The illegal press during World War II

On 16 May 1940, one day after the Dutch capitulation, the newly formed German occupation authorities summoned the editors-in-chief of all Dutch newspapers. At this meeting, the press was explained what the intentions were during the German occupation. Naturally, no critical writing about the German regime was permitted. Furthermore, no reports that could endanger the German war effort were permitted. Furthermore, press releases from the German news agency DNB (Deutsche Nachrichten Büro) and the German military high command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) had to be printed on the front page of the newspaper.

Censorship beforehand would not take place. But afterward, it would. Newspapers that did not adhere to the imposed rules initially received a friendly warning, but if that didn't work, a temporary or permanent ban was imposed. The newspaper was then effectively closed down. With this seemingly friendly approach, the Germans had a goal. They wanted to "align" Dutch society with German society. They wanted to slowly, gently, but decisively convert the Dutch to National Socialism, with the ultimate goal of having the Netherlands become a province within the German Reich.

The Dutch press was to play a key role in this process of harmonization, namely providing the Dutch people with National Socialist information through their own familiar channels. The idea was that this would be done voluntarily and with gentle coercion. Initially, the German occupiers allowed the editorial staff and editors-in-chief of the various newspapers to remain in their posts. But at some newspapers, the Germans went further. The newspapers of the social democratic publishing house De Arbeiderspers, including Het Volk, Vooruit, and Voorwaarts, were immediately confiscated by the German occupiers. Not only did the Germans see the social democrats as political opponents, they also intended to use these newspapers to convert Dutch workers en masse to National Socialism. Consequently, the De Arbeiderspers newspapers received a new, entirely pro-German editorial team.

Although most newspapers grudgingly adhered to the rules to maintain business and employment, enthusiasm for National Socialism was virtually nonexistent. Moreover, newspaper readers dropped out en masse. They were not satisfied with the constant German war propaganda. The circulation of Dutch newspapers fell dramatically during the first year of the occupation. For example, that of Het Volk, one of the newspapers of De Arbeiderspers, fell from 212,000 to 82,000 during 1940, a decrease of more than 60%. The German press policy in the Netherlands had thus failed.

Dutch newspaper readers quickly realized that their newspapers were only publishing the perspective of the German occupiers. Many people weren't happy with this, and newspaper subscriptions quickly declined. Because of the censorship, there were no alternatives. Or were there?

In the summer of 1940, just weeks after the German invasion, the first illegal newspapers and pamphlets appeared, often in small print runs and consisting of only a single sheet of paper. They were simple: typed or handwritten, reproduced on a mimeograph machine. Obtaining them was difficult. The circulation was only a few dozen or hundreds of copies. If you knew the right people, you could subscribe. Or the newspaper was distributed among trusted friends and acquaintances. These newspapers didn't so much provide news, but initially offered a critical opinion of the German occupier and their measures. Sometimes they also called for resistance. These first illegal newspapers were among the earliest forms of resistance against the German occupier.

The very first illegal newspaper: Geuzenactie

The first illegal publication appeared as early as 15 May 1940, the day of the Dutch capitulation. Under the title Geuzenactie, the author of this handwritten chain letter, Bernard IJzerdraat, called for active resistance against the German occupation. The second issue, dated 18 May 1940, is considered the first surviving Dutch resistance newspaper. Geuzenactie soon appeared three times a week and, from the summer of 1940 onwards, was typed and mimeographed instead of copied, under the title De Geus van 1940. Bernard IJzerdraat also gathered a resistance group around him, the Geuzen, who engaged in espionage and sabotage. However, the group was dismantled in November 1940. Bernard IJzerdraat and a group of his associates were executed by firing squad on 13 March 1941. Jan Campert wrote the famous poem De achttien doden (The Eighteen Deaths) about this. It was the first major trial against the Dutch resistance. And the eighteen deaths were among the earliest death sentences carried out in the Netherlands by the German occupiers. While the Germans in 1940 still tried to convert the Dutch population to National Socialism through enticement and persuasion, after the February Strike of 1941, they took action. The process of standardization had failed. The German terror had begun.

News and information were still plentiful during those early war years. While newspapers, Dutch radio, and cinema newsreels were dominated by German propaganda, it wasn't difficult to listen to foreign stations on the radio, despite German jamming. Broadcasts from London, including Radio Oranje, aimed at the Netherlands, were particularly popular. This allowed for some diversity in reporting. But foreign stations also engaged in war propaganda. The problem, then, was not so much obtaining information, but interpreting it. What was true? And how should the news be interpreted? The first illegal newspapers tried to fill that void. They didn't so much provide new information, but rather a perspective on the world. Opinion, in other words. They were certainly not neutral. Most illegal newspapers arose out of anger over the German occupation and the measures it imposed. Consequently, they were often virulently anti-German.

