Dutch Nazis, Nationalism and the Monarchy

Regular readers may recall a past article on the Netherlands involvement in World War II in which mention was made of the Dutch equivalent of the Nazi Party, the NSB or Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging in Nederland (National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands) which was founded in 1931 and led by Anton Mussert, today the most notorious Dutch collaborator of World War II. There is much that can, I think, be learned from the relationship between Anton Mussert and Adolf Hitler, the Dutch NSB and the German NSDAP which should serve as a warning for people today who might have the right intentions but who should be on guard against any threats to separate them from their own unique identity and historic institutions. The NSB started out with the simple goal of wishing to stop the decay in Dutch society and restore the Netherlands to her former status as a major world power but ended up, by their increasing adherence to the German Nazi Party, fighting for the exact opposite of that.

As with many such similar movements, the NSB was originally most inspired by the fantastic success of Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party in Italy. They had swept to power a decade earlier while Hitler and his Brown shirts were still struggling. Because of this, the NSB, founded by Anton Mussert and Cornelis van Geelkerken, had more in common with the Italian Black shirts than with Hitler and the Nazis. The most noticeable difference was that they were pro-Dutch and not anti-Jewish, indeed, like the Fascists, originally had Jewish members. They were opposed to direct democracy, advocating corporatism rather than capitalism or socialism but were not revolutionary, planning to work within the existing constitutional framework to achieve power and enact their changes to the Netherlands legally. They pushed for national unity and favored the corporatist model specifically to end the labor-versus-ownership divide which caused strikes and to put occupational concerns over ideological divisions.

Their goal of pushing for a return to national greatness also meant calling to mind the glory days of Dutch history when the Netherlands had been a major power. This meant that they were not opposed to the Dutch monarchy, indeed they drew inspiration from many past members of the House of Orange and, most significantly for our purposes here, they wanted to see the strengthening and expansion of Dutch power around the world. This meant that they wanted to strengthen their position in the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia) and to annex Flanders and French Flanders to create a “Greater Netherlands”. This would, of course, necessitate the break up of the Kingdom of Belgium and the NSB intended for the vast Belgian Congo to become a Dutch colony and, if possible, for the Netherlands to regain control of South Africa by restoring the Afrikaner republics as Dutch colonies united with their ancestral homeland. They expected to be a close ally of Germany but nothing more, pursuing their own national interests on the world stage. However, their friendship with the Nazi Party proved a double-edged sword.

Early on the NSB gained some surprising electoral success for a country which, then as now, was seen as a place where such a party would not be expected to do well. The NSB gained enough of a following for the socialists, trade unionists and major religious institutions to come out against them. The government forbid state employees from joining the party and the socialists formed groups to disrupt their events and prevent the NSB from getting its message out (the Antifa of the day). They reached their peak in 1935, saw support drop somewhat after that but they were still a force to be reckoned with when World War II in Europe broke out with the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

The decline in support for the NSB came at around the same time, roughly 1936 and afterwards, that the Nazis began to eclipse the Italian Fascists as their primary source of inspiration. Racial rhetoric and anti-Semitism began to appear and became increasingly common though never on the same level as these subjects dominated political discourse in Germany. One area of concern in this regard was the Dutch East Indies where the NSB had some sizeable support before the war. This is not surprising given that one of the primary concerns of the NSB was to strengthen and enlarge the Dutch colonial empire and so, naturally, they were not without support in the largest and most important Dutch colony. However, the Dutch East Indies was also home to a sizeable minority of mixed-race people who, like the Anglo-Indians for the British, were quite important to the smooth operation of the colony which constituted the vast majority of the Dutch empire. There was considerable concern that the racial rhetoric would damage the support for the NSB in the East Indies. As it turned out, that would prove the least of their problems.

Future Dutch Queen Juliana with exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II

Yet, it was partly the racial rhetoric of the Nazis that kept the Dutch complacent. When Hitler invaded Poland and Britain and France declared war on Germany, most people in the Netherlands expected to sit out the war just as they had done from 1914-1918. The German Nazis, after all, viewed them as their Germanic cousins of superior racial stock and this, along with the fact that the Germans had pledged to respect Dutch neutrality and the detail that the Dutch had not and would not be so foolish as to attack the Germans, caused many to think the war would pass them by. Their queen was even married to a German prince and the former German Kaiser was living in the Netherlands and had been protected by the Dutch monarchy from efforts by the Allies to have him extradited and hanged as a “war criminal”. It therefore came as a great shock when the Germans started bombing them, dropping airborne troops on them and had panzers racing across the border. The Dutch were caught completely unprepared and despite their surprisingly fierce resistance were only able to hold on for four days before being obliged to surrender with the government and Queen Wilhelmina going into exile in England (quite against her wishes as she was preparing to hand out rifles to her maids and butlers and defend her palace herself -she was quite a formidable old lady).

The Nazis occupied the Netherlands and, naturally, turned to their biggest local fans in the NSB for support in running the country and dealing with the local population. This brought about a dramatic change in how the NSB was viewed and by what the role of the NSB was to be in the destiny of the Netherlands. Formed in reaction to the Great Depression, the NSB had garnered much of its support from presenting an alternative to communism and Mussert had addressed record crowds to talk about an alternative to the alien ideology of communism and the recently discredited model of capitalism. However, as soon as the war touched the Netherlands, a war no one expected, least of all the NSB which thought the Nazis would never attack, bomb and invade their Germanic racial brethren which was also neutral, until they did, Mussert immediately got in touch with the Nazis and offered his country up for annexation by Hitler’s Third Reich and even proposed leading a secret mission to kidnap Queen Wilhelmina and present her to the Germans.

Anton Mussert, doing his best to look the part

Mussert had rather ‘jumped the gun’ in throwing himself at the feet of Hitler before Hitler’s forces had actually conquered the Netherlands with the result that the Dutch government found out about these messages and several NSB leaders were arrested though Mussert himself escaped and remained in hiding until after the German conquest was complete. When the dust settled, however, he was not immediately given control of the Netherlands as he had expected, Hitler appointing the Austrian Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Reichskommissar of the Occupied Dutch Territories. When Mussert approached him about being named head of state in place of the Queen, Seyss-Inquart referred him to Hitler and to Hitler the ambitious Mussert proposed a ‘Nordic Federation’ of Germanic countries under Hitler’s direction and with himself in charge of the Netherlands. Hitler brushed him off but Mussert went on, holding rallies urging for cooperation with the Germans but with talk of the “Greater Netherlands” being sidelined in favor of talk about the Netherlands simply having “a place” in the “new Europe” run by Germany and Italy. Later on, Mussert would propose that he himself should be Hitler’s ‘number two’ man in this new order but, again, Hitler brushed him off.

Nonetheless, Mussert remained devoted to Hitler, even publicly swearing personal allegiance to him and urged his people to do the same. In June of 1940, at a mass gathering, he called on the Dutch people to rally behind him in supporting Hitler and the German war effort and to renounce their allegiance to the House of Orange, the Dutch monarchy and the government-in-exile in Britain. The Dutch were thus given a choice and it was made very stark for them; Mussert or Queen Wilhelmina. Mussert had been the nationalist leader pledging to strengthen and expand the Dutch empire but now was more about having a favored position in German-dominated Europe so long as they behaved themselves. Hitler, it must be said, did little to encourage such expectations and never allowed Mussert any position of real importance. He was not the head of state, he was not the prime minister and was only allowed the sort of honorary title of “Leader” but with no official position or power to go along with it. On the contrary, the Germans would eventually show more favor to other NSB members who were more pro-German and anti-Dutch, one even proposing to replace the Dutch language with German.

Dutch recruiting poster for the SS

A new chance arose, however, to rally the Dutch to the Axis cause when the war was expanded to what Germany and Italy had always claimed was their real enemy; the Soviet Union. The Dutch had no desire to fight against the British but they volunteered in large numbers to fight the communist threat which had openly called for the subjugation of the world. The Netherlands supplied more volunteers for the Axis war effort than any other occupied country and the Germans were quick to make use of them on the brutal eastern front. Putting politics aside, the Dutch proved themselves in dramatic fashion, fighting with immense courage, many being highly decorated and taking dramatic losses in the process. Against the Bolshevik hordes, the Dutch fighting man had proven his worth and made incredible sacrifices in the process. However, just as the first year of the ‘Crusade against Bolshevism’ came to an end, Dutch nationalists would find themselves betrayed yet again when the Empire of Japan decided to get in on the global war. However, rather than joining Germany and Italy in war against the Soviet Union, it would be against the United States of America and, subsequently, against the Netherlands as well in order to seize the extensive oilfields of the Dutch East Indies.

