Anton Mussert dreamed of transforming the Netherlands into a fascist state loyal to Hitler during the 1930s. As leader of the National Socialist Movement, the NSB, he planned to abolish democracy and replace it with an authoritarian corporatist system. But his ambitions were riddled with contradictions from the very beginning. The NSB was not the first fascist movement in the Netherlands.
Earlier groups emerged in the 1920s, heavily inspired by Italian fascism, but they collapsed due to internal divisions. When Hitler rose to power in Germany, new parties appeared. The NSNAP wanted the Netherlands to become a province of Germany, while the Zwart Front pushed a Christian fascist agenda. Both remained marginal and eventually disappeared.
Mussert founded the NSB in 1931 with Cornelis van Geelkerken in Utrecht. The movement rejected the label of political party, calling itself a movement instead. Its ideology centered on corporatism, the belief that society should be organized through professional groups rather than political parties or individual votes. The party used the metaphor of a human body, where each part had its own function but had to work together for the health of the whole.
The party program offered something to everyone. Entrepreneurs would keep private property and enjoy a ban on strikes. Workers were promised profit sharing, pensions, and health insurance. In return, they had to embrace community spirit, sacrifice, and solidarity.
Class interests were to be sacrificed for the good of the entire people. The NSB rejected both Marxism and liberal capitalism, presenting itself as a third way that was neither left nor right. Interestingly, Mussert insisted the NSB was not anti-Semitic in its early years. He claimed they did not imitate German National Socialism.
But by the end of 1934, internal pressure forced him to ban Jews from leadership positions within the party. The following year, after Germany adopted the Nuremberg Laws, the party aligned even more closely with Nazi ideology. Mussert still publicly claimed he had nothing against Dutch Jews, but his position had effectively collapsed. The party quickly became trapped in its own contradictions.
How could a movement claiming to be fiercely nationalist orient itself toward a powerful foreign neighbor? As early as 1933, NSB members were accused of treason. Their uniforms and military drills were not seen as typically Dutch at all. The party was forced to defend every political decision made by Hitler, including the Kristallnacht attacks against Jews in 1938.
Mussert claimed to regret the German methods, but he developed frightening ideas. He began to see Jews as a potential cause of war in Europe. He even devised a plan to forcibly resettle all Jews in Guyana. He wrote that two worlds collide, the Jewish world and the people’s world, placing liberalism, capitalism, and Marxism in one camp and fascism with National Socialism in the other.
Within the party, a deep split emerged between Mussert and his rival Meinoud Rost van Tonningen. The fundamental question was whether the Netherlands should remain an independent state or be absorbed into a greater German Reich. Mussert advocated a Germanic confederation where the Netherlands would keep its autonomy, its flag, and its identity. He admired Italian fascism under Mussolini and dreamed of uniting the Netherlands with Flanders to create a greater Dutch state.
Rost van Tonningen was far more radical. He supported the SS ideology and believed the Dutch state was merely an administrative detail. He wanted all Germanic peoples united under direct rule from Berlin. In his vision, the Netherlands would cease to exist and become a province of Germany.
He rejected Christian morality and Dutch national symbols in favor of racial ideology and a new pagan worldview. The Germans exploited this rivalry. They used Mussert as a formal figurehead to keep the Dutch population calm, while Rost van Tonningen and the Dutch SS carried out the real work of Nazification and economic exploitation. In the end, Mussert’s position proved to be an illusion because Berlin favored Rost van Tonningen’s vision of a greater Germanic state.
If Mussert had actually gained power, the Netherlands would have become an authoritarian corporatist state. The parliamentary system would have been abolished immediately, with no room for opposition. Mussert would have held absolute authority, and the Council of Ministers would have answered to him personally, not to the people. Independent judges and constitutional rights would have been replaced by a legal order serving the party’s definition of the people’s interests.
The economy would have been transformed into a directed system. Free markets and large banks would have been restricted in favor of state-controlled professional bodies. Employers and workers would have been forced to cooperate, with strikes strictly forbidden. Large-scale public works projects would have been introduced to combat unemployment and instill discipline, similar to Germany’s Autobahn construction.
The media, education, and culture would have been placed under government supervision to spread national socialist ideals. The concept of the people’s community would have been the guiding principle. Anyone who did not fit that image, politically or racially, would have been pushed to the margins of society or possibly persecuted. Internationally, the Netherlands would have entered a close alliance with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Mussert would likely have pursued the annexation of Flanders to form a powerful block along the North Sea. But despite his hopes for independence, the country would have fallen within Berlin’s sphere of influence and become a vassal state of the German Reich.
