The Art of Staying Neutral

Front matter

Maartje M. en het ts ane Art tayın Neutral

The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914-1918

Amsterdam U hiversi tye

Table of Contents

List of Tables, Maps and Illustrations / 9 Acknowledgements / 11

Preface by Piet de Rooij / 13

Introduction: The War Knocked on Our Door, It Did Not Step Inside: / 17 The Netherlands and the Great War

Preface

Dutch culture does not make much allowance for the display of military ceremonies or traditions. An explanation can perhaps be found in the absence of a real aristocracy since the beginning of the Netherlands as a more or less recognisable state. There was of course an occasional count or baron around, but they didn’t add up to an impressive number, nor did they earn themselves pages in the history books as brave warriors, or even as elegant horsemen in manoeuvres or parades. The army offered the sons of some families a career, but the menial tasks involved were mostly left to foreigners and the proletariat. Uniforms, feathers, and brass insignia usually featured as indispensable decorations for the House of Orange during the nineteenth century, but that had no further consequences. The only army that won considerable admiration in the Netherlands was that of the Boers in South Africa at around the turn of the century. The Boers were seen, according to the tradition of republican virtue (Machiavelli), as ordinary farmers and burghers bravely defending their goods, families and independence. In that sense it wasn’t even a real army, but simply a nation bearing arms to fight with courage and cunning against a regular army that misbehaved on a terrible scale, as was to be expected from so-called professionals. In the Netherlands, there was no trace of a ‘National Efficiency Campaign’ as was found in England to increase physical strength, no cultural appreciation for military prowess as in France, let alone the pervasiveness of military values in national life as in Germany. While the empire in the East Indies was brought under direct rule with considerable aggression, the homeland itself had no intention whatsoever of getting entangled in any European conflict. In case the Netherlands was invaded, it was prepared to leave more or less half of the country as indefensible and withdraw behind the Hollandse Waterlinie (Holland Waterline), which meant that large stretches of land were flooded and turned into morasses (with strongholds at key positions). If this didn’t work then only Amsterdam, surrounded by a ring of fortifications, would be defended until allies came to the rescue. All this seemed sensible and above all not very expensive, but also not very valorous; in some ways not unlike the hobbits in the peace-loving Shire as described by J.R.R. Tolkien (‘And the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance. But...’).

When the July 1914 crisis exploded into war and all across Europe men hastened to their military destinations, the Netherlands was very quick to mobilise its army. A journalist from the Social-Democratic paper Het Volk (The People) reported a conversation with ‘a comrade in uniform’: ‘What a misery. Do you see my family over there? Yesterday I put my last wages in my wife’s hands. What will become of them? I have always worked hard, have a decent little house, turned an honest penny. Was all that care and trouble over a decade all in vain? And why? Heaven may know why all this is happening.’ This summed up the sentiments of the nation: War was not only disrupting ordinary life and civilisation as such, it was also incomprehensible. Let us pray that we can avoid the miseries of this war. But praying was not quite enough. It took a great military effort, skilled diplomacy, political wisdom, and a bit of luck to maintain some vestige of independence. The Netherlands was spared the most frightful costs of the war, while the killing and maiming during the war were in the true sense of the word unimaginable. Still some hardship befell the country. During the war, Queen Wilhelmina visited several cities and had to be rushed along lines of protesters crying loudly ‘Hunger! Hunger!’ The last two years of war in particular brought a lot of misery to many households due to the combined effects of harsh German mandates and an economic blockade imposed by Britain and the United States. Staying ‘neutral’ until the end of the war obliged the government to accept a considerable reduction in the standard of living of its citizens. The armistice of November 1918 did not come a moment too soon.

