The long-lasting legacy of collaboration. The exclusion and integration of former national socialist milieus in Dutch society
This programme will investigate the legacy of war and collaboration in new ways. The general hypothesis is that examining the processes of integration and exclusion of former national socialist milieus in Dutch post-war society will enhance our understanding of collaboration and the consequences of the Second World War. To test this hypothesis, instead of assigning the terms ‘right’ (‘goed’), ‘wrong’ (‘fout’) or ‘grey’ (‘grijs’), we will turn them into objects of research.
A key question is in which ways the preconditions of reintegration and the meanings of ‘wrong’, ‘collaborator’ and ‘political delinquent’ changed over time. Both the ‘out-group’ perspective of the former collaborators and their families, and the ‘in-group’ perspectives of government and society, are relevant (Elias 1965). By analyzing and explaining this dynamic our programme will be more than a supplement to existing research into the special criminal proceedings against collaborators (‘bijzondere rechtspleging’) and into other groups marked by the war (i.a. Romijn 1991, De Haan 1997). Addition of the perspective of the out-group will deepen our understanding of how society dealt with the war experience. During the occupation approximately 100,000 people were members of the Dutch Nazi-movement (Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, NSB), 23,000 men served in the Waffen-SS. After the liberation the public prosecutors produced at least 540,000 files investigating collaboration; about 100,000 persons were conditionally released, 65,000 actually convicted. This research, however, includes all who were regarded as having been in one way or another on the ‘wrong side’. Besides members of the NSB or SS this includes their spouses and children, and also, for instance, people who were never formally convicted but who were widely known as having a ‘tainted’ past. Thus one of the integrating and innovative elements in the programme is the emphasis on social integration of national socialist milieus, instead of on individual perpetratorhood. Since this diffuse group cannot be isolated in statistics we need to define how we will explore this phenomenon in practice.
Integration and citizenship are central in all three subprojects. Integration is understood in a broad sense: as political, social, economic, and cultural participation in society. Cultural integration then means (the sense) of being part of the memory culture and value systems society is built on. People who recognize themselves and are recognized by their environment as ‘good citizens’ may be considered integrated. However, what a ‘good citizen’ is exactly remains subject of discussion and research.
Upon release former collaborators were explicitly obliged to behave like ‘good Dutchmen’. Contemporary ideas on what this actually meant, will be compared with the sociological classification into liberal, (neo-)republican, and communitarian notions of citizenship: was ‘good citizenship’ defined on the basis of political rights and freedoms (liberal), or was political participation (republican), or even visible devotion (communitarian) expected? These three notions of citizenship differ in the degree to which individuals must prove their citizenship, and in the tasks of (government) institutions and living environment. The linking question is how the various concepts of citizenship expanded or limited integration opportunities, and in that way determined the integration parameters.
Formulated differently: the limits of the constitutional state and welfare state that was realized after the war are examined through the foute milieus. The way in which these milieus were either integrated or excluded and their subsequent responses demonstrated which behaviours and attitudes were defined as either acceptable or unacceptable. This is a theme that did not just emerge in our multicultural society, but is in line with an older tradition of, for example, the ‘elevation’ of the working classes and the ‘re-education’ of ‘antisocials’ and ‘criminals’. The treatment of former collaborators also implied a dynamic civilizing offensive aimed at groups that were considered deviant and a threat to social cohesion and societal order.
The three subprojects combined demonstrate how society’s handling of this serious problem developed from confinement to integration, and subsequently reflection.
The first subproject – the study into the internment camps for ‘political delinquents’ in the Netherlands and Belgium – covers the years 1944 to 1950: a key period when exclusion was the dominant perspective, and integration seemed very distant. In this phase ‘good citizenship’ provided an instrument to discriminate rather than a goal that former collaborators could also attain. The central question in this subproject is what influence the (experience of) internment had on the subsequent integration in free society.
On the one hand its analytical nature distinguishes this new study from the generally anecdotal, personal, and emotional publications on camp life, as they exist in the Netherlands and Belgium, and on the other hand it is different from many scientific publications because we start with the phase of exclusion: gaining insight into the long-term legacy of the collaboration requires knowledge of the period of the occupation, as well as immediately following it. Among former collaborators the internment phase has produced a specific narrative about their own position. In this narrative they do not see their wartime past as the cause of their confinement, but they place themselves as ‘political prisoners’ opposite the reconstructing constitutional state’s message of democracy and freedom. For many the internment and conviction still symbolize their relationship to the nation.
This subproject researches the scope and boundaries of physical exclusion. We want to examine the expectations of the detainees and their families regarding to their return to society based on their interaction with, among others, chaplains and probation officers. Conditional release is a delicate theme, because both prisoners and social and spiritual caregivers had to articulate in their arguments and decisions which was the deciding factor: the political one (f.i. believing in democracy) or the social one (f.i. the preservation of a stable family life). Analysis of these sometimes conflicting interpretations of good citizenship provides new insight into the nature of society during the postwar reconstruction. A comparison with Belgium can furthermore answer the question whether a different handling of the problem of collaboration has also resulted in differences in integration and exclusion after the occupation.
