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1 Along and against the archival grain Defining flows of information and mechanisms of power in Dutch post-war policies towards German enemy citizens Marieke Oprel (MA) 1 Introduction In August 1945, the Dutch Custody Institute ( NBI, the Institute ) opened its doors. Authorized to detect, administer and liquidate the assets of collaborators, NSB ers and the group central in this research, German enemy citizens, the NBI was one of the most important institutions of the Dutch postwar administration of justice. Over a period of twenty-two years ( ), the Institute dealt with hundreds of thousands of cases. It is estimated that the NBI yielded milliards of Dutch guilders, including 750 million Dutch guilders with the liquidation of German enemy assets. 2 The NBI did not only administer enemy assets, it also handled the requests for de-enemisation. In order to clear their name, claim their property back and apply for a work- or residence permit, German enemy citizens could submit a request for a so-called no-enemy declaration, which would prove that they had behaved like a Dutchman during the Second World War. In total, almost enemy citizens applied for deenemisation; some succeeded, many were de-enemised without return of property. 3 Of all the German enemy citizens who challenged their status, extensive records were filed by NBI employers. The information was used as evidence in the de-enemisation process. The files itself were the basis for more precise-defined de-enemisation criteria, which had to be formulated along the way. After the NBI was dissolved in 1967, its archive was transferred to the National Archives in The Hague 4. Already in the 1960s, a considerable amount of records had irregularly and regularly gone lost, and during the transfer again a substantial part of the archive got regularly destroyed. Over files on German enemy citizens were saved, to be hardly researched since. In this paper, in context of the conference theme Information and Power, I will discuss the power that lied - and still rests in the NBI archive, in particular in the (information in) the files of German enemy citizens. Central is the argument that the NBI archive is not just a store for political and legal documents, 1 PhD-candidate in Political History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam. 2 Friso Wielenga, West-Duitsland: Partner Uit Noodzaak: Nederland En de Bondsrepubliek (Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1989), 421; Louis de Jong, Het Koninkrijk Der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, vol. 12, Epiloog (Den Haag: SDU, 1988), Wouter Veraart, The Assets of the Schichts. The Fate of Enemy Property in the Netherlands and in Switzerland between 1945 and 1952, 2014, 4 Inventory Archive Dutch Custody Institute (NBI), , National Archives, The Hague. 1

2 but also an object an sich, which tells multiple narratives, (his)stories that complement current historiography on the Dutch post-war administration of justice. The paper consists of three parts. First, I will focus on the process of selection and collection of information. Personal details, questionnaires filled in by the applicant and the administrator, family histories, reports of NBI administrators on the assets of the German in question, and most importantly, testimonies in favour or against the German enemy citizen who requested a no-enemy declaration were collected and filed. What do these documents reveal about the German enemy citizens, and the process they underwent? How was the information collected and selected, who filled in the documents? Secondly, I will outline how the archive itself had, and still has, power. Due to the Wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens ( the Personal Data Protection Act ), the archive is not publicly accessible. The index-cards used by NBI secretaries to order and organize the files are, however, available for research and have been the starting point for this research. Building forward on Ann Laura Stoler s research on colonial administrations, I study the NBI archive along and against the archival grain, combining traditional methods and digital tools to gain qualitative and quantitative results. As I will show, analysis of the index-cards proves not only the key to the files of German enemy citizens, but also helps to understand the bureaucratic apparatus of the NBI. Finally, I will conclude with how the archival paper trail can be the basis for history writing. The history of German enemy citizens has only been mentioned in the margin of Dutch post-war historiography. This can be explained by the trends and phases, the different approaches to the Second World War. The state of the archive has also been put forward as an explanation, yet I hope with my research to provide evidence to the contrary. (De-)enemising Germans The Decree on Enemy Property, which declared all German nationals to be enemy citizens and thus constituted the basis for Dutch post-war policies towards German nationals, was promulgated on 20 October It was published in a special version of het Staatsblad, the official magazine of the Dutch government-in-exile in London. Like other royal decrees issued by the Dutch government-in-exile, the Decree on Enemy Property was also communicated via radio broadcast (Radio Oranje) and newspapers. Whether these information channels informed all Germans who were now officially enemy citizens is unclear. More likely is that flyers provided by the Militair Gezag ( the Military Authority, MG ), in combination with oral communication, have circulated the Decree. The news may well have circulated days or even weeks earlier or later in some cities than others. The Decree stated that all people who were declared enemy citizens had to report themselves and declare their property. Where and how this 2