Reliability of the news

"The first casualty of war is the truth" is a well-known saying. And it's true because all parties involved in war have an interest in concealing their own weaknesses and strengths and denigrating and misleading the enemy. Reliable information is deliberately suppressed, censorship is introduced, a fair hearing is often impossible, and preferably the press is also enlisted in the war effort and asked, if not forced, to produce propaganda. This makes neutral and critical journalism particularly difficult in wartime. We also see the illegal press struggling with this. An interesting article that appeared on July 2, 1940, in De Geus of 1940, under the headline The true spirit of the German beast is increasingly coming to light.

In Den Helder, Haarlem, Schiedam, and Rotterdam, it has been established that German planes, hiding behind clouds or the darkness of night, began flying behind the British aircraft. After the British dropped their bombs on military targets (including the Red Cross hospital in Den Helder, where war materials were stored), the Germans subsequently dropped several more bombs on civilians and houses (such as in Rotterdam). They are now claiming on the radio and in the press that these murderous bombs also came from the British. SEARCH FOR AND KEEP THIS SHARDWARD. They will expose the liars[…]

With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the above report is untrue. The bombs that fell on civilian targets were also British bombs. Bombing, especially in the early years of the war, was notoriously inaccurate. Numerous bombing raids resulted in civilian casualties due to stray bombs. But for civilians at the time, it was often incomprehensible that British aircraft dropped their bombs on civilian targets. Asking German or British authorities for an explanation was impossible, nor was conducting an on-site investigation. As a result, stories and rumors like the one above circulated regularly, making it impossible to refute them with reliable information.

Different newspapers, same content

You often find two illegal newspapers and wonder: is this the same newspaper, or a different one? Same title, same date, same content, but a different look. How is that possible?

Distributing thousands of printed newspapers to other locations was dangerous work. It had to be done by train or truck, and that quickly became noticeable. It was safer to have a single copy of the newspaper, or the typed text, delivered by courier. The newspaper would then be retyped in another location and mimeographed on the spot, or retyped and reprinted. As a result, two copies of the same newspaper could look completely different, yet contain the same content. This is common with illegal newspapers and can sometimes be confusing.

Besides newspapers, radio was the most important source of news. (Television and the internet, of course, didn't exist yet.) The German occupiers were irritated that the Dutch population could simply listen to English radio, including broadcasts from Radio Oranje from London. British news and war propaganda formed a critical counterbalance and a powerful weapon for the Allies against German propaganda. Jamming the British transmitters proved insufficient. Therefore, in May 1943, all Dutch citizens were required to hand in their radios. Some people dared to hide a radio to secretly listen to English stations. But violating the radio ban carried draconian penalties, such as imprisonment in a concentration camp, which often resulted in death.

The 1943 radio ban left many Dutch people deprived of diverse news, while the need for it was enormous during the war. Everyone wanted to know what the war was really like, and especially how quickly liberation would come. The radio ban gave a huge boost to the underground press. Illegal newspapers sprang up like mushrooms. Ultimately, more than a thousand different titles were published! Because of the radio ban, a large number of these newspapers primarily published news reports secretly intercepted from British radio stations.

Professionalization

Some illegal newspapers were put together by a single person in an attic room. Sometimes only a single issue was published. But other newspapers developed into large, professional, secret organizations. The best-known of these are Het Parool, Trouw and Vrij Nederland, all three of which still exist today. Je Maintiendrai and the communist De Waarheid were also major titles. They owned several printing plants, established a distribution network for the newspaper's distribution throughout the country, and illegally secured supplies of paper and ink. They also managed to obtain the large sums of money needed to print and distribute the thousands of copies of their newspapers in various ways.

German censorship and standardization completely transformed the pre-war, diverse Dutch media landscape. Yet, there was more than just satisfaction with the pre-war situation. Like society as a whole, the Dutch press was strongly divided into pillars. Protestants and Catholics had their own political parties, schools, hospitals, football clubs, unions, and so on. And therefore also their own newspapers. These so-called pillars also included a liberal, a social democratic, and a communist pillar. People within a pillar often lived in a kind of bubble. They only read their own newspaper and, in practice, did not take advantage of the enriching diversity offered by Dutch press freedom. This pillarization continued during the war in the underground press. The newspaper Trouw had a strong Reformed affiliation and was closely associated with the National Aid to Hiders (LO) and the Knokploegen (KP). De Waarheid was the newspaper of the illegal Communist Party of the Netherlands. Het Vrije Volk was the illegal continuation of the social democratic newspaper Het Volk, which was affiliated with the Social Democratic Workers' Party. Christofoor was a Catholic resistance newspaper. Many of these resistance newspapers (though by no means all) were the mouthpieces of pre-war groups within the pillarization. Not everyone was happy with this, because it was precisely during the war that the "Breakthrough Idea" developed: the idea that the pre-war pillars should be abolished after the liberation in favor of broader cooperation in a renewed Dutch society. However ambitious these ideals were, after the war the pillars were largely restored, only to be rapidly dismantled from the 1960s onward.

