When the Germans took over the Netherlands in 1940, Dutch police officers found themselves trapped between two impossible choices. Keep working under Nazi rule, or walk away and leave the job to collaborators. Some officers chose to cooperate, even helping round up Jews and resistance fighters. Others, as the war dragged on, developed serious moral objections and resigned.
But the Germans showed no mercy to those who refused. After the Dutch surrender on May 15, 1940, the country came under civilian German occupation. The government in exile, broadcasting from London, told civil servants to keep doing their jobs and cooperate with the occupier as much as possible, hoping this would protect the population. But cooperating with the Germans soon meant turning against your own people.
On August 31, 1940, during Queen’s Day, police were ordered to punish citizens who shouted orange slogans or wore orange flowers. In the first year of occupation, the Germans introduced the so-called Aryan declaration. Every civil servant, including every police officer, had to sign a statement confirming they were not Jewish. Jewish officers were dismissed, and police chiefs who weren’t loyal enough to the occupier were replaced, usually by members of the NSB, the Dutch Nazi party.
In late 1940, Radio Orange broadcast a message urging Dutch citizens not to cooperate with the occupier. The broadcast reminded people that the Germans had no right to punish them for their political beliefs, their race, or their religion. But the police were expected to enforce those very punishments. At first, many officers waited to see what would happen.
In the summer of 1940, the force even expanded, hiring 6,000 new officers. The Germans found the Dutch police structure too complicated and reformed it. The Marechaussee lost its military status and the word “royal” was dropped. A new central leadership was created, and a German police chief, General Hans, was appointed.
The Austrian Reich Commissioner, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, decided that maintaining public order was partly the Dutch police’s job, but they would answer to the Germans. The occupiers didn’t have enough manpower of their own. The German security police in the Netherlands had only about 400 personnel. So they needed the Dutch police to do the dirty work.
The NSB had its own paramilitary wing, the WA, dressed in black uniforms. After the Amsterdam police arrested 400 Jewish men in February 1941, strikes broke out in the capital. A month later, the occupiers set up a police training battalion in Schalkhaar. There, reliable officers were trained in military tactics and Nazi racial doctrine.
After six months, they were sent back to regular units. The name Schalkhaar soon became a symbol of bad cops. One officer later recalled the dilemma he faced when he was offered training there. “I had little choice.
Either I took the job with the police or I had to go to the AEG factories in Berlin. Schalkhaar had a bad reputation, and I didn’t feel like being sent there. As a convinced Catholic, I asked the bishop for advice. He told me to join the police, because in the Dutch police I could do more for the Dutch people than in Berlin.
”
One of the most painful chapters in Dutch police history is their role in deporting Jews. Dutch policemen were used to round up Jews during raids. In June 1941, a few months after the February strike, 250 Amsterdam police officers were deployed to arrest over 200 German and Dutch Jews. Officially, they were to be interrogated by the SD, but it soon became clear they had been sent to Mauthausen concentration camp.
Similar raids happened in other cities in the months that followed. Wim Seters, the Inspector General of the police, complained to the Secretary General of the Justice Department, a man named Schrieke. Seters argued that the police should not be used to round up Jews who had done nothing wrong. But Schrieke, an NSB member, said the police simply had to do what was required of them.
On the streets, a cop was easy to recognize. If he let someone off for a traffic violation, he was a friend of the people. If he got in trouble with the enemy, he was a patriot. But if he followed the occupier’s increasingly criminal orders, he was a collaborator.
There was a gray zone between collaboration and resistance, a kind of accommodation. Officers who wanted to do the right thing faced a terrible dilemma. If they resigned, their spot would be filled by an NSB officer who would have no problem carrying out anti-Jewish measures. If they stayed, they were collaborating.
One pre-war Marechaussee officer, Kavan, admitted this was one reason he kept his job. He also couldn’t afford to resign because he had to pay alimony to two wives. In May 1942, he was removed from his post and taken into captivity. After the war, to his own dismay, he was not allowed back on the force.
In February 1943, the Dutch churches made their voice heard. Bishops and other clergy sent a letter to Seyss-Inquart with a clear message: police officers must no longer cooperate in rounding up young men for labor in Germany or in arresting and persecuting Jews. After that call, some officers openly refused to work. Others went into hiding.
To stop this, the occupiers introduced a brutal measure called Sippenhaft. Family members of policemen who went into hiding were rounded up and sent to Vught concentration camp. By the end of 1943, 150 relatives of police officers were already imprisoned there. Between the summer of 1943 and the summer of 1944, about 600 policemen went into hiding.
As the war turned against Germany, the occupiers grew more vicious. In 1943, the Netherlands entered a spiral of violence. Death sentences against Dutch citizens rose alarmingly. The Germans introduced a police law that allowed those arrested to be shot without trial.
The resistance hardened too. “Wrong” cops, those who collaborated, became targets for attacks. Pro-German officers clumped together in groups, hunting for people in hiding and Jews. The resistance did everything possible to frighten them, but small groups of collaborators still managed to do a lot of damage.
Their actions damaged the reputation of the entire police force for years. After liberation, a purge was set up to clean the police force of bad cops as quickly as possible. Officers who had been members of the NSB, the WA, or the SS were immediately fired. Even training at Schalkhaar could mean dismissal.
Other officers were suspended while their behavior was investigated. Between 40 and 45 percent of all police officers were investigated. Of those, nearly 12 percent, about 1,954 officers, were fired. In total, 19 percent of the policemen who were on duty at the end of the occupation were punished.
The other 81 percent received no punishment. Under the special justice system, nine policemen were sentenced to death and executed. Dozens more received prison sentences, especially National Socialist chiefs of police, department heads, and employees of special units who had tracked down and arrested Jews in hiding and resistance fighters. Fifteen years after liberation, none of them were still in prison.
They had served their sentences or been pardoned.