3 declaration took place is one of the question of which the answer is hidden in the archive of the NBI. Initially the implementation and execution of the Decree on Enemy Property was left to the MG, who was established to restore order in Dutch post-war society and organise daily administration of justice. Together with the local police the MG coordinated the internment of Germans and confiscation of property in the first months after the southern provinces had been liberated in autumn 1944, until almost a year later, after the German capitulation in May 1945, the NBI was founded. An a-selective sample of 50 Beheersdossiers, files of German enemy citizens who submitted a request for de-enemisation, shows that German nationals had to fill in various forms, varying from basic registration documents to complete questionnaires. 5 Many applicants filled in their whole family history, to underline their ties with the Dutch society. Some had lived in the Netherlands for decades, spoke the Dutch language fluently and had raised their children in a Dutch or binational context. Other applicants were Dutch women, who had married a German man, as was quite common in pre-war Dutch society. Also people who had been born in the Netherlands, but because of their German father registered as German citizens, were affected by the Decree and tried to challenge their status. A special group were German refugees, for example German Jews, who had fled to the Netherlands in the (late) 1930s, to escape the Nazi regime. In short, the group of German enemy citizens was very heterogeneous, which confronted the NBI with various problems. Another complicating factor was that the Decree reached beyond national borders, and also concerned Germans in the Dutch overseas territories. In the Dutch East Indies, as well as in for instance Surinam and Curacao, Germans were a substantial minority group. 6 For their request, NBI agencies were established in respectively Paramaribo, Willemstad and Batavia. To coordinate the execution of the Decree for Germans who had lived in the Netherlands or possessed property in the Dutch Kingdom but now held residence somewhere else in the world, also agencies were founded in Brussel, London, Paris and New York. At the height of the operation of Dutch administration of Justice, the NBI had a head office in The Hague, side offices in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and over 64 agencies. In the late 1940s, standard forms or at least some sort of standard format that could serve as a point of reference for the NBI employers were created. But in the first months after the NBI was established, neither the policy nor the administration was streamlined. The Decree on Enemy Property 5 The files are stored in NBI archive In the Dutch East Indies, the German population varied from 3400 in 1920 to almost 7000 in There is no number of the population in In Surinam and the Dutch Antilles the number of Germans is unknown, but in the early days of May 1940 two hundred Germans got interned. 3

4 provided only general guidelines, a more precise definition of enemy and property had to be formulated along the way. Research so far shows that every file contained different documents, and varied in size from only three or four papers to files as thick as a fist. Some Germans possessed several cars, enterprises and even real estate, of which the (financial) details had to be reported. Other Germans had little more than some furniture. Even the smallest assets were registered. In order to be considered for a no-enemy -declaration German enemy citizens had to provide testimonies of good behaviour. Again the sample test showed a variety in form and content. Some people included over twenty testimonies in their application, others only one or two. Many people came with testimonies of neighbours and colleagues, some of family relatives. Most relevant were (positive) testimonies of people who had participated in resistance movements. But even these testimonies could not always guarantee success. The criteria for de-enemisation seem to have varied, in any case in the period , from case to case. Following the paper trail As a result of the Personal Data Protection Act (2001), the archive of the NBI is not publicly accessible. Only when one has full name and place and date of birth, access to the files of German enemy citizens is allowed. The index-cards used by NBI secretaries to organise and file the incoming post are, however, public, and a pilot study demonstrated that analysis of these cards brings forward interesting results. First of all, the cards provide data. The circa cards all contain name of the applicant, place and date of birth, place of residence, nationality, reference to the office or agency that handled the request, the verdict and the date of notification. 7 At the moment, the data of the cards is entered in a database. The database allows to count, filter and query the data, and thus to answer questions such as: how many German enemy citizens were Jew, how many German enemy citizens were man and so on. The statistics also enable visualisation of the archival content: by plotting the geographical data on a map, insight is gained in the global outreach of the Decree on Enemy Property. The data on the index-cards thus provides the key to enter the archive and statistical answers 8. But there is another reason why research on index-cards proves worthwhile. During exploratory study on the cards and the files, minor scrawls and figures stood out. Inspired by Ann Laura Stolers work on colonial administrations, I decided to study the stamps and messy notes in the margin on the 7 This number of is not the total number of Germans in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. How many Germans held residence in the Dutch Kingdom in the post-war years is unclear. Statistics of the Statistics Netherlands (CBS) indicate that in Germans lived in the Netherlands, in This number does not include Germans in the (former) colonies. 8 The results of the pilot study of 2016 can be found on By now, thousands of cards have been entered. 4

