensational and gripping . . . shedding light on some of the most urgent issues of our time' Judges of the Costa Book of the Year 2018
Describes and illustrates the full range of Dutch resistance groups and German and collaborationist counter-resistance groups during the Nazi occupation in 1940-45. The Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II followed a complex course, whose scope is not widely understood. It was a great deal broader and more varied than the much-reported German counter-espionage success against Dutch agents parachuted in by the Special Operations Executive. From spring 1943 onwards, three Dutch Resistance organizations gained momentum: the Order Service (OD), the Resistance Council (RVV), and the National Assault Teams (LKP). In response, the Germans raised collaborationist forces to counter the Resistance, including the much-feared Landwacht. In September 1944 the OD, RVV and LKP amalgamated into the Netherlands Interior Forces (NBS), while Allied troops began to liberate the southern provinces. This allowed NBS forces in the south to form Stoottroepen, uniformed and armed by both the British and US armies. These assisted the Allied advance, while a bloody underground struggle continued in the occupied north until final liberation in April–May 1945. Illustrated with rare photos and new colour plates, this book gives a comprehensive account of one of the lesser-known struggles of World War II.
When most people think about the Netherlands, images of tulips and peaceful pot smoking residents spring to mind. Bring up soccer, and most will think of Johan Cruyuff, the Dutch player thought to rival Pele in preternatural skill, and Ajax, one of the most influential soccer clubs in the world whose academy system for young athletes has been replicated around the globe (and most notably by Barcelona and the 2010 world champions, Spain). But as international bestselling author Simon Kuper writes in Ajax, The Dutch, The War: Soccer in Europe During the Second World War, the story of soccer in Holland cannot be understood without investigating what really occurred in this country during WWII. For decades, the Dutch have enjoyed the reputation of having a "good war." The myth is even resonant in Israel where Ajax is celebrated. The fact is, the Jews suffered shocking persecution at the hands of Dutch collaborators. Holland had the second largest Nazi movement in Europe outside Germany, and in no other country except Poland was so high a percentage of Jews deported. Kuper challenges Holland's historical amnesia and uses soccer -- particularly the experience of Ajax, a club long supported by Amsterdam's Jews -- as a window on wartime Holland and Europe. Through interviews with Resistance fighters, survivors, wartime soccer players and more, Kuper uncovers this history that has been ignored, and also finds out why the Holocaust had a profound effect on soccer in the country. Ajax produced Cruyuff but was also built by members of the Dutch resistance and Holocaust survivors. It became a surrogate family for many who survived the war and its method for producing unparalleled talent became the envy of clubs around the world. In this passionate, haunting and moving work of forensic reporting, Kuper tells the breathtaking story of how Dutch Jews survived the unspeakable and came to play a strong role in the rise of the most exciting and revolutionary style of soccer -- "Total Football" -- the world had ever seen.
The essays in this collection cover not only multiple countries, but also multiple aspects of the concept of neutrality: political, economic, cultural and legal. These case studies have led to a re-evaluation of the notion of neutrality, and the role of neutrals, during the First World War, making this collection of great value to all scholars of neutrality, the history of individual neutral countries, and of the war itself.
The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years... The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.