However, this period does not explain everything. Whereas in the second half of the 1940s the future still seemed to offer opportunities, on their return to family and labour market, many people experienced which problems a fout past sometimes continued to have. In subproject 2. – about the concrete social reintegration of former national socialist families – we will investigate the effects of punishment and internment: many former political delinquents had not only lost their jobs, they also lost part of their political rights, such as the right to vote and to stand for election, and their nationality. Married women automatically lost their nationality when their husbands lost theirs. It took until the late 1950s before most of them had their rights restored; in Belgium some people were deprived of certain rights for the rest of their lives. We want to systematically examine the effect of these measures on integration. People who had lost the Dutch nationality were formally regarded as aliens. The employment office and therefore also potential employers knew that someone was a ‘former political delinquent’, and so finding work was not easy. The formal requirements for regaining these rights were obscure, and then there were also the silent barriers. How did not having the right to vote or a passport impede the pursuit of integration? How important were these attributes of citizenship to this group? Were they prepared to meet society halfway in order to ‘belong’, or did they fall back on like-minded networks?
In the public domain of the 1950s and ‘60s ‘the war’ came up mainly as a result of incidents, including several public scandals regarding the foute wartime past of well-known persons and ‘the revival of fascism’. The fact that collaboration remained an open wound often compelled the people involved to a strategy of secrecy, silence, and evasion. From about 1965 the public definition of the essence of the evil of collaboration started changing. Parallel to the increasing emphasis on the persecution of the Jews, the focus on treason diminished and shifted to (potential) perpetratorhood in the execution of the Holocaust. Subproject 2. investigates the significance and the repercussions of this new dimension of guilt and guiltiness (in their own eyes as well as in those of their adolescent children and society around them). Again, a comparison with Flanders is interesting. Unlike the situation in the Netherlands, former Flemish collaborators were excluded from the Belgian state, but frequently not from the Flemish community. Their immediate environment did not associate them with treason, nor with perpetratorhood, but rather with Flemish idealism.
In subproject 3. – about children of foute parents as a victim category – integration and citizenship also play an important role. In the Netherlands children of collaborators started organizing from the late 1970s because they were looking for ‘recognition’: their story was also part of the national wartime past and their traumatic childhood entitled them to care. In this group we see the legacy of the stories about internment camps and exclusion, and not least: the suppressed wartime past. The abuses during internment and the discrimination afterwards sometimes also evoked anger in the ‘second generation’, because they felt they were not fully accepted citizens. This is expressed in several ways. For example: among the children from former national socialist milieus the notion of being stigmatized as ‘a child of’ is a major theme. Especially during national holidays such as 4 and 5 May they feel excluded from the national community: at first their stories were incompatible with the schematic national discourse of ‘oppression’ and ‘resistance’, later on they did not fit within the discourse of anti-racism and human rights. Convincing society that they were not guilty but merely ‘innocent children’, was the only way their story could be included in the latter, more general meaning of war: children should not be punished for the actions of their parents, and every child suffers under conditions of war and violence.
The desire of ‘children of’, as many have started to refer to themselves, to integrate in the memory of the war became manifest in the 1970s and ‘80s. Then Dutch society became aware of the psychological consequences of the Second World War, and the central focus in thinking about the war shifted to (psychological) care and victimhood. Citizenship and victimhood appear to enter into a symbiosis in the Netherlands during this period. The children of collaborators’ desire to integrate in the war memory therefore went hand in hand with the search for integration in care and welfare services. This begs the question how widespread this phenomenon was: children from national socialist milieus in Belgium never identified themselves as a victim category, but those in Norway did.
Apart from sharing the element of integration and citizenship, the three subprojects also form one whole because they cover the entire postwar period in chronological order. The questions are designed in such a way that the effects of each previous phase on the next one become clear. For example, the experience in the internment camps (subproject 1.) led to specific notions and expectations about people’s own position in postwar society (subproject 2.), and it played an important role in the reflection of the children of foute parents on the origin of their feeling excluded (subproject 3.). The actual integration in the 1950s and ‘60s (subproject 2.) also influenced this reflection (subproject 3.).
Each of the three subprojects furthermore aims to place the Dutch experience in an international context. Due to the volume and nature of the available research material, plus the current state of research in the Netherlands and other countries, direct comparison of two countries based on primary sources is only possible in subproject 1. In the other projects the Dutch situation is placed in an international context on the basis of extensive literature research and the international network of the researchers. Again, we are very interested in Belgium, but also in France, Denmark, and Norway, and we will examine similarities and differences with Germany and Middle European countries. Content and operationalization of the three subprojects are addressed in more detail in the separate descriptions.
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