2.4 The Netherlands during the interbellum

• Geschiedenis
• Middelbare school
• havo, vwo
• Leerjaar 3

2.4 Netherlands 1918-1939

A segregated country in crisis

Consequences of the stock market crash

Remember?

• 1929: New York stock market crash -> stock market collapses!
• global crisis
• Germany hit especially hard
• high unemployment in the US and Europe
• The Netherlands also faces this economic crisis in the 1930s....

This lesson:

• 1919 universal suffrage for women
• pillarisation of the Netherlands
• consequences of the crisis in the 1930s
• adaptation policy Colijn government
• unemployed - voting - provision of work
• Extreme right: NSB
• neutrality policy 1930s

Concepts in this lesson:

• right to vote
• universal suffrage
• pillarisation
• 1930s crisis
• stamping
• undeclared work
• adjustment policy
• employment projects
• NSB
• neutrality policy

1917 -> new constitution

• universal suffrage for men: right to vote.
• Confessional parties get most votes -> government
• Socialists are kept out

Verzuiling

=> the Netherlands is divided into separate groups based on religion or political beliefs

=> each group is a "pillar"

=> 4 pillars: Catholics, Protestants, Socialists and Liberals

=> groups live separated from each other, little contact between them

4 zuilen

1. Katholieken
2. Protestanten
3. Socialisten
4. Liberalen

1930s->Crisis in the Netherlands

• The Netherlands is hit hard by the crisis, with trade with the US and Germany coming to a virtual standstill.
• Many companies and factories have to close down.
• Between 1929 and 1935, unemployment rises from 22,000 to 500,000
• They receive a small allowance from the government and were under strict control 

Consequences

Unemployed in the 30s.

• only unemployed people aged between 21 and 60 receive the support allowance
• unemployed through no fault of their own, no work due to the crisis worldwide
• For this, they have to queue twice a day to stamp: a card on which you collected stamps to show that you really weren't working
• This is mainly to prevent undeclared work and fraud
• job creation projects were set up to do something about unemployment anyway...compulsory heavy physical work often

Solutions?

Colijn: prime minister in the crisis years of the 1930s

• He became prime minister of the Netherlands in 1933 as leader of the ARP(a predecessor of the CDA)
  

His solution to the crisis: =>Adjustment policy

=> Government does not spend more money than comes in = adjustment

Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (NSB)

The NSB-> National Socialist Movement

• crisis -> fascism in Italy, Nazis in Germany
• also in NL: the NSB, the extreme right
• Leader: Anton Mussertc (photo)
• promised to end unemployment, just like the Nazis in Dld.
• The NSB gained many members only after the German occupation. Before that, they got only 4% of the vote -> due to pillarisation, people only vote for their own party.

Netherlands mobilises

November 1939

• The Dutch government pursued the neutrality policy: the government wants to remain neutral, as it did during World War I. The Netherlands does not have a state-of-the-art army and thus hopes not to have to fight.
• In 1939, the army still mobilises, as a precaution....