But then, at last, it was all over. The Netherlands resumed its old ways, becoming the Shire again. The Great War vanished from memory. It had all been just ‘a faulty past’ in which the world had gone astray. Basically, this peace-loving country had had nothing to do with it, except of course as a victim. Curiously enough, it left only a blank page in the nation’s history. After some time had elapsed, a ‘comprehensive journalistic chronicle’ was published in two volumes by P.H. Ritter, general editor of a newspaper, entitled De Donkere Poort (The Dark Gate). This 1931 publication offered the first complete picture of the Netherlands in wartime, starting abruptly in July 1914 and ending suddenly in November 1918. Ritter modestly noted that his book might be of some use for future academic historians. But if this was supposed to be an invitation it fell flat. Some academic historians did convene a Dutch Committee for the Research of the Causes of the World War (1924-1937). At the centre of that committee was N. Japikse from Leiden University, who set foot onto the hazardous field of ‘contemporary history’ because he doubted the concept of ‘Alleinschuld’ as was hammered out in Versailles. This meant that only Germany was guilty of instigating the war. This kind of research was perhaps eminently befitting historians in a neutral country, but it was greeted with few signs of appreciation from abroad and had the tendency of strengthening the Dutch view that the Great War was something that had little to do with the Dutch past. The Second World War subsequently completely obliterated what little attention there had been for the Great War. In common parlance, ‘the war’ means the Second World War; the First World War is nowadays hardly recognised any more (as is sometimes evidenced in television quiz shows); politicians don’t make any allusions to it in their more ambitious speeches; there is nothing like Remembrance Day, a statue, museum or site that keeps the memory alive. It is only in the past decade that battlefield tourism has become popular. The tourists go mostly to Flanders Fields with a very successful guidebook Velden van weleer (Fields of Old) by Chrisje and Kees Brants (1993).

But perhaps these tourists are mostly attracted by an interesting historical themepark, of the kind David Lowenthal has written about, that of history as ‘a foreign country’; which in this case, as far as the Dutch are concerned, has to be seen in the most literal sense.

The only exception to this general trend is the publication of the three-volume Nederland in de Eerste Wereldoorlog (The Netherlands in de First World War) by C. Smit published in the period 1971-1973. But this ended up being a slightly disappointing enterprise: He offered not so much a general analysis of the Netherlands during the war, but focussed on key aspects and details of foreign policy, heavily based on formal documents. Symbolic of the minimal amount of attention the Great War attracted during this time was the chapter on it in the valuable Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden (General History of the Netherlands), which appeared in the period 1976-1983 in fifteen heavy volumes. The subject was dealt with in twelve pages and rumour has it that they had to be written on very short notice, after the editors had originally overlooked this episode in their general outline and planning. All this seems like a long time ago. The last few years have seen a remarkable growth of interest in the First World War as an important phase in Dutch history. To name only a few outstanding works: in 1998, Marc Frey’s Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Niederlande (The First World War and the Netherlands), which is especially good on economic developments; in 2000, Evelyn Roodt’s Oorlogsgasten (Guests of the War), which is particularly interesting regarding the help that was offered to refugees and the section on the detainment of prisoners of war; in 2001, Hubert P. van Tuyll van Serooskerken’s The Netherlands and World War I, which offered remarkable insight regarding the importance of the quick mobilisation and the diplomatic activity needed to uphold neutrality; in 2001, Paul Moeyes’ Buiten schot (Out of Range), which offered a general and complete image of this period for the first time for a general public; in 2002, Ivo Kuypers’ In de schaduw van de grote oorlog (In the Shadows of the Great War), which creates a striking argument about this period as one that brought the state, trade unions, and employers together in what might be considered the beginning of the welfare state or the ‘poldermodel’; and, more recently in 2004, Ron Blom and Theunis Stelling’s Niet voor God en niet voor het Vaderland (Not for God nor the Fatherland), a voluminous study on left-wing resistance to the war. The present book by Maartje Abbenhuis follows this new trend. Although she lived and worked in New Zealand, it is the result of her archival research in the Netherlands, which was perhaps stimulated by a Dutch ancestry. It is well-written and highly interesting, but the question of course is: Is there something left for her to tell?