Japan invades the Dutch East Indies

Once again, the Dutch were caught unprepared and had only minimal Allied assistance to call upon when the Japanese invaded, a massive operation that none of the western powers had previously thought Japan capable of. The Dutch set fire to their oilfields and their small colonial army offered gallant resistance but it was to no avail. Needless to say, the previously considerable support the NSB had in the Dutch East Indies immediately evaporated. It also caused considerable dismay at home. Imagine yourself being a proud, patriotic Nederlander; the NSB says they will lead you to a “Greater Netherlands” which will revive and enlarge the Dutch empire, making it bigger and better than it had ever been before. Then you are told that, instead, the Netherlands will be a subsidiary part of a greater Germanic federation but you can at least keep what you have and will be protected from communist subjugation. Finally, while your men are fighting and freezing to death on the eastern front alongside the Germans, you find out that Germany’s ally has seized your largest and most important colony, killed large numbers of your people and put everyone else in concentration camps. That sort of thing would tend to sap morale.

Queen Wilhelmina during the war

Now, still keeping in mind that you are a proud Dutch nationalist, possibly freezing to death on the Russian front, that while the side you are fighting for says your empire must be given up and your relatives in Southeast Asia are at the mercy of the Japanese, that Queen Wilhelmina, who you are told is now your enemy, is calling for the liberation of the Netherlands from German rule and the liberation of the Dutch East Indies from Japanese rule, fighting for the full restoration of the Dutch empire. You will also notice that all talk about South Africa is out of the question whereas Queen Wilhelmina had been the most sympathetic leader in the world toward your Boer brethren back in the days of their fight against the British, even sending a Dutch warship, HNLMS Gelderland, to evacuate the Boer President Paul Krueger from Africa and bring him to Europe. You might have even heard that the German Kaiser would not receive Krueger but in the Netherlands, Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch Royal Family gave him the warmest welcome in The Hague. Which side, that represented by the Queen, or that represented by Mussert, must have seemed the proper cause for any proud Nederlander?

Mussert had enough sense to see this and when the Dutch East Indies was invaded he appealed to Hitler to use his influence to get the Japanese to back off, to call off his “Honorary Aryans” in favor of actual Aryans as the Nazis might put it. Again, Mussert was ignored and Hitler and Mussolini quickly declared war on the United States in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Did this have an impact on the Dutch who were fighting alongside the Germans? Obviously, it could not have helped. Friction over Dutch officers being replaced with German ones in the Dutch SS volunteer legion had caused many to resign and the Dutch suffered heavy losses around Leningrad after being reformed in the spring of 1942. Later, their nominal commander, a former high ranking officer of the Dutch military, Lt. General Hendrik Seyffardt was assassinated at home. After their enlistments expired in the spring of 1943, by which time the Japanese had seized the Dutch East Indies, most refused to reenlist to fight with the Germans. Due to the lack of recruits, the legion was disbanded in May of 1943. When Mussert tried to protest against the reprisals taken by the SS after the murder of Seyffardt, Hitler would not even see him.

As Axis forces were being pushed back in Russia, North Africa and the Pacific, the Germans ordered the conscription of all former Dutch soldiers into their own army and SS legions. In response, the Dutch went on strike and nearly a hundred were shot in retaliation but there was little the Germans could really do, a dead man being rather less likely to work or fight for your war effort than one on strike. The NSB was decimated, most of its members dead on the Russian front or assassinated by the Dutch underground. When Hitler finally gave Mussert a last audience he informed the Dutch “Leader” plainly that he would never be given any political power. Still, he carried on even as June 1944 saw the Allied invasion of France, including over a thousand Dutch soldiers who had escaped the continent, fighting for their Queen and country. On September 5, fearing the approach of Allied soldiers, the remaining NSB members fled to Germany though Mussert notably did not, was taken prisoner and executed for high treason after the war.

The Dutch spent the last winter of the war starving and freezing as the Allied Operation Market Garden failed and the Germans cut off all supplies to punish their racial cousins. The only relief came from 11,000 tons of food dropped by American and British aircraft. Not long after, the German forces remaining surrendered and soon the Queen returned, met by a rapturous welcome. Interestingly enough, after Mussert was convicted and sentenced to death, he appealed to Queen Wilhelmina to spare him. The Queen he had renounced his allegiance to, the Queen he encouraged his people to abandon, the last hope Mussert had was for her to use her royal powers to spare his life. However, Queen Wilhelmina was not that sort and Mussert was executed by firing squad. He died for his persistent allegiance to a German ruler who never trusted him nor made any objection to the stripping away of Dutch territory. Queen Wilhelmina, on the other hand, would spend the end of her reign fighting to maintain the Dutch colonial empire in Southeast Asia, even while her own allies betrayed her and the business elites of the country criticized her for not conceding.

Dutch colonial troops march against Japan

There is a great lesson to be learned from the sad life of Anton Mussert and his NSB. His desire for the Netherlands to be stronger was certainly valid as subsequent events proved that neutrality only works if your neighbors are good enough to respect it. He was not a revolutionary, was not anti-religion nor was he anti-other races, simply pro-Dutch. His political views about disliking democracy and preferring a system based around occupational representation were, in my view, perfectly reasonable. However, his captivation with Hitler proved disastrous for himself as well as his movement. It certainly did his country no good but Hitler would have done with the Netherlands as he pleased regardless of whether Mussert was in the picture or not. He became so enamored with the idealized image of Hitler that he turned against the traditions and traditional institutions of his own nation so that, in the end, it was the Queen he betrayed and was fighting against who represented the cause of Dutch greatness while the side he was on was allied to a power which themselves claim to have been fighting a race war against his people and those like them. That is something everyone with a proper pride and self-respect for their own people and culture would do well to take notice of.

How New York Got Its Name

Previously, more than once, I have bemoaned the lack of familiarity most Americans have with colonial history. Sadly, I do not see that as likely to change in the foreseeable future given how the population is increasingly becoming less connected to the people who established the colonies which eventually came together into the country that exists today. This is unfortunate as, without the participating European colonial empires there would be no United States (nor any other country as exists today in the Americas) but even among those who are at least vaguely aware of the state of affairs prior to the independence of the “Thirteen Original Colonies”, fewer still are aware of just how many European colonial empires were involved in the settlement of North America. The Spanish, French, English and Russians all played a part as did still less remembered powers such as the Kingdom of Sweden (at the time Sweden and Finland) which established a North American colony in the reign of Queen Christina and, likewise, so did the Seven United Provinces of The Netherlands.

Dutch West Indies Company

Although mostly centered on what is today New York, the Dutch colony covered parts of what is today New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut and even small areas of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The Dutch got their start with the employment of Henry Hudson, an Englishman, by the Dutch East India Company to try to find the elusive northwest passage to Asia. In his famous ship the Half Moon, he explored much of the coast of northeast America, giving his name to a river and a large bay in Canada. He did not make it to Asia but he returned to Holland with glowing reports of land ripe for colonization. More expeditions followed to survey and chart the area in greater detail and to trade with the native population all of which were funded by the New Netherland Company. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was granted a charter to gain for The Netherlands a piece of the lucrative fur trade in North America. It is also noteworthy (though often forgotten) that their charter forbid them to take possession of any land that was not legally purchased from the native inhabitants.

Peter Minuit

Today, this presents a problem to the egalitarian crowd as even many who know practically nothing about this period will remember that the Director of New Netherland colony, Peter Minuit, purchased Manhattan Island from the natives for 25 Dutch guilders worth of trade goods. Many, keeping in mind that today Manhattan is home to some of the most highly valued property on the planet, portray this as Minuit cheating the Indians out of a fortune in real estate with a chest full of trinkets. This, however, runs counter to the argument for egalitarianism since, if this was such a huge swindle and if all people are equal, the Indians should have known they were being cheated. One cannot, on the one hand, demand that everyone be treated equally and then, at the same time, demand that special allowance be given to the ignorant. The truth, however, is that the Indians were not so ignorant and the Dutch did not swindle them. Yes, the land is worth a huge fortune today but, at the time, it was empty wilderness, no different than the other vast tracts of empty wilderness that covered the continent. Land was something that seemed endlessly plentiful whereas the manufactured goods offered by the Dutch were items which the Indians did not have and could not make for themselves, thus each gave up something they had in abundance for something the other could not obtain on their own, the very definition of a successful business transaction.

