PHASE I (BEFORE 10 MAY 1940): PRE-WAR LEGAL FRAMEWORK

A policy of neutrality, adopted in 1839, helped keep the Netherlands out of the First World War. In 1918, there was a general sense of relief that the fear of warfare on Dutch territory had not come true. In the second half of the thirties, that fear returned as a result of German rearmament and Adolf Hitler's confrontational politics. As before and during the First World War, the Dutch government had to prepare for possible war and occupation. Especially in regard to economic war preparations, it reverted to the experiences and the emergency measures of 1914–1918. Deliberations on the character of a possible German occupation were influenced heavily by memories of the particularly stringent German occupation regime in neighboring Belgium during the First World War. The Dutch government saw no alternative to looking into the settlements of international law regarding the mutual rights and duties in the relation between an occupying power and the interior administration of an occupied country (the Laws and Customs of War on Land, as formulated at the Hague Convention of 1907).

As the general legal framework for the penalisation of civilian collaboration with occupying forces, article 102 of the Dutch penal code forbade “assisting the enemy”. The article included as “assistance” services to the enemy like espionage and acting as a guide. There was a similar article regarding collaboration in the military penal code. The position of civil servants under a possible occupation was not legally regulated, but directives regarding this problem were issued. In May 1937, the government formulated a set of “Instructions” (Aanwijzingen), which contained rules concerning the correct attitude of governing bodies and civil servants in the case of an enemy attack. The Instructions were similar in meaning to a 1915 memorandum on the same matter. The basic principle was that governmental services should keep on functioning as well as possible in the interest of the general population. The civil servants were instructed to decide for themselves in good conscience if a certain measure served the occupier more than the population. At the municipal level in particular, civil servants were explicitly instructed to refuse cooperation to measures that could directly benefit the enemy's war effort.