Abbenhuis’ book is founded on the highly original interweaving of internal and external developments. Until recently, the social and economic developments in the Netherlands were seen as the direct consequences of the policies of the warring countries. The blockade by Britain and the German blackmail tactics reduced vital imports of food and coal, which meant that the intake of calories in the Netherlands dropped, the heating of homes became very insufficient and industry had to stop its machines due to a lack of energy. According to this view, Dutch society was passive, the victim of external conditions. Van Tuyll has shown that this image is only partly cor-

PREFACE 15 rect: Staying neutral required very active diplomatic endeavours. Abbenhuis has taken us much further along that line. While the army was vital for defending Dutch neutrality, it was essential that the military’s hold on society remain strong: Traditional liberties had to be set aside; the transport system had to be at full capavity to be able to move personnel and materials; the distribution of food had to, first of all, be geared to the needs of the army; telegraph and telephone lines had to be monitored; borders trespassers had to be thwarted; and public order in society — which became increasingly more important as the war went on — had to be guaranteed, if necessary by force. At some point, 75 per cent of the country was under direct military surveillance. Symbolically enough, the military headquarters of the Stelling Amsterdam were housed in the best hotel in the city, the Amstel Hotel (nowadays the choice of royalty, business tycoons, and pop stars). It is too simple, however, to analyse this as a kind of imperialism of men in uniform, always impatient with politicians, let alone with left-wing revolutionaries or even liberal notions of civil rights. All these measures — and more — were the direct consequences of defending neutrality as such. That is to say, neutrality cannot be seen simply as the exclusive task of the army; it was also the plight of the nation. Society had to accept a level of militarisation, which as Abbenhuis shows, came along with a lot of misunderstandings, hard bargaining, and bitter conflict. In 1914-1918, the Netherlands had to deviate sharply from its non-militaristic or even anti-militaristic tradition, but resumed it shortly after the events. Because, after all ‘nothing had happened’ all these efforts already seemed ridiculous after a few years. For example, the Social-Democratic writer A.M. de Jong wrote a highly succesfull ‘military novel’ in 1928, Frank van Wezels roemruchte jaren (The Glorious Years of Frank van Wezel), which made a lot of fun of military life during the war years. The Dutch forgot the war, thereby completely overlooking the ominous turn European history had taken. Abbenhuis has written a well-balanced and very informative book on ‘the art of staying neutral’, an art the Dutch themselves did not fully understand at the time and quickly forgot for the most part afterwards.

Piet de Rooij University of Amsterdam

Introduction

The War Knocked on Our Door, It Did Not Step Inside: The Netherlands and the Great War

Throughout the continent, Europeans met the coming of war in August 1914 with excitement, fear, and agitation. This was as true for residents of a small, neutral country in the northwestern corner of Europe as it was for the inhabitants of nations who were to fight and die by the millions. For over four years, the Dutch lived in the shadow of a war that was being waged violently in nearby Belgium and France. Throughout that period, they feared an invasion, mobilised the army and navy, and many prayed that their neutrality would be safeguarded. And it was. But neutrality was not a magic charm that staved off the nasty effects of warfare. On the contrary, in remaining neutral, the Dutch were presented with a multitude of challenges, crises, and disasters that affected every facet of life. Over 400,000 men between the ages of 20 and 40 were conscripted into the armed forces, removed from their families and livelihoods. The war hampered the shipments of vital goods, while the rationing of fuel and foodstuffs became increasingly common and stifling. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners, both civilians and soldiers, sought sanctuary in the country, presenting a mammoth refugee problem for the authorities. The government introduced new laws and regulations, created special distribution and administrative bureaux, and used the military to handle matters for which it had no other solutions.

The Netherlands between 1914 and 1918 may have seemed an island of calm amidst the uproar and chaos in the surrounding countries, but behind the peaceful facade hid a worried nation facing a highly uncertain future. There was nothing self-evident in Dutch neutrality during the Great War and it certainly was impossible for the nation to remain aloof — afzijdig or ‘disinterested in taking sides’ — while its warring neighbours challenged its interests and interfered with its well-being. Due to the Netherlands’ geographic proximity to several of the combatant states, the Dutch could not avoid the repercussions of the war. Wilhelmine Germany flanked the eastern border; Belgium, scene of much fighting on the western front, was situated on the southern border; with France further south still; and to the west, across the Channel, lay the concentrated naval might of Great Britain. All of the combatants made demands upon Dutch neutrality and used their powerful positions to exact compliance. Despite being surrounded, caught ‘between the devil’ (Germany) and the ‘deep blue sea’ (ruled by Britain), the Netherlands managed to remain neutral. It did so by compromising with each belligerent when and where possible, even at the expense of conceding its own independence and neutrality. Its citizens hoped fervently that their neighbours would accept these compromises, and they often did. The Dutch also protected their non-belligerency by upholding the standards of behaviour expected of them as neutrals.