New Amsterdam, capital of New Netherland, soon became a busy hub of trade, settlement and privateering. The Dutch brought in colonists from Europe and, in an act for which they have been condemned since, also brought in the first African slaves to North America. However, operations were still more expensive than the Dutch West India Company liked and they tried various methods to cut costs. In an act that should be considered an educational moment, the very business-minded and technically republican Dutch authorities found it beneficial to revert to a sort of feudalism. This became known as the patroon system by which a major investor would be given the title of patroon, a large tract of land and extensive control over it with powers quite similar to those held by feudal lords in the monarchies of the Old World. The patroon was, for his part, expected to bring in at least 50 families of colonists within four years of receiving his title. This did result in growth for the colony, though still not as much profit as was hoped for.

Peter Stuyvesant

There were also conflicts to deal with as well as commerce such as the two-year long war fought with surrounding native tribes by Director Willem Kieft as well as, in 1655, the conquest of New Sweden by a Dutch force of about 700 led by the feisty, one-legged Director Peter Stuyvesant. He was a more hard-line figure than New Netherland was used to, cutting back on religious freedom in favor of adherence to the Dutch Reformed Church, trying to limit Jewish immigration, encouraging Jewish settlers to leave and becoming increasingly anxious about the rapid growth of the neighboring English colonies and their competition with the Netherlands. Stuyvesant was accused of being rather on the tyrannical side and opposition to him sprang up in the colony. Unfortunately, it was at precisely this same time that New Netherland faced its greatest crisis. That crisis arose when King Charles II of Great Britain, recently restored to his throne, determined to conquer the Dutch colony. Although Charles II had been sheltered in The Netherlands during the Interregnum, his preferred foreign policy was one of friendship with France and hostility toward the Dutch.

James, Duke of York

An expedition of four ships and 450 men, led by royalist civil war veteran Richard Nicholls, set out from Plymouth and arrived to besiege New Netherland on August 27, 1664. As was his character, Stuyvesant wanted to put up as much of a fight as possible but, by this time, he lacked the support of many of his own colonists, some of whom were angry about his policies and others who simply wished for nothing to interfere with their business. They preferred trading their Dutch flag for an English one rather than have a destructive battle that would disrupt commerce. This lack of cohesion meant that there was no chance of the Dutch, under Stuyvesant, standing a chance against the English forces and so, on September 8, 1664 Stuyvesant formally surrender the colony to the King of England and New Netherland was no more. The royal connection in all of this was that King Charles II had promised this area of North America to his brother the Duke of York (later King James II) and Richard Nicholls was Groom of the Chamber to the Duke of York and it was the Duke who had chosen him to command the expedition. It seemed only natural then that New Netherland should be renamed New York in the Duke’s honor.

Even though this episode of American colonial history is not well remembered, the evidence of it still exists in New York City today if you know where to look. Perhaps the most famous landmark is St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery which was built by Stuyvesant and is where he is buried. His family later sold the property to the Church of England (under conditions) and it is the oldest church in continuous use in New York City. It also features a bust of Stuyvesant which was sent over by Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands in 1915. The flag of New York City is based on the orange-white-blue tricolor of the Netherlands, “the Prince’s Flag” and even the famous financial center of Wall Street, has its name because that site was formerly where a road was along the palisade surrounding New Netherland and thus came to be referred to as Wall Street. The Dutch population and language persisted in parts of New York longer than most probably realize. President Martin Van Buren, for example, grew up speaking Dutch as his first language and many Dutch words, names and even some traditions still survive in parts of New York to this day.

In any event, that is how New York went from being a Dutch colony to being named after the heir to the English throne and Britain’s last Catholic monarch.

The Odd World of Royalist Conspiracy Theories

There is a man, probably unknown to most younger Americans today, named Lyndon LaRouche who was once fairly well known as someone who was constantly running for president without ever winning. He ran on his own at least once as I recall but usually as a Democrat though he never made any headway, never won a primary and thus was never actually nominated. An ardent socialist from a French-Canadian family, he was known for his many and diverse conspiracy theories and his, perhaps, most overriding conspiracy theory involved monarchism and, in particular, the most prominent monarchy in the world, namely the British monarchy. There have, of course, been numerous individuals throughout American history, and doubtless in other countries, who have portrayed the British as the villains of the world but I do not know of any who took it to such an extreme as Lyndon LaRouche or of any other who so particularly singled out the British Royal Family as the authors of this villainy.

To summarize the views of LaRouche and his movement, this man believed that the British Empire was and still is alive and well, despite all evidence to the contrary. He maintains that the supposed global super-power, the United States of America, is, in fact, not even an independent country but is, rather, simply one of the pawns of the British Empire which still dominates the world and that HM Queen Elizabeth II is the unquestioned and absolute ruler of this British Empire which secretly dominates the world. He has claimed that the Queen maintains her position by being at the top of a vast, global, drug cartel network and has never missed on opportunity to accuse the British Royal Family of being responsible for every tragedy and atrocity that has ever come about. Some of these have gained more traction than others, such as his assertion that Diana, Princess of Wales, did not die as a result of a drunk driving accident but was assassinated by British secret agents on orders from the Duke of Edinburgh.

However, while LaRouche insists that the British monarch is the mastermind of this sinister conspiracy, he by no means limits it to the British royals alone. He has often referred to an Anglo-Dutch empire of drug traffickers and, in fact, concludes that since 1688 the Dutch took over the British Empire and set all of this up, so while the House of Windsor is on top today, it is only thanks to their Dutch co-conspirators of days gone by. He, of course, has also played up the German ties of the British Royal Family, past and present, such as by portraying Prince Philip and the late consort of the Dutch monarch, Prince Bernhard, of being Nazis and that the Anglo-Dutch royals are still carrying on the Nazi campaign of genocide on a global scale. He also once made a point to write that Prince Philip was Danish as if this was equivalent to being a Nazi German so, presumably, the Danish Royal Family is implicated as well as the British, Dutch and German royal houses. So, the British Empire rules the world through drug trafficking, except it is actually the Dutch empire under another name and is run by German royals who are all Nazis. Are we clear now?

LaRouche was a very big fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but certainly all recent American presidents have simply been the puppets of this Anglo-Dutch British Empire in his view. All of this may seem quite entertaining for southern Europeans but, rest assured, LaRouche does not let you off the hook either. After all, he also asserts that the Anglo-Dutch empire, run by Germans, was established in order to supplant the Venetian empire which dominated European affairs and held all of Europe in its grip previously. So, in the annals of the secret history of the world according to Lyndon LaRouche, before the British Empire dominated the world through banks and drug cartels, it was the Venetian republic which did so, all of the supposedly powerful kings of Spain and France, the German and Italian princes simply being the powerless puppets of the villainous and all-powerful Doge of Venice!

Does this sort of thing happen in other parts of the world? Not to any great extent from what I can tell. I have never heard of any equivalent in Africa or the Islamic countries. In Japan the native monarchy is certainly not talked about in such a way though I have seen a few examples in Japanese entertainment of portrayals of the (again) British monarch being the one who secretly calls the shots, that the British royals and hereditary aristocracy are still the ones really in control of the country, they just do everything behind the scenes so as not to attract notice. That being said, I have to believe this is simply a tool of imaginative fiction and I doubt very seriously anyone in Japan actually believes that. The only non-western equivalent I have ever heard of is the conspiracy regarding the late Qing Dynasty which is prevalent among the more bizarre elements of the Han Chinese nationalists though, obviously, in a country like Communist China, it is hard to know how much of this to take seriously since it is all necessarily based on rumors and such. As conspiracy theories go, it is a fantastic one.

According to these Han-supremacists, depending on which version of the conspiracy you choose to believe, the Great Qing Empire is, like the British Empire, still alive and well and still ruling China secretly, behind the scenes. Some versions of the story say that the Manchu princes themselves are running the show, others that it is simply a conspiracy of Manchurians in general who maintain Manchu supremacy over the Han Chinese. This is quite an accomplishment considering that the Han account for about 92% of the population of China while the Manchurians are practically nonexistent. Even simply counting those with some Manchu ancestry would still be a statistically irrelevant number. Nonetheless, the Han-supremacists who push this conspiracy, carrying on the anti-Manchu sentiment of the late Qing period, believe that the Chinese government and military are riddled with Manchurians who manipulate policy, kill off Han Chinese rivals and guide national affairs. Probably their most well known accusation is that the former “one child policy” was actually a secret program of genocide by the Manchurians to wipe out the Han population.

