TV -

That's a really big issue, that I'm not sure I have good enough input on to discuss very well; but some sources indicate that the Netherlands was less rigidly dominated by Nazi administrators than at least some other occupied lands. It appears that much of the existing political structure, and existing beaurocracy, was left in place. The Netherlands sustained a semblance of "democracy" throughout most of the Nazi occupation.

The Nazi "conquerors" seem to have accepted, or ignored, some refusals by the Netherlands to implement Nazi policies that were more destructive in other occupied countries, but to a certain extent the Netherland's own administrators picked up and carried out a few "Nazi-ish" programs with great efficiency.

The "National ID card" program is given as an example of one instance where the Dutch were exceptionally efficient, worked eagerly with the Nazi administrators there, and very quickly and thoroughly implemented a "Nazi policy that sounded like a good idea."

The purpose of the ID cards was, of course, to identify the jews (and other non-Aryans) for extermination. The Netherlands successfully, at least for a while, refused to export jewish Dutch citizens, but went along with the export of non-citizen (foreign refugee) jews. They seem to have suffered little from the Nazi administrators for what they refused to do, but to some extent took up some parts of the Nazi occupiers' programs as their own.

Note that from my position, and at this time, it's very difficult to "characterize" what really happened in any of the occupied countries in that era. Very great care is required in accepting what any one source says, and I've found only a few sources that approach day-to-day events within occupied countries. The most "popularly believable" sources may not be the most accurate.

In most of the occupied countries, a lot of the support for Nazi policies came from fundamentalist religious beliefs, but in the Netherlands the Nazi's seem to have gotten more help from "petty beaurocratic" penchant for orderliness (a speculative conclusion at this point, of course).

John

John