This book provides an overview of the precarious position the Great War forced upon the Netherlands. It is primarily a study of neutrality, which answers the following questions: How does a neutral state protect its security, uphold its independence, and safeguard the prosperity of its citizens in times of war? How does it prevent violations of neutrality from occurring? It is also a study of the impact of ‘total war’ on non-belligerents, all the more pertinent since in their relationship with neutrals, most of the belligerents extended the military conflict by other means, i.e., economically, politically, and psychologically. The Netherlands played a key role in the Great War and the advantages the warring parties gained from its neutrality actually helped to protect its security.

Neutrality formed a central tenet of Dutch foreign policy and its interests prior to 1914. Neutrality seemed to best guarantee the security and welfare of the nation and its economy, both on the continent and in its colonies. In fact, neutrality had become a celebrated part of the Dutch national psyche and promoted the international face of the Netherlands as a paragon of peace and prosperity in an increasingly unstable world. Above all, nations like the Netherlands and Belgium were drawn to neutrality because it seemed to certify their territorial security. However, given that the relationship between the major European states became increasingly confrontational between 1900 and 1914, the Belgians and the Dutch realised that they may not survive a future continental conflict with their neutrality or security intact.

The fear of continental war had two immediate results for Europe’s neutral states in the two decades before the outbreak of the Great War. Firstly, the rights and obligations of neutrality, drawn up in The Hague Peace Conference of 1907 and the controversial London Declaration of 1909, offered a standard of behaviour that bound neutrals and combatants alike. Secondly, the growing tensions between Europe’s great powers, highlighted by their arms race and the build up of naval might, ensured that neutrals focussed on improving their own defences and military strength. In wartime, neutrality had to be protected, and the Dutch armed forces took on the tripartite role of defence, deterrence, and upholding neutrality regulations. These actions were undertaken to prevent and arrest neutrality violations from within and outside its territorial borders; to act as a deterrent against possible infringements (what Efraim Karsh described as a ‘negative neutrality’ strategy);4 or, in the worst case scenario, to defend the nation against invasion, after neutrality failed. The neutral country had to be prepared for two alternative wartime scenarios: One in which it remained neutral and neutrality had to be upheld, and another where it was invaded. Neutrality largely stood and fell on the ability of the military to uphold international law as well as to act as a defence force. Defence and neutrality were, however, not necessarily mutually compatible.

The Dutch tend to misrepresent or, rather, under-represent the Great War in their national history, and tend to subscribe to the view of a Dutch archivist who in 1999 after explaining my research interests exclaimed: ‘We were neutral! What is the point of studying that?’ Until recently, historians of the Great War have neglected the role of neutrals as much as the historians from this neutral country had neglected the role of the war. Fortunately, this trend is changing. It has been quite some time since

Nils Orvik’s research in 1953 where he correctly surmised that the Great War saw the decline of neutrality as a valuable foreign policy for small states.5 The case of Belgium during the Great War, and even more so, the cases of neutral Europeans during the Second World War, proved @rvik’s case only too clearly: The supposed foundations of neutrality recognised by international law — impartiality, territorial integrity, freedom of the seas, and the right to trade unhindered — only applied when neutrals could force acceptance from their warring neighbours. For belligerents, the stakes during ‘total war’ were too high to let the letter of the law interfere with their wartime conduct. Hence, small, neutral states had to engage deftly in the art of compromise, had to be willing to sacrifice certain legal rights as well as aspects of their sovereign independence for the sake of avoiding war. In the Second World War, most of Europe’s neutrals only remained so based on their ability to provide Hitler’s Germany with necessary trade, finances, or strategic security. In other words, neutrality had basically disappeared as a universally recognised legal concept by 1939. The Great War was a major step towards its demise.