The idea that there are anti-Han Manchurians in control of China at a time when non-Han minorities have been reduced to a miniscule fraction of the Chinese population is clearly absurd but hardly more absurd than LaRouche arguing that U.S. President Obama, the son of a man imprisoned by the British colonial authorities in Kenya, would be the pliant stooge of the British monarch. It is no less absurd than the conspiracy put forward by the recently deceased Jack Chick that the Islamic religion was created by the Pope as an instrument of the Catholic Church, that the Catholics, Muslims, Jews, pagans and Freemasons were all playing for the same team against his version of “true” Christianity. How can anyone possibly believe any of this?

A simple explanation is that they take certain actual facts and then build absurdities on top of them. The “one child policy” was real, after all. The British Empire did fight the Opium Wars with China and the Catholic Church did absorb many pre-Christian customs of pagan Europe. The Italian city-states and the Dutch republic were major banking centers and London today is one of the financial centers of the world. The conspiracy theories mentioned above take these facts, expand on them and the next thing you know, the Queen is running a drug cartel, Qing princes are ruling Communist China and the Jesuits are the papal assassination squad. As it stands, very few people believe these stories and those who do find them attractive, I think, because they allow people to believe themselves powerless and thus not responsible for the sad state of affairs in which they find themselves. It may reduce people to being powerless dupes but at least it means someone else is to blame, it is not your fault and all you have to do is believe it and support those who told you the “truth”. You do not have to actually take any action as these all-powerful forces would easily thwart you after all, so it is also extremely convenient and requires very little effort on your part, which is how most like it.

There a myriad of these types of conspiracies, aimed against various groups, large and small alike and they can be quite irritating. I find them irritating because, for one thing, secrets are hard to keep and most people with a sinister agenda are quite open about what they are doing because they do not think it is sinister. Focus on winning the game, not dissecting the motives of the other player. I also find it irritating because it gives permission for people to stop taking responsibility for their own actions or, more usually, their inaction. It encourages people to see themselves as victims and there are few things more destructive in the modern world than the victim mentality. It also leads to the same sort of thing that the tens of thousands of Christian denominations led to in western religion which was an ever increasing amount of skepticism. When people do not know what to believe, when there are so many different narratives that are being pushed, people simply give up, stop believing anything they hear and, again, become inactive.

Most intelligent people, I would think, can easily see that conspiracies such as the unseen, all-powerful British Empire or the secret society of Manchurian loyalists are complete and utter nonsense. However, conspiracies do exist. Many people, in America for example, said that all talk of the “Deep State” was a silly conspiracy theory but we now know it to be completely true. Conspiracies exist but they are rarely, if ever, secret or, at the very least, do not stay secret for long. It is also true that not everything that looks like a conspiracy actually is, often it is simply a group of like minded people, working toward the same goal who thus inadvertently assist each other and this can be easily portrayed as a conspiracy even when nothing of the sort was going on. Again, what matters is what they are doing, not who is doing it or how much they coordinate with each other. So, for a monarchist perspective, I would say it does not matter to me so much whether the French Revolution was a Masonic conspiracy, it only matters to me that I think the Revolution was horrible and should have been prevented or stopped. I would oppose anyone favoring the French Revolution whether they were a Freemason or not.

I would also add, frivolously, that these types of conspiracies do make me laugh in as much as the enemies of monarchy tend to have a loftier view of existing monarchs than many monarchists do. While monarchists lament the powerless state of western monarchs, the enemies of monarchy like LaRouche followers still think they are the most powerful people in the world, secretly dominating world affairs behind the scenes. Sometimes, one must simply appreciate the irony of the situation.

The Netherlands in the Napoleonic Wars

At the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution, The Netherlands was still a republic, albeit a very business-minded republic with a prince, usually, holding the place of honor in government. This was the United Provinces, as they were often called, though some still referred to the area as the Spanish Netherlands to differentiate the lands from Belgium which was known as the Austrian Netherlands. Both areas were to see rebellions and upheavals and their destinies would prove to be intertwined. In the Austrian Netherlands, Catholics and leftist republicans joined forced in opposition to Emperor Joseph II to proclaim the independence of the “United States of Belgium” which was eventually suppressed by Emperor Leopold II. The trouble brewing in Belgium, where Catholic opposition to the Emperor brought about a common cause with the dissident, revolutionary sect, was the primary reason why Joseph II was probably the most anti-American and pro-British monarch on the continent during the American War for Independence as he feared the precedent this would set for his Belgian subjects.

Prince Willem V of Oranje

In the United Provinces, there had long been a tension, periodically breaking out into violence, between the republican faction and the royalist faction (or ‘Orange party’) of Dutch politics with the republicans wanting to keep the country a republic and, indeed, make it even more republican while the Orange party wanted to empower the Prince of Orange and make him king. The American War for Independence also highlighted this division as the Prince of Orange, Willem V, favored the British while the republican government favored the American patriots and ultimately succeeded in bringing the Dutch republic into the war against Britain alongside the American rebels (though the Dutch did not benefit by it). As in Belgium, the Dutch republicans seem to have been inspired by the American example as illustrated by how they began calling themselves the Patriot party in opposition to the Orange party. They became even bolder until finally clashes broke out between the Patriots and the Dutch army which tended to be loyal to the Prince of Orange. The situation became so serious that it took an armed intervention by King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia to see the Dutch patriots cleared out.

Prince Willem V was thus in control but only by the grace of Prussian bayonets when the French Revolution began to come to a boil and, given recent events, he was well aware of the danger of such ideology spreading. In 1792 the French declared war on Austria and prepared to invade Belgium where they expected popular support. The Prince of Orange, not being in the strongest position, held back. However, 1793 saw the regicide of King Louis XVI of France and every royal in Europe was instantly made aware of how serious this situation was. On February 1, the United Provinces, led by Prince Willem V, declared war on the French Republic, joining the “War of the First Coalition”. There was, originally, some success when an Austrian-Dutch army led by the Prince of Coburg defeated the French under General Charles Dummouriez at the Battle of Neerwinden on March 18 in Belgium, however the Prince of Orange and his Dutch troops were defeated at Menin on September 3 and another Austro-Dutch army was defeated by the French at the Battle of Wattignies in October. The Austrians on their own, as well as the British and their German comrades did no better in the face of the mass conscript armies of France.

Willem VI, later Willem I

1794 saw the last of the coalition forces driven from Belgium and the country was annexed to the French Republic and would remain so for quite some time. That same year, French forces under General Charles Pichegru invaded the Netherlands along with a contingent of anti-Orange Dutch patriots led by General Herman Willem Daendels in a surprise attack during the harsh winter. Local republican revolutionaries rose up in support of the invaders, making things even more difficult. Whereas, in the past, the French had been traditional enemies of the Dutch, the French had made themselves the most acceptable allies for Dutch, Protestant, republicans by embracing republicanism and tearing down the Catholic Church as well the monarchy. The French republicans declared that they had come to “liberate” the Netherlands and in 1795 declared the country the Batavian Republic. Defeated from without and betrayed from within, Prince Willem V was forced to go into exile in England. The new French-backed Batavian Republic was declared a “sister republic” of France, one of many such puppet-republics the French established in the wake of their armies.

However, not everyone felt “liberated” by this turn of events. The behavior of the French republicans won them few friends outside the already ideologically committed and the French also annexed Flanders, Maastricht, Venlo and part of Walcheren with Flushing to France. The British, however, still had a good intelligence service operating in the area and took notice of the growing Dutch discontent with their so-called liberators and in 1799, as part of the War of the Second Coalition, launched a joint invasion of the Batavian Republic along with an Imperial Russian Army force. The British were led by the “Grand Old” Duke of York and the Russians by General Johann H. von Fersen. They were met by a Franco-Batavian (Dutch) force of about equal size but, after initial success, in battles lasting from August to November, the Anglo-Russian army was ultimately forced to retreat, leaving the Netherlands once again to the First French Republic and their local collaborators. The House of Orange had not been mere spectators to these events as the Hereditary Prince of Orange, later Willem VI, participated in the campaign alongside the British and Russians. In fact, he was instrumental in the seizure of a naval squadron known as the “Vlieter Incident” with the ships ultimately being sold to the Royal Navy.

