Necessary Evil, Last Resort or Totally Unacceptable? Social Democratic Discussions on Political Violence in Germany and the Netherlands

Abstract

When discussing the use of political violence in interwar Europe, at first sight it seems hardly appropriate to include the Netherlands in a Europe-wide overview. Even though the Netherlands witnessed a couple of violent incidents in 1933 and 1934, Dutch politics did not succumb to the violent excesses experienced in Germany, for example. In fact, in comparison with Germany, the Netherlands could be described as an exemplar of peace and order. The country had only three different heads of government in the entire interwar period, the Dutch National Socialist movement never won more than 8% of the vote in an election, and neither the world economic crisis nor general doubts about the suitability of democracy could disrupt the parliamentary system in the 1930s.¹ Traditional historiography holds that nothing ever happened in the Netherlands in the interwar period, that political and social development had come to a complete standstill, and that the long 19th century’ actually did not come to an end there until the German invasion on 10 May 1940.²