While it may seem self-evident in the world of the strong that the weak must yield to the mighty, in the years prior to 1914, nations like the Netherlands and Belgium saw neutrality as an opportunity to look after their own interests. As G.W. Kernkamp, a Dutch journalist-cum-historian, proclaimed in his press reports during the Great War, neutrality was not an end in itself, but a means of remaining independent (zelfstandig). When neutrality undermined the sovereign independence of the Netherlands in 1917 and 1918, Kernkamp argued that neutrality was no longer a viable foreign policy.” The pre-war optimism in neutrality expressed by the Dutch was supported by international conventions agreed to and, in some cases, created by the great powers themselves. The Dutch population, therefore, had reason to feel confident that neutrality would prevent them from having to participate in a future war and enabling it to maintain a modicum of normality. These expectations may have been idealised and naive and do not necessarily reflect government policies and beliefs, but they were prevalent among many Dutch citizens. By 1918, of course, this optimism had turned sharply into pessimism, and the war proved, once and for all, that the popular expectations attached to neutrality in 1914 were unrealistic on a continent filled with nations intent on destroying each other.

Yet, even in the interbellum period, the Netherlands did not jettison the idea of neutrality — if only because it had few viable alternatives. The country toyed with League of Nations membership, opting for a foreign policy of zelfstandigheidspolitiek (policy of independence), a word coined by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, H.A. van Karnebeek (1918-1929), to represent the nation’s compromise between limited involvement in collective security and an avowed declaration of independence in its foreign dealings. But when the League of Nations failed spectacularly in the 1930s, the Dutch returned to the familiarity and comfort of neutrality. Van Karnebeek himself publicly endorsed neutrality as late as 1938:

we [the Dutch] are caretakers of a territorial integrity that is very important for the political balance in Europe and for peace. We are trustees! We are in charge of ensur-

INTRODUCTION Ig ing that this integrity is not endangered and is not complicated. Our position rests on trust that can be placed [by others] in us. We, therefore, have to avoid the appearance that our position, even in time of peace, is useful to another, whichever, power. Rooted in our trusteeship is an obligation to uphold the integrity of our territory, as well as a categorical imperative of defence. The function that we fulfil in the political structure of Europe is a function that rests not only on our own interests, but on those of Europe.

Our calling is not only that of neutrality in times of conflict, but of independence in general as a permanent political manifestation.’

Certainly not everyone was as positive as Van Karnebeek about the value of the Netherlands’ international position in 1938. Several important figures, including Nicolaas Bosboom (Minister of War, 1914-1917) and General C.J. Snijders (Commander-in-Chief, 1914-1918) published warnings during the interbellum years that security would be much harder to guarantee in a future conflict.9 Other political leaders were also under no illusions in the 1930s. They realised that the Netherlands had few feasible options; it remained a small nation flanked by powerful neighbours.’° In many respects, holding on to neutrality was a last ditch effort to maintain some independence on an increasingly insecure and unstable continent. Neutrality also served as a faint hope, seemingly endorsed and guaranteed by Adolf Hitler himself. The country’s only true hope, of course, was that Hitler would abide by his promises, which he did not make a habit of doing. Nevertheless, the rapid capitulation to Nazi Germany in May 1940 came as a huge shock to the Dutch, shattering any illusions they still harboured for neutrality.

In the most simplistic terms, the case for the demise of Dutch neutrality in the Second World War — namely, that it depended upon the decisions and actions of other states — can also be made for the First World War. There is no denying that if one of the major powers had wanted to invade and conquer the Netherlands between 1914 and 1918, it could have done so without too many problems. The military strength of the country, while not insignificant, was not impressive enough to keep the large armies of Germany or, for that matter, Great Britain and France at bay. As we shall see in chapter 1, there were a number of reasons why the warring nations chose to uphold Dutch neutrality during the war, ranging from economics to military strategy. While in 1914, the Netherlands as a neutral offered advantages to both sets of belligerents, these had all but disappeared by 1918. As a result, the last year of the war was an extremely difficult one for the Dutch. They were saved in large part by the fact that the combatants’ attentions were firmly focussed elsewhere.