Gen. Janssens at the Battle of Cape Town

The Prince of Orange also wrote a series of letters in 1795 known as the “Kew Letters” while in exile, instructing the governors of the Dutch colonies overseas to resist the French and cooperate with the British, in his capacity as Captain-General of the Dutch armed forces, in the hope of keeping these territories from being controlled by the Batavian Republic. Malacca, Amboina and West Sumatra (in the Dutch East Indies) did so and surrendered to the British without opposition. Cochin, or Dutch Malabar in India, on the other hand, required some “persuasion” from the Royal Artillery but, in the end, the Dutch holdings in India and Ceylon were captured by the British. Also in 1795 the British sent an expedition to seize control of the Dutch Cape Colony at the bottom of Africa. The local Dutch forces offered determined resistance but were finally compelled to surrender on September 15. Later, the British would hand the cape over to the Batavian Republic as part of a peace agreement and so another expedition would have to take it back again. When the Napoleonic Wars finally ended, the British would give back the Dutch colonies they seized, but not all of them, keeping some, such as the Cape colony, for themselves as it was a highly prized strategic chokepoint, controlling access to and from the Indian Ocean and south Atlantic.

Meanwhile, in 1803, Jan Rudiger Schimmelpenninck was elected President of the Batavian Republic but things began to change thanks to the grander aspirations of one Napoleon Bonaparte. After succeeding in making himself “Emperor of the French”, the client republics that France had set in neighboring countries suddenly received an upgrade to become client monarchies. In 1806 the Batavian Republic, at the behest of its French masters, became the Kingdom of Holland and the Emperor Napoleon awarded the new Dutch kingdom to his brother Louis (originally Luigi) who became King Ludwig I of Holland (or to be more precise, Lodewijk I). This led to a rather unusual situation as the new King Ludwig proved to be quite popular with his new Dutch subjects. Unlike, for instance, Napoleon’s older brother who became King of Spain, many Dutch people embraced their new monarch or, at least, did not dislike or oppose him. To his credit, Ludwig I took his new position seriously and tried to be a good king. That, however, ultimately led to trouble with his brother. King Ludwig I was supposed to be little more than a puppet but he was a puppet who tried to pull his own strings and when Dutch and French interests conflicted, Napoleon expected French interests to prevail. However, his brother actually stood up for Dutch interests which caused Napoleon no small amount of frustration (and at a time when he had much to be frustrated about).

King Ludwig I of Holland

This tension between the two Bonaparte brothers was exacerbated by the effort of the Emperor Napoleon to defeat Britain by means of economic strangulation. He instituted the Continental System which forbid France and all countries controlled by or allied with France from trading with the British which, as it turned out, proved more ruinous for the continent than it did for Britain and particularly for The Netherlands which had a heavily trade-based economy. Needless to say, smuggling soon reached epidemic proportions because of this and Napoleon was so desperate to stamp it out that in 1810 he simply annexed the Kingdom of Holland and it was absorbed into the French Empire. The former King Ludwig I, by then none too popular with his brother, fled into exile in the Austrian Empire and remained there for the rest of his life. So it was that, until 1813, the Dutch, willingly or not, mostly fought alongside the French under Napoleon. For some, this did not seem all that unnatural given the long history of Anglo-Dutch rivalry and warfare.

Because of this situation, there were prominent Dutch military men on both sides of the conflict. General Jan Willem Janssens had fought against the British at the Cape Colony and Java, was made Secretary-General for War for the Kingdom of Holland by Louis Bonaparte and then, after annexation, fought for Napoleon under Ney in the War of the Sixth Coalition. He would later serve as War Minister for the Kingdom of the United Netherlands in the last campaign against Napoleon. General David Hendrik Chasse, regarded by many as the best Dutch soldier of the period, was from the Patriot party and commanded the Dutch brigade that fought for Napoleon in Spain for which exploits he was elevated to baron. He carried on in French service after the annexation but remained bitter about it though he won decorations and promotions for outstanding service, even being credited with saving the French army at the Battle of Maya. For his offensive spirit and fierce attacks, Napoleon nicknamed him, “General Bayonet”. He too though would later fight against Napoleon as commander of the Third Netherlands Division during the Waterloo campaign. Later still, he would defend Antwerp during the Belgian Revolution.

Constant Rebecque

One soldier of the Dutch army who fought against the French revolutionaries as well as Napoleon the whole way was not actually Dutch but a Swiss professional soldier; Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque. He first came to France as part of the Swiss Guard protecting the King. He survived the massacre of his regiment during the Revolution and from there was employed by the Dutch, serving in the regiment of Prince Frederick. When the French conquered the United Provinces, he served with the British and later the Prussians before returning to the British along with the Prince of Orange during the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington. After the downfall of Napoleon, according to a previous agreement by the major allied powers, the former United Provinces as well as Belgium were to be united into one country with the Prince of Orange as its monarch. This would be the Kingdom of the United Netherlands which would officially come into being in 1815, combining the Seven Provinces, Belgium and Nassau, though Nassau would later be traded for Luxembourg. This was because the allies wanted a strong monarchy as a buffer between the French and the Germans. Rebecque was instrumental in organizing the Dutch-Belgian army and would serve as Quartermaster-General and chief aid to the Prince of Orange (commander of the Allied I Corps) in the Waterloo campaign.

Prince Willem V of Orange was long since gone by then, having died in exile in Germany in 1806 (in fact, his body was only reburied in The Netherlands in the 1950’s). He was succeeded by his son Prince Willem VI of Orange, however, in 1813 he had, with the downturn of fortune for Napoleon, returned to the Netherlands and received quite a warm welcome, almost everyone by that time having turned against the French. In 1815, with the support of the allies, he proclaimed himself King Willem I of the United Netherlands, also becoming, in due course, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. His son and heir was the Prince of Orange who would fight on more than one battlefield as chief deputy to the Duke of Wellington with his old military tutor Rebecque as his ‘right hand man’. Unfortunately, the military reputation of the Dutch, particularly as it concerns the Waterloo campaign, has suffered considerably and quite unjustly at the hands of their British allies, both in accounts from participants, post-war historians and even television filmmakers.

The Prince of Orange at Quatre Bras

Probably because so many had fought with the French, the British may not have been inclined to trust the Dutch too much and, in addition, there was the already mentioned long history of Anglo-Dutch rivalry in trade, colonial expansion and naval supremacy. Whatever the cause, the British quite unfairly ridiculed and derided the Dutch participation in the Waterloo campaign. More recently, historians have done serious research, not simply repeating what others wrote before them and have found that the standard British version of events was not true, indeed, in some cases was shown to be impossible. The truth is that the Dutch-Belgian army played a critical part in the final campaign against Napoleon. Indeed, if Rebecque had not countermanded an order from Wellington so that the Dutch-Belgian troops stayed and fought at the crossroads of Quatre Bras, the British would not have been able to occupy the choice position that Wellington had picked out to do battle at Waterloo. The Prince of Orange himself, has often been portrayed in a grossly exaggerated way as being totally incompetent. This is also not true. Though the Prince of Orange certainly made some mistakes, they were not due to incompetence but simply to his lack of experience.

King Willem I of the Netherlands

As it happened, the troops with the orange cockades acquitted themselves well and, again, if the Dutch forces had not held off the French for as long as they did at Quatre Bras, the subsequent defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo might never have happened. However, it did and so King Willem I was secure on his throne, achieving what almost all the Princes of Orange before him had dreamed of since the winning of Dutch independence. As things were established, he was also pretty much an absolute monarch, though that situation would not survive him. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars could be seen as the fire in which the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands was forged. At the beginning of the era, they were a republic, the Seven Provinces which was often called the United Provinces but which were far from united. Crippled by the feuds between the orange and patriot parties, the country was an easy victim of the revolutionary French. However, they endured and finally fought their way back, emerging as a strong and, mostly, united kingdom. Belgium and Luxembourg was part from them in time but for the Netherlands itself, the Napoleonic Wars were a pivotal moment in history. The Dutch had gone in as a republic but emerged as a monarchy.

Brief Thoughts on Geert Wilders

It is election time in The Netherlands and the one political figure who has been getting the most attention, and the most criticism, from the media is certainly Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV). Despite having otherwise very liberal views, Wilders has been described as a "far-right" populist by the media as well as the "Dutch Donald Trump" for his desire to stop Muslim immigration into the Netherlands and to take the Dutch kingdom out of the European Union. Of course, any look at his political and social views, or the domestic policy of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, will show that these are certainly not "right wing" or "far right" figures at all. However, as they both stand opposed to open borders and in favor of national sovereignty, that is all it takes these days to be considered a right-wing extremist. For myself, I have never been wild about Wilders but would not hesitate to vote for him in this election were I eligible to do so. Aside from his social views, with which I am not in agreement, there is the issue of the monarchy and Geert Wilders is certainly not a member of what was once called the 'Orange Party'. He is certainly no Jacobin firebrand and would probably rate as more royalist than his French, female counterpart but an ardent royalist I would say he is certainly not. He relationship with the House of Orange has troubled me for years.

