Preliminary Programme

The liberation may have been the end of the war, it did not mean the end of all problems. The economical system had to be rebuilt, the infrastructure was badly damaged and in need of repair and society and the administration needed to be purged. But first, a new authority had to be established to bring this about. It was not clear which people would hold this new authority and how it would function. In this contribution we examine the groups that contended for power at the liberation in The Netherlands and the bases of their claims. These groups not only comprise armed forces such as the Allied troops, the local resistance and the Dutch Military Authority, of which the latter was officially charged with the civil administration. Also the Dutch government in exile, the prewar political parties and newborn movements for political and moral renewal were among the contendants. They all thought themselves legitimized to play a leading role in the postwar reconstruction of society and the political system. Each group had its own ambitions for the future and tried to realise them by gaining power at or shortly after the liberation. In practice, this led to a contention for power which ended with the restoration of the parliamentarian system and the organisation of the first postwar elections. We make some comparisons with the French situation in the same period. (Show less)

Around the globe, at the end of World War II and the defeat of the Axis powers, regime-transitions manifested themselves in many different shapes. Usually, historians have analysed political transitions primarily from the context of the nation-state. This fits in with a tendency to identify political reconstruction with national resurrection. In order to provoke new insight, this paper attempts a comparative examination of transitions in two cases that are quite far apart and different in nature, but connected by historical (colonial) ties: the Netherlands and Indonesia.

The Netherlands were? occupied and governed by neighbouring Germany between 1940 and 1944-45. This same period saw the virtual end of Dutch colonial rule over the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia, which was occupied and governed by Japan from 1942 to 1945. Both regimes of occupation claimed to establish a completely ‘new order’ in Europe and Asia on the ruins of the preceding liberal and imperialist states. But ambitions to establish a new world order did not end with the conclusion of the Second World War. The defeat of Germany and Japan in May/August 1945 ushered in another phase of transition, in which the dynamics of authority and legitimacy were again reformulated. In both the Netherlands and Indonesia, military occupations by the Allied Powers were instrumental in establishing post-war regimes that advertised themselves as the re-establishment of self-determination and at the same time as a departure from the pre-war situation. In the Netherlands, a period of transition was to produce a stable government of undivided legitimacy once more. In Indonesia, the process of decolonization was accelerated and transition pointed the way to several, contending, attempts at establishing a new political equilibrium, one dictated by the Dutch, others aiming at an independent statehood.

Although the nature and the outcome of transition may have been completely different in the two countries, the synchronic rhythms of postwar recovery and reinvention beg for comparison: the cataclysmic collapse of the old order in 1940 and 1942; the way in which the occupying powers compromised themselves by means of repressive policies; the borrowing of political and military power from the British and American Allies; the struggle to re-establish transitionary rule as a self-sustaining process towards recapturing political power and beating political contenders (parts of the former resistance movement in Holland, nationalist formations in the Indies); and finally appeal to the urge to innovate national politics and world relations.

Within this context, we intend to analyse strategies of political legitimation of the different contenders during the period of transition, with reference to local, national and international perspectives. Our purpose is to discover – from a comparative perspective - at which levels during the transitionary period political authority was accumulated, was accepted and thus could be effective, or not. (Show less)

International humanitarian relief efforts are an integral part of key events in the 20th century, and if the first four years are anything to go by, they will feature prominently in the 21st century also: Internationally coordinated relief efforts responding to natural disasters, famines or armed hostilities are an everyday part of media coverage. In this global age, most of us have come to expect such international cooperation. But what we now take for granted is, in fact, the result of a long learning process in which the aftermaths of each of the two world wars were catalysts.

This paper is based on a research project on British humanitarian assistance in Germany after the Second World War. Initially this help was directed at survivors of the Shoah, former forced labourers and other UN nationals only, but as early as October 1945 it was extended to German refugees and German children in particular. It was provided jointly by the British government and numerous voluntary organisations, whose relief teams followed in the wake of troops. British humanitarian assistance was a compassionate response to the violence, mass-murder and war crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich. It provided shelter, medical treatment, clothing and food that was essential for the survival of UN nationals during the final stages of the war and immediately afterwards. Moreover, this multi-pronged approach to solving social problems helped stabilise Allied control in Germany during this period, and also made the Allied occupation more palatable to the populations of both Germany and Britain.

In particular the paper will focus on: 1. British planning during the Second World War. 2. The deployment and activities of British relief teams in northwest Europe after D-Day. 3. The cooperation between relief teams and the Military Government in Germany. (Show less)