5 documents. 9 Although the NBI is mentioned in various studies on post-war legal redress, the institution itself has hardly been researched. Focusing on what was written oblique to official prescriptions, on the ragged edges of protocol, a picture comes into being of a chaotic institution, flooded by requests and unequal to its tasks. As mentioned, the Decree on Enemy Property only provided basic guidelines. In a nutshell, enemies were all who were related to, or affiliated with Axis powers, property was defined in the broadest sense of the word. The standards for de-enemisation were also not well-defined; the criterion typical Dutch behaviour gave way for different interpretations. The NBI was thus not only confronted with the task to execute, but also give form to the Dutch policies. An administration had to be set up, administrators had to be enlisted and informed, and along the way jurisprudence had to be formulated. Was the administration completely without precedent? With regard to the index-cards and the administration, the NBI system seems to be based on a rather basic standard. Boxes with indexcards in alphabetical order were common in the pre-computer era. But the system of stamps also seem to show resemblance to German registration systems in the 1930s and the system used in concentration camp Westerbork. More research is required before any hypothesis can be formulated. The boxes with index-cards back then arranged in alphabetical order, nowadays muddled must have functioned as a database avant la lettre. With various stamps administrators tried to classify the heterogeneous group of German applicants. For example, with the stamp J Jews were identified, but also for example nuns ( kloosterlingen) and farmers in the border areas ( grensboeren ) were classified. The stamp-system was, however, not consistent: not all Jews got a stamp, some people got various stamps and so on. With regard to the execution of the policies towards German enemy citizens, he NBI had no legal precedent to rely upon. Since the Netherlands had remained neutral during World War I, the Dutch government had no experience with post-war administration of justice. The Decree on Enemy Property was based on the British and American Trading with the Enemy Act. Also for example policies in Belgium had been an inspiration. The files of German enemy citizens indicate that various discussions have been held on how to interpret the Decree. Were Austrians also Germans? Some considered Austria German territory since 1938, others stated that Austria had been occupied. How to deal with women of Dutch origin, who had become German through marriage? How to define criteria for de-enemisation: was listening to Radio Oranje or the circulation of illegal newspapers enough? Or did the German enemy citizen had to prove that he/she had helped people hide? Many open questions, of which some were answered only by 1947/1948 when the Dutch government published an official adjustment of the 9 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, N.J. etc.: Princeton University Press, 2009), 2, 20. 5

6 Decree. The inscriptions in the margin, the enormous amount of correspondence between the various offices and agencies and the scratched out remarks in the documents seem to be signs of chaos, of uncertainty. Many documents echo personal convictions and opinions of NBI employers. In particular in the first post-war years, when there was no jurisprudence to fall back on, these personal statements were of influence in the final verdict. This brings me back to my premise that the NBI archive had power. First of all, the archive was and is a store of political and legal documents, including thousands of files with a (selection) of information that proved evidence in court. Secondly, every record that was created constituted to the process of policy-making. The archive thus became a transparency on which post-war power relations were inscribed as well as an intricate technology of rule itself. With the right projector, an open-minded research perspective, the archive thus reveals not only information, but also power structures. Thirdly, the archive holds also power because of the way it is has been collected and preserved. In the 1960s, before the NBI was dissolved in 1967, regularly and irregularly archival records were destroyed. In 1975, when the archive was transferred from the Ministry of Justice to the National Archives in The Hague, again tons of archival material were selected for destruction. What the criteria were during this process of selection, collection and destruction is unclear, but the archive is no longer complete. What also complicates is that the NBI archive consists of a complex of archives, including the archives of the various offices and agencies. Despite the informative inventory that was drafted in 1996, it is a challenge to research the archive in-depth. Next to the (lack of) structure of the archive, of course the Personal Data Protection Act also puts up research barriers. These restrictions do not only hinder research, but also disable relatives to learn more about their family history. More than seventy years after its establishment, the NBI still has a fragmenting and decentralizing effect on the provision of information. 6

7 (Re) constructing histories In Dutch post-war historiography, the history of German enemy citizens has only been mentioned in the margin. In the late 1980s, a few studies were published on Dutch policies towards German nationals (de Jong 1989, Wielenga 1989) and in recent years here and there articles or references have appeared. 10 The history of what used to be the largest immigrant minority is, however, not been integrated in Dutch history of the post-war period. This can be explained by the trends and phases, the different approaches to World War II. For many years, the moral dichotomy of right and wrong dominated Dutch society and historiography. Only in recent years, the contrast between Dutch people who were right since they had resisted German occupying forces on the one hand, and those who were wrong because they collaborated on the other hand has faded. But the history of Germans in the Netherlands and overseas territories, as well as histories of other minorities, is not yet integrated in the Dutch historical narrative. The archive of the NBI has also been put forward as an explanation for the lack of in-depth research on German enemy citizens. Considering the chaotic structure and privacy restrictions, this is understandable. But I hope this paper demonstrated that following the NBI s paper trail, it is possible to (re)construct the history of German enemy citizens. The files reveal personal information, which gives an idea of the men, women and children who got affected by the Decree on Enemy Property. The files, policy documents and correspondence of the NBI also show and reflect the uncertainty and chaos of the first post-war years. They provide insight in the discussions about de-enemisation criteria and the continuing struggle to execute a Decree without well-defined guidelines. The inscriptions in the margins, the stamps, the scratched out remarks all indicate that employers worked hard to set up an organisation and administration, categorising the heterogonous group of Germans in order to make policy. Using digital tools and traditional methods such as close reading and discourse analysis, analysing the archive along and against the archival grain, the archive does tell (hi)stories of Dutch policies towards German enemy citizens in the aftermath of World War II. 10 In 1980 and 1982, Melchior Bogaarts published two articles on the Dutch policies towards German nationals. Foskea van der Ven published about former German property Schiermonnikoog (1993), Huis Doorn (2001) and the Cannenburgh (2011). In 2008, Jan Sintemaartensdijk and Yfke Nijland published a study on Operation Black Tulip. Plans to annex German territory were described by again Friso Wielenga (1989, 1999) and Hans Smits (2012). 7