Not all of this, to be fair, is his own fault, depending on how you look at it. The monarchy in The Netherlands is supposed to be non-political and non-partisan, however, no one usually minds if the royals express opinions as long as they are in line with the liberal mainstream. Talking about "values" is fine but, in an era in which values are legislated by the government, nothing is non-political these days. In her 2007 Christmas speech HM Queen Beatrix made some remarks that most, including Wilders, took as a very thinly veiled swipe at him and his party, praising multiculturalism and criticizing opposition to it. From that time on, Wilders made no secret of the fact that he has little to do with Queen Beatrix (Princess Beatrix since her abdication) and has called for the monarchy to be removed from having any political power and become purely ceremonial. This, of course, is a major problem for me but I do not believe Wilders would have taken the position he had were it not for the Queen coming out in opposition to him and his party first. Still, I have no doubt the situation persists as I doubt the views of King Willem-Alexander are very different from those of his mother or anyone else in the circles they move in.

This, under ordinary circumstances, would be enough for me to never consider supporting Wilders at all but, alas, these are not ordinary circumstances. In the first place, Wilders takes no official position on the monarchy and has never become a republican. It would be a difficult thing to do given that the PVV, while having a larger percentage of republicans than most, is still a party with a large majority of its membership being royalists. If for no other reason that the facts on the ground and realpolitik, I could not imagine Wilders ever trying to abolish the monarchy provided the King broke every precedent and openly tried to suppress him which, likewise, I could never imagine happening. So, as far as the monarchy goes, there is reason for me to dislike him but not enough to consider him untouchable or to outweigh other factors.

Those other factors are also very important to me and, it seems, to a growing number of Dutch voters as well. This is reassuring since, as his support increases, so does the amount of royalist support for Wilders and that will help check his dislike of the current members of the House of Orange. I fully support Wilders in wishing to save the Netherlands for the Netherlanders because a Netherlands without Netherlanders would be no Netherlands for me. I also fully support his aim to take the Netherlands out of the European Union. This also helps me swallow my disdain at his call for a purely ceremonial monarchy since, in my opinion, as long as any monarchy is part of the EU, the monarchy is basically ceremonial anyway as the Sovereign is not truly sovereign. I also think that the Dutch monarchy and all the rest that makes up the Dutch culture and national character can only be preserved by the Dutch themselves and not by Moroccans, Algerians or Turks. Net migration for the first half of 2016 alone was double what it had been the previous year. This is unprecedented. For me, the burqa is just as out of place in Amsterdam as a miniskirt would be in Riyadh. I want the Dutch monarchy to survive but I also want there to be a Dutch population for it to reign over. So, not without some reservations, I would be voting for Wilders and the PVV were I able because, for me, populations are not interchangeable and the Dutch people are not replaceable. Also, because I do not think anything will get better, from my reactionary point of view, until the tyrannical, top-heavy, talking shop called the European Union is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Ik stem Wilders & lang leve de Koning!

Revolution in the Dutch East Indies

Not everyone may know it now, but the Kingdom of the Netherlands was once a major power. After winning independence from Spain (the dominant military power of the day) in a very long war, the Dutch fought off the French, won wars against England and established themselves as a major player in Europe. Long a powerhouse in business and world trade, the Dutch built an empire that stretched from the Americas to South Africa to India and East Asia. It was, however, in Southeast Asia that the crown jewel of the Dutch empire rested, their largest colony by far and the one which was the most productive, contributing a huge percentage of the overall economy of the Netherlands. That colony was, of course, the Dutch East Indies, known today as the Republic of Indonesia, a vast archipelago of thousands of islands that is about as far from one end to the other as the continental United States. For more than three hundred years the Dutch East Indies belonged to the Netherlands, a princely republic and later a very business-minded, Protestant monarchy reigning over a huge territory of disparate Islamic principalities and some of the most abundant natural resources to be found anywhere in the world.

KNIL troops in Java, World War II

There were conflicts, of course, in the establishment of this colony and the occasional unrest but none of it was very serious, certainly nothing that the small but very professional Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) could not handle. An anti-Dutch nationalist movement had been on the rise, but it seemed to be dealt with easily enough and its leader, Sukarno, was captured and incarcerated. Even when World War II erupted in Europe, not much changed in the Dutch East Indies. After an heroic but futile four-day fight the Netherlands was conquered by Germany and the Dutch Royal Family was forced to flee to England. However, the stout-hearted and determined Queen Wilhelmina continued to preside over her government-in-exile and the Dutch East Indies contributed as much as possible to the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany. When the United States of America placed sanctions on the Empire of Japan, including an oil embargo when America had been the primary provider of oil to the Japanese, the British Empire did the same. The Dutch government, likewise informed the Japanese that they could expect no oil from the Dutch East Indies. Their homeland was under occupation by Japan’s Nazi ally and the Dutch stressed that all of their resources were needed for their own struggle to liberate the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Japanese troops in the Dutch East Indies

Not long after, in a major offensive kicked off by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Japanese launched an ingenious, multi-stage offensive across Southeast Asia. Despite more heroic but futile resistance, the Dutch naval forces and the Dutch colonial army was defeated and the Dutch East Indies came under Japanese occupation. All White people were immediately placed in concentration camps, as were most of the sizeable minority of mixed-race people and any natives who opposed or were expected to oppose Japanese rule were either killed or confined. The anti-Dutch dissident Sukarno was released from his prison and became a willing collaborator of the Japanese. There was talk of absorbing other surrounding territories, particularly British Malaysia, to create a “Greater Indonesia” but the Japanese had no intention of allowing the Dutch East Indies to become independent. The whole point of the invasion was to secure control for Japan of a source of resources and raw materials that no foreign power could withhold from them. It was then, only after Japan had clearly lost the war and the atomic bomb had already been dropped on Hiroshima, that Japan authorized Sukarno to declare independence. It was a final, parting shot at the hated Europeans to make a restoration of Dutch rule as difficult as possible. In that regard, it more or less worked as planned.

Sukarno

The Dutch had previously always been on friendly terms with Japan. In fact, during the long years of Japanese isolation, the Dutch were the only western power to have any contact with Japan at all. When the war was over, the Dutch asked the Japanese military to remain in place to keep order in the colony until they could return. The Japanese did stay until Allied forces arrived but they gave many of their weapons to the anti-Dutch Indonesian dissidents and thousands of Japanese stayed behind rather than return home to carry on their war against the Whites in Asia. Sukarno had also been busy, trying to set up a government of his own, growing out of a committee the Japanese had allowed him to form during the war. It was this body which declared that the Indonesian Republic would include not only the Dutch East Indies but British North Borneo, the Malay Peninsula and Portuguese Timor as well. It would have a dictatorial president and, although Sukarno wanted a secular and unitary state, he later conceded to the powerful Islamic clerics of the country to state that the new country would be based on submission to Allah and would require all Muslims to obey Shariah law (or syariah law in the local tongue).

Mohammad Hatta

There were divisions, Sukarno wanted a unitary state while his deputy, Mohammad Hatta, favored a federal system. Nonetheless, they were united in what they were against and Sukarno simplified his position and his proposed republic by basing it on five principles; Islam, humanitarianism, national unity, democracy and social justice (as he defined them of course). This, of course, will sound all too familiar to people today. You have a Marxist-socialist revolutionary, making concessions to Islam, talking about democracy which he has no intention of actually enacting, national unity but only for those of his own nationality, humanitarianism while carrying out horrific atrocities and the catch phrase so popular with today’s progressives, “social justice” which, then as now, came down to a war against anything White, western, Christian or traditional. No doubt the “social justice warriors” of today would look on the Indonesian revolutionaries with their coalition of socialists and Islamists as their beloved ideological forefathers. This was though, it must be said, also the start of a struggle within Indonesia between the more secular nationalists and the Islamic fundamentalists which is still going on today.

Queen Wilhelmina

So it was that by the time the Dutch were ready to return to their colony, Indonesia had already declared independence, already had a political platform, a flag and national anthem and even aspirations for territorial conquest. HM Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, certainly had no intention of giving an inch of this. She was extremely determined that any concession would be a betrayal of all they had fought and suffered for during the war. She wanted to fight for the full restoration of the Dutch empire and regarded Sukarno and his regime as traitors who had collaborated with foreign invaders and perpetrators of a race war. However, having just emerged from the ruin of World War II, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was hardly in a condition to make an immediate and robust response to this outbreak of revolution in the colonies. Worse, her Allies were far from united or in agreement as to what their reaction would be. The United States had, under President Roosevelt, taken a very hostile attitude to all colonial empires during the war and while it was certainly in the interests of the British who wished to maintain their own empire, also recently decimated by the Japanese in East Asia, to support the Dutch, they were in hardly better condition to offer much support. The Dutch, with a depleted, bombed-out country of their own and “friends” who were either opposed or indifferent to their reclaiming their lost empire faced a huge territory with a large population full of revolutionary fervor ready to fight them using any tactics necessary.