Difficult and dangerous

It wasn't easy to obtain the resources needed to produce, print, and distribute a newspaper on a large scale during the war: reliable information, paper, ink, a printing press, transportation, distribution, storage, money, and reliable people. Paper and ink were scarce and practically only available through the official distribution system. A whole chain of people had to commit fraud and turn a blind eye to "organize" these materials. Printing houses that printed regular newspapers during the day, or even leaflets for the NSB (Dutch Nazi Party) or the German Wehrmacht, printed illegal newspapers at night. And all of this had to be done in the utmost secrecy. All it took was one person to be loose-lipped, clumsy, or careless, and lives were at stake. Because contributing to an illegal newspaper carried draconian penalties: prison, a concentration camp, or the death penalty. During the war, numerous illegal newspapers were dismantled by German law enforcement, and countless contributors were arrested. Many died in concentration camps or by firing squad. For example, 151 members of the Vrij Nederland organization were imprisoned during the war. Eighty-six of them were executed or died in concentration camps. Therefore, producing or distributing an illegal newspaper was extremely dangerous.

The illegal press was a thorn in the side of the German occupiers. Although illegal newspaper publishers were regularly arrested and organizations dismantled, the illegal press proved ineradicable through repression and terror alone. The German authorities therefore considered other measures, such as sowing confusion about the reliability of the illegal press. This was done, among other things, by publishing the magazine De Gil (The Scream) in 1944. De Gil was a satirical magazine that responded to current events. It was critical of the German occupiers and satirized members of the NSB (National Socialist Movement) and other collaborators. At the same time, the magazine attempted to discredit the motives of the resistance and stoked fear of the war violence that would accompany the liberation, and the chaotic period afterward. In this way, De Gil attempted to sow confusion in public opinion. However, it quickly became clear to the observant reader that De Gil came from a pro-German perspective. The impact of De Gil was therefore limited, and publication ceased after 14 issues.

The Germans took their psychological warfare against the illegal press a step further. In the Vught concentration camp, they had imprisoned printers and graphic artists produce counterfeit copies of illegal newspapers. Some of the information was altered to sow confusion about the reliability and positions of the illegal press. Little is known about the extent and effect of these forgeries. Few of the printers involved survived the war. However, a few forged copies of resistance newspapers have been preserved.

Conclusion: Resistance through the dissemination of critical information

For five years of war, illegal newspapers, under extremely difficult circumstances and at an incredibly high price, brought some form of diversity to news reporting. The illegal press gave people knowledge, hope, and confidence in a positive outcome to the war, thus providing moral support to many. The underground newspapers were critical, called for the rejection or non-acceptance of the occupier's measures, and were a source of inspiration for all kinds of resistance. Although illegal newspapers were also not objective and also deliberately or accidentally spread incorrect information, they formed an important counterbalance to the regular press, which the Germans had harmonized, and to German propaganda publications. This made the illegal press one of the most important forms of resistance during World War II. Hundreds of illegal workers paid for this with their lives.

Literature

• Lydia E. Winkel, De ondergrondse pers 1940-1945, (Amsterdam, 1989)
  A standard work, originally published in 1954, supplemented and revised in 1989, with an overview and brief description of all illegal newspaper titles published during the war.
• Heuvel, Hans van den and Gerard Mulder, Het vrije woord: de illegale pers in Nederland, 1940-1945, (The Hague, 1990)
• Vries, Hille de, Een ophitsend geschrift: de geschiedenis van het illegale blad Trouw, (Utrecht, 1968)
• Keizer, Madelon de, Het Parool 1940-1945, verzetsblad in oorlogstijd, (Amsterdam, 1991)
• Numerous Dutch resistance newspapers can be found, viewed, and searched on Delpher
  The KB holds a significant collection of resistance newspapers. The largest collection of Dutch resistance newspapers is held by the NIOD (Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies). Both collections have been digitized and made available on Delpher.