But by looking primarily at the position of Germany, Britain, France and the United States vis-a-vis Dutch neutrality one loses sight of one of the most important factors regarding neutrality, namely the Netherlands’ chameleonic position during the war. Neutrality depends not only on the wishes and expectations of combatant states but also on the ability and capacity of the neutral to sustain an expected level of behaviour. Neutrals must adhere to certain key international laws: to act with due care in treating warring parties with equal levels of impartiality and (dis)interest, and to give them equal (dis)advantage. Neutrals must also abide by the expectations of belligerents and to compromise between them when they clash. One should not dismiss the neutrality commitments made by the Dutch themselves during the Great War. Hence, the focus of this book is not so much on the international situation surrounding Dutch neutrality (which has received its due, although not overwhelming, attention in the historiography)" but on its domestic context. The primary actors in the coming pages are the people and organisations that enforced the nation’s neutrality, most notably within the armed forces. The themes in this book will, therefore, revolve around the viability of the armed forces, and especially the Royal Dutch Army (Koninklijke Landmacht), to fulfil both positive and negative neutrality goals: to uphold international obligations, to act as a deterrent to attack, and to maintain adequate defence. But it is not only a study of the military aspects of neutrality; it is also a study of a nation in crisis. While the following chapters analyse the rise and fall of Dutch neutrality, they cannot do so without commenting on the consequences of the war for the nation and its people. Therefore, this is not a study of foreign politics, diplomatic relations, or economic threats, although they do have a place in the coming narrative, but a study of the mechanics of neutrality, defence, and the impact of war on a nation precariously situated ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’.

INTRODUCTION 2I

Chapter I A Nation Too Small to Commit Great Stupidities:’

The Netherlands and Neutrality

The essence of neutrality is the avoidance of war, namely, the avoidance of involvement in the wars of others. But despite its deceptively simple definition, neutrality is not a homogeneous concept. It has changed meanings over the centuries, reflecting the concerns of states adopting it as their foreign policy and those desiring to challenge its validity. Neutrality has a long history going back as far as the sixth century BC when Milesians abstained from supporting either Ionian Greece or Persia.” During the Middle Ages, it was common practice for warring parties to refrain from sinking ships of countries not involved in the conflict.3 In the fifteenth century, neutrality became a vaguely defined quasi-legal term referring to nations that opted out of a particular war. Neutrals at that time could profess partiality to one side or another and could supply it with all manner of materials, including military goods.4 Neither contraband regulation nor impartiality were widely observed, although neutral ships were protected from privateering.” Napoleon’s disregard for the proclaimed non-belligerency of several European countries, including the Netherlands, entailed the death of old-style neutrality, and the birth of neutrality based on international law.© Influenced by the American Act of 1794, territorial integrity and impartiality became the cornerstones of neutrality in the 1800s.7 International conventions, such as those formulated at the Paris Conference of 1856, at Geneva in 1864, in The Hague in 1899 and 1907, and at the London Conference in 1909, aimed to regulate the laws of warfare and the rights and obligations of neutrals in time of conflict and peace. They provided the basis for neutrality in the first half of the twentieth century.

Since 1909, in legal terms, neutrality defines a relationship among nation-states in wartime, namely between those who fight and those who choose not to. Although nations can profess neutrality in peacetime, the conditions of neutrality only apply in time of conflict. International neutrality laws place clear obligations on the behaviour of belligerents and non-participants with regard to each other, and in return guarantee the latter certain rights of territorial integrity, security and unhindered trade (except for contraband). It is an extremely attractive option for states that have little to gain and much to lose by becoming involved in war. Needless to say, neutrality is much more than a definition in international law. Neutrals have to work within the complex web of inter-state relationships, which often do not adhere to the wording of legal documents nor to the arbitrary wishes of countries wanting to remain detached from their neighbours’ activities. Hence, in time of war, neutrals tread unsteadily, much like a juggler walking a tightrope. They have to balance themselves between the demands and concerns of warring sides while attempting to keep their own interests in play. It is all too easy for a juggler to lose his balance, drop the balls, and plummet into the beckoning void.