The Dutch were pressured then, both by the situation and their own allies, to come to some sort of a negotiated peace with the Indonesian republicans. This was not the first choice of the Queen, but it seemed the only option available. While Allied, mostly British Imperial, forces landed to disarm the Japanese and liberated the Europeans being held in concentration camps, the Indonesian revolutionaries prepared to resist them, wrongly fearing that they were determined to restore Dutch rule. In the meantime, republican officials were parceled out among the islands to enact the dictates of the revolutionary government. The local Indonesian princes mostly came under extreme pressure if not outright attack either for having collaborated with the Dutch previously or for collaborating with the Japanese more recently. Young people ran rampant, fired by the revolutionary rhetoric of the republicans, led by Sukarno who blasted the native princes for stunting their country with “feudalism” and thus allowing the Dutch to gain control and rule the islands for the last three centuries. Law and order quickly broke down and chaos ensued as different factions and different ethnic groups pursued different goals.

Flag of the Japanese sponsored PETA

There were Marxist radicals, separatists, Islamic fundamentalists and more moderate leftists all jockeying for position. The revolutionaries were, however, aided by the fact that since the Japanese had first broken Dutch rule, most did not want to see it return. Not everyone was opposed to maintaining some sort of connection with the Netherlands but a reactionary return to the former colonial regime as it was seemed completely beyond the realm of possibility. That this would be a vicious fight was made clear early on when violence broke out in Surabaya in East Java, between Indonesian republicans (along with remnants of the Islamic militia force formed by Japan, PETA) and occupying British forces on October 28, 1945. From November 10-24 this escalated to an all out battle and what would be the bloodiest single fight of the entire revolutionary war. The British won the battle but, in what would become an all too familiar pattern, were horrified by the cost and determined that the Dutch cause was hopeless. Thereafter, rather than stand by their Dutch ally, the British would likewise support the republicans in the United Nations.

The republicans began forming a more formal government, though none tended to last very long and Sukarno remained the real power and driving force of the revolutionary movement. The Dutch were convinced that they would have to come to some sort of agreement and the British brokered the Linggajati Agreement between them and the Indonesians. The agreement went into effect on November 12, 1946 and stipulated that the Dutch government would recognize republican rule over Java and Sumatra while the eastern archipelago would be retained and all would remain under the Dutch Crown. There would be a federal system for the islands with the Republic of the United States of Indonesia (RUSI) including Java and Sumatra of course as well as southern Kalimantan and the “Great East” of Sulawesi, Maluku, the Lesser Sunda Islands and West New Guinea. The revolutionaries did not ratify this agreement until March of 1947 and neither they nor the Dutch were satisfied with it when it was signed on May 25, which of course the British took as proof that it was actually perfectly fair and reasonable. It was, however, destined to fall apart very quickly.

Dutch royal troops of the first police action

Revolutionaries had been fired by radical zeal and a compromise solution was not what they had been prepared for. Within hardly a month the republicans committed numerous violations of the agreement and the Royal Dutch government, frustrated with the whole affair, decided that it would take a taste of battle to set things in order. On July 21, 1947 the Dutch launched a “police action” (“Politionele Acties” as the Dutch called it) named Operation Product. The Royal Netherlands military had to rebuild their colonial forces from scratch since they had been completely dismantled by the Japanese but, nonetheless, they fought with skill and determination. Royal Dutch troops drove the republicans out of Sumatra, then East and West Java, finally confining them to the central Yogyakarta region of the island of Java. The action had been quite successful but rather than congratulations on their victory, the Dutch were denounced by the new international community represented by the United Nations. More negotiations were organized, this time held aboard an American warship, and these resulted in the Renville Agreement, agreed to on January 17, 1948. This agreement recognized Dutch control over the territory taken by their forces but only until a vote could be held to determine whether the populace wished to remain under the jurisdiction of the Netherlands or the Indonesian republic.

Dutch military column, first police action

This time, certainly, the Dutch had more cause for discontent with the agreement than the republicans. They had fought a hard campaign and been immensely successful, only to be told their gains would likely be taken away as soon as it could be organized. Meanwhile, the revolutionaries had been knocked down hard by this defeat and seemed to be coming apart at the seams. In 1948 part of western Java broke away under the leadership of Islamic radicals, declaring itself the Indonesian Islamic State (doesn’t that sound familiar too?) or as it was more commonly known, Darul Islam. This separatist Islamic theocracy would continue to bedevil the Indonesian authorities until its founder was finally captured and promptly executed by the republicans in 1962. There were other divisions too such as one faction led by the throwback anti-colonial dissident of a bygone era Musso of the PKI and a Trotskyite faction led by Tan Malaka. In what was called the Madiun Affair, for its location in East Java, a communist insurgency broke out that called for the people to overthrow the republican government as well as the Dutch. None of these ultimately succeeded, Musso being killed and Tan Malaka later being executed by republican forces in February of 1949. However, it made the United States very nervous about the communists gaining a foothold in Indonesia and increasingly put pressure on the Dutch to make an accommodation with Sukarno who, the Americans were convinced, could be kept on the side of the non-communist western camp.

General Simon Spoor

The Royal Dutch military forces, however, were not about to give up while the work of centuries was falling into chaos. The Queen of the Netherlands was fortunate to have a very tough and talented commander of her forces in the East Indies in the person of General Simon Hendrik Spoor, a World War II veteran who had worked closely with General Douglas MacArthur and rather took the “American Caesar” as his example. Originally a colonel, Spoor was given the temporary rank of lieutenant general when he was given command of the Royal Dutch Army in the East Indies. He was a man of seemingly boundless optimism, for whom no task was too great and his first ‘police action’ against the republicans had been very successful. Many did not know, because of the immense confidence he displayed and the great care he took of his soldiers, just how much stress was heaped on the workaholic general. The only real criticism of General Spoor was his efforts to suppress news of atrocities committed by Dutch forces under his command. Such things did happen, though none were officially sanctioned of course, but these were widely used for propaganda purposes by the revolutionaries and were taken up by communist forces in the international community. They never told, of course, that these were prompted by acts of torture and mutilation carried out by the republicans against the Dutch and Dutch-allied native forces. General Spoor was simply concerned with not providing the enemy with such ammunition and protecting the integrity of the Royal Netherlands Armed Forces.

KNIL forces on parade ground

General Spoor, and the other Dutch authorities, could see the international elites aligning against them, they knew they were in an extremely difficult position but they also knew that success on their ground would counteract more of this pressure than anything else could. As such, the Dutch launched a second ‘police action’ in December of 1948 codenamed “Operation Kraai”. General Spoor had excellent intelligence on the enemy thanks to the breaking of the republicans’ secret code which revealed both their military and diplomatic plans. Once again, the focus was on Java and Sumatra, where the “head” of the revolutionary movement was located. The object was to force the republicans to accept the compromise proposed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands which would preserve the federal system and keep the East Indies under the overall reign of the Dutch Crown. The operation began with a formal announcement by the local Dutch civil authorities that, as the republicans had violated the Renville Agreement, the Netherlands forces were no longer bound by it. General Spoor launched a complex, integrated attack on the leadership centers of the revolutionary movement using land, air and airborne forces.

KNIL troops in the jungle

The republican leadership based at Yogyakarta was the primary target and General Spoor thought that the revolutionaries would throw everything they had into the fight. However, he was surprised by how little resistance they ultimately offered, quickly retreating in the face of the determined Dutch offensive. They would resort to guerilla warfare, something Spoor never wanted to consider. However, once again, the Royal Dutch military operation was well-planned and hugely successful. Yogyakarta was captured on December 19, 1948 and very soon both Sukarno and his deputy Hatta were captured and exiled to northern Sumatra or the island of Bangka. It was the second time Sukarno had been apprehended by Dutch authorities (the first being prior to the Japanese attack in World War II) and the revolutionary republic was effectively decapitated by this victorious operation. The republicans quickly cobbled together an emergency government in western Sumatra but their entire operation was in disarray, their forces were defeated and smashed and the Netherlands forces seemed to have accomplished all of their goals of the operation.

