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Dutch King Regrets Nazi Membership Grandfather

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

AMSTERDAM (Worthy News) – Dutch King Willem-Alexander said Thursday it is vital that “we must face the past, even the less beautiful parts,” a day after new revelations emerged about his late grandfather’s long-hidden Nazi past.

He spoke in response to revelations that Prince Bernhard had been a member of Germany’s Nazi Party, also known as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).

Bernhard’s NSDAP membership card surfaced on Wednesday. The prince, long seen as a hero by military veterans and former resistance fighters during World War Two, had long denied membership in the NSDAP.

The Amsterdam-based Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), seen as an important voice of the Jewish community in the Netherlands, had urged the government to investigate the prince’s past.

Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he did not believe an investigation was necessary. However, amid mounting pressure, Dutch King Willem-Alexander said in a rare statement that he could “well imagine that the news” about his grandfather’s Nazi past “has a major impact and evokes many emotions, especially among the Jewish community.”

German Nazis and their Dutch collaborators deported some 107,000 Dutch Jews, mainly to the death camps Auschwitz and Sobibor, where they were murdered, according to historical records. Only 5,200 Dutch Jews survived the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah.

In addition, 25,000-30,000 Jews went into hiding, assisted by some churches and the Dutch resistance movement. Two-thirds of those hiding Dutch Jews managed to survive, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

NAZI DEPORTATIONS

Dutch King Willem-Alexander made clear that he did not want to walk away from the fact that his father had been a member in the 1930s of the Nazi Party that eventually supported these deportations.

Before the presentation of the Royal Award for Modern Painting 2023 in the Royal Palace on Dam Square, he said: “I am convinced that we have to face the past, even the less beautiful parts of the past.”

The king said he decided to open the royal archive until September 6, 1948. “I also have the option of removing things from the archive, but I decided not to do that. I believe the entire archive should be available as transparently as possible for the purposes of historiography.”

From January, researchers can consult letters, documents, and other sources from these archives, he said.

Bernhard’s NSDAP membership card was confirmed on Wednesday by the Government Information Service.

Historian Flip Maarschalkerweerd, a former director of the Royal House Archives, reported its existence in the Dutch respected daily NRC and his book De Achterblijvers (‘The Stragglers’).

He said he had found the document in the prince’s private archives while working there.

ROYAL DENIALS

Prince Bernhard denied his membership in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party until he died in 2004. “I can declare with my hand on the Bible: I was never a Nazi. I never paid for party membership; I never had a membership card,” he said in an interview with the Dutch daily de Volkskrant (‘The People’s Paper’), which was published after his death.

He had, however, admitted membership in a branch of the feared paramilitary SS in Germany, linked to several war crimes and attacks against Jews and other minorities.

Prince Bernhard claimed membership and reportedly even wearing SS uniforms was necessary in Germany in the early 1930s to avoid having to advertise his opposition to Hitler. Experts have questioned that assessment.

This wasn’t the only controversy surrounding the prince, who revealed he fathered several children outside his marriage and was mired in corruption. In 1976, the Royal family was rocked by revelations that he had accepted a $1.1 million bribe from U.S. aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Corporation to influence the Dutch government’s purchase of fighter aircraft.

The scandal precipitated a constitutional crisis that tarnished the monarchy. He was forced to resign as Inspector-General of the Dutch Armed Forces and was no longer officially allowed to wear a uniform in public.

Yet his supporters also remember the controversial prince as the person who led Dutch troops during the Allied offensive against Nazi Germany in the Netherlands.

He was also present during negotiations and the German surrender at the Dutch city of Wageningen on May 5, 1945.

After his wife Juliana’s accession in 1948, he served as the Netherlands’ goodwill ambassador and, in 1954, founded the annual secretive Bilderberg Conference of mainly key bankers, economists, and politicians. In 1961, Prince Bernhard helped establish the World Wildlife Fund and served as its first president. Yet recent questions about his Nazi past were expected to challenge his legacy further.