Unfortunately, and to the great frustration of Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch authorities, at this moment of triumph, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was effectively undermined by the international community, including their own allies. The British had already turned against them, recently independent Asian countries such as India aligned against them and finally the United States also condemned the Dutch military action. Needless to say the Soviet Union and Communist countries were always opposed to the Dutch and the continuation of any colonial regime. In January of 1949 the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding that the Dutch give up the gains of their victory and allow the reinstatement of the republican government. Pressure was also put on the Dutch to renounce any and all sovereignty over the Indonesian archipelago by July 1, 1950 including the threat of losing Marshall Aid for the Netherlands if they did not. In effect, the UN was coming out against the compromise proposed by the Netherlands and endorsing the Dutch simply handing the Indonesian republicans everything they wanted in spite of having beaten them in the field.

Flag of the Indonesian Republic

The Dutch had little choice, in the face of the opposition of the international community, but to give in. From August 23 to November 2, 1949 talks, known as the “Round Table Conference” were held in The Hague to hammer out the details for the transfer of power between the Indonesian Republic, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Indonesian federal states established by the Dutch in the aftermath of their successful police actions. The Dutch authorities agreed to recognize the independence of the “Republic of the United States of Indonesia”, to withdraw all Dutch military forces and to the holding of elections for an Indonesian Constituent Assembly. West New Guinea, or Netherlands New Guinea, remained under Dutch control although the republicans never relented in claiming it as part of their “Greater Indonesia”. The republicans agreed to pay 4.3 billion guilders of the sizeable debt owed to The Netherlands though this was far from the total amount. On December 27, 1949 the Kingdom of the Netherlands officially transferred sovereignty to the Indonesian republic.

Queen Juliana at her inauguration

This would not, however, be presided over by Queen Wilhelmina who, despite wishing to reign until 1950, had grown increasingly ill and increasingly frustrated at the loss of the Dutch East Indies. The Queen abdicated on September 4, 1948 to be succeeded by her daughter Queen Juliana. It was left to her to formally acknowledge Indonesian independence though the Dutch still hoped to maintain a close relationship with at least the more loyal portions of their former colony. The RUSI, under its constitution at the time of independence, consisted of the Republic of Indonesia plus the fifteen “united states” established by the Dutch and which they were closest with. The Dutch government had ensured that these states would, according to the constitution, have a more equal standing with the much more heavily populated republican territories and thus could influence the new regime in a more friendly direction for the Netherlands or at least for those fifteen states. However, this was not to be as Sukarno quickly made use of his “emergency powers” to dissolve the federal system bit by bit and take control of all of these areas, incorporating them into the Republic of Indonesia as the unitary state he had wanted all along. By May of 1950 the last of these states were gone and the Republic of Indonesia stood alone as one, united, top-down government ruled from Jakarta.

One of the most famous events which led to Sukarno taking emergency authoritarian measures was an attempted coup by Captain Raymond Paul Pierre “The Turk” Westerling, a former Dutch colonial army officer and expert in anti-guerilla warfare in January of 1950. He was backed not only by Dutch loyalists but also by certain powerful Indonesians who wanted to preserve the federal system to maintain greater autonomy for the local authorities, the most notable being Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak, himself also a former officer of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL). One of the last areas of resistance was Ambon where, in April of 1950, the Republic of South Maluku was declared. The Ambonese were a rather unique ethnic group in Indonesia with many Christians and a history of friendship with the Dutch. The Ambonese had formed a large part of the mostly native KNIL. By November the authorities had succeeded in suppressing them after which 12,000 Ambonese soldiers, along with their families, were forced to flee to the Netherlands where they established a relatively short-lived government-in-exile.

Flag of Netherlands New Guinea

The only holdout then was Netherlands New Guinea which remained a Dutch colony and was intended to provide a safe haven for the Christian, pro-Dutch population, particularly the large number of mixed-race Eurasians who faced persecution at the hands of the Islamic nationalist revolutionary republicans, for either their race or, if they were Christians, for their religion. This ‘last stand’ of the Dutch in Indonesia lasted until 1962 when Indonesian military forces began to move in following the announcement that a local government would be established. Once again, although the Dutch and especially the locals in West New Guinea were prepared to defend themselves, the international community closed ranks against the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In the United States, John F. Kennedy was President, a long-time admirer of the socialist Sukarno, and he sent his brother to basically threaten the Dutch with economic catastrophe if they did not immediately surrender and abandon Netherlands New Guinea to Indonesia. The territory was handed over to the UN which duly transferred it to Indonesia. There was a plebiscite, much later, after the authorities had time to consolidate, intimidate and indoctrinate which, of course, showed a result in favor of the Republic of Indonesia. This “Act of Free Choice” was known as the “Act of No Choice” by the locals and was so flagrantly unfair that even the international community had to protest but, of course, nothing was done about it.

British troops at the Battle of Surabaya

What is most remarkable about what is now known as the Indonesian Revolution is just how successful the Dutch were yet they ultimately lost everything because of the pressure of the international community, in particular the United Nations. The whole affair revealed just how disunited the western powers were compared to the communist bloc which, while they often agreed on little between themselves, were certainly in agreement when it came to who they opposed and any western, Christian or colonial power was always to be opposed. The Dutch were sold out by their own allies. The British jumped first, believing after the Battle of Surabaya that the whole affair was hopeless, plus they shifted radically to the left immediately after the end of World War II and were determined to surrender their own empire while the United States displayed a very inconsistent and naïve policy in regard to the Dutch East Indies. They effectively backed a regime led by a man who had collaborated with Japan and the Axis powers in World War II simply because colonialism had become very unfashionable and they thought they could win over Sukarno to the side of the anti-communist countries if they backed him in supporting Indonesian independence. Not for the first time, the American government was proven completely wrong. Once done with the Netherlands, Sukarno immediately turned on his naïve sympathizers, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and became virulently anti-American.

This conflict is also much closer to us today than most realize. A leftist revolutionary and insurgent becomes a world celebrity promising “social justice” while stamping out freedom, radical Islamism makes common cause with secularists against a Christian power, what amounts to ethnic cleansing is carried out but is shrugged off by the world community because the targets are people of European or partial European ancestry. A military campaign is fought and won only to have globalist politicians say they are not allowed to win and must withdraw and allow the defeated enemy to reclaim all they had lost. Western powers back fundamentally anti-western forces because they think these can be won over with kindness only to have them turn on them in the end. Does any of this sound familiar? A better question would be; does any of this NOT sound familiar? The aftershocks are still going on today.

Osama bin Laden, he remembered, others forgot

In 1975 East Timor declared independence from Portugal and the place was immediately invaded by Indonesia. Decades of warfare ensued between the Islamic Indonesians and the mostly Christian population of East Timor. The independence of Catholic East Timor from Muslim Indonesia was cited by Osama bin Laden in his 2001 statement justifying the 9-11 terrorist attack. Often upheld as the “model” Islamic country (and Indonesia is the largest Islamic country by population in the world) the divisions that existed at the time of independence still exist today between the more secular Muslims and the more fundamentalist Muslims. As of 2011, almost half of Indonesian Muslims supported Islamic law being the law of the land in their country and abroad, about 70% believed Muslims were not responsible for the 9-11 attacks. From 2007 to 2013 attacks on religious minorities in Indonesia shot up from 91 to 220. In Aceh, where the Dutch fought a particularly fierce colonial war in the 1870’s, the province adopted total shariah law in 2001. There have been an increasing number of incidents, leaving aside the terrorist bombings in Bali in 2002 and 2005 that killed hundreds of people, showing how Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, lashing out at Christian converts (such as in West Papua or West New Guinea), insufficiently radical Muslims and those who have been rediscovering the Hindu roots of the country.

What is certain is that life has not been a pleasant succession of improvements for Indonesia since the success of the revolutionary republicans and the end of Dutch rule. Despite being a treasure house of natural resources, most Indonesians live in or near poverty while only the top government officials enrich themselves. The government has been tyrannical more often than not, frequently violent and unstable with numerous rebellions and now a growing trend toward Islamic terrorism. The Kingdom of the Netherlands, on the other hand, with virtually no natural resources, a bombed out ruin of a country in the aftermath of World War II, managed to quickly work its way back to prosperity, despite having a lower GDP than Indonesia, having a much higher standard of living. True, Marshall Aid from the United States helped in the recovery, but Indonesia has also received a huge amount of foreign aid including a huge amount of war reparations from the Japanese which is frankly ridiculous given that the man then ruling Indonesia, Sukarno, had collaborated with the Japanese so any harm they did during their occupation was harmed he helped them to accomplish! In any event, far from the socialist paradise that was promised. The overall event does, however, provide numerous lessons which we should all be able to learn from.