Few historians doubted it, but now the evidence that Prince Bernhard was a member of the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler’s party, is very convincing. In his book The stragglers, which will be released this Wednesday, Flip Maarschalkerweerd reveals that he has found the prince’s original NSDAP membership card. Maarschalkerweerd, former director of the Royal House Archives, found the map on Soestdijk in the prince’s private archives, which he had to inventory after his death in 2004.
Prince Bernhard denied that he was a member of the Nazi party until his death, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. In 1996 Gerard Aalders and Coen Hilbrink published The Sanders affairin which they revealed that they had found a copy of Bernhard’s membership card in the US, and correspondence about the cancellation of his membership from 1936. That year he became engaged to Juliana.
In a series of interviews he had before his death with de Volkskrant the prince further stated: “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.”
Bernhard did acknowledge that he had been an (aspiring) member of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schutzstaffel (SS). “You had to participate somehow in the beginning,” he said, “because they would let you fail your exam icy cold if they had the idea that you were anti.”
1949 note from Lucius Clay
When Flip Maarschalkerweerd found the NSDAP card and the associated correspondence about termination of membership, he was initially surprised. “Those were German pieces,” he says. “You would expect them to be in Germany.” But he soon found an explanation. There was also a note from 1949 from Lucius Clay, the military administrator of the American zone in Germany. „Dear Prince Bernhard,” he wrote, “I kept this in my safe for several years. As I was about to destroy it, I remembered that you have earned the right to destroy it yourself.” The Americans must therefore have found the documents in Germany and made the copies that Aalders and Hilbrink found in the US.
“For me personally, this is very nice to hear,” says historian Gerald Aalders when he hears of the find. “I was accused of all kinds of things at the time. A week before his death, Bernhard called me from his deathbed to deny everything. He was trying to deny something that couldn’t be denied.”
Is it still conceivable that it was a forgery, with which the Germans wanted to blackmail Bernhard during the war? “I don’t think that is possible,” says Aalders, “because there is also correspondence from friends of Bernhard who had to ensure that his membership was canceled. No, that is really beyond any conspiracy theory.”
“This is a spectacular find,” says writer Annejet van der Zijl, who already read Maarschalkerweerd’s book at his request. She herself wrote a dissertation on Bernhard in 2010, in which she revealed that the prince had been a member of a student association dominated by National Socialists. She found Bernhard’s membership card from the Deutsche Studentenschaft which also mentioned his NSDAP membership. After its publication, there was indeed a few who suggested that it was a forgery, says Van der Zijl. “But the evidence is now so overwhelming that it really can no longer be denied.”
“It would actually have been illogical,” says Van der Zijl, “if someone with his background, a whiner, had had the political insight that it would be better not to become a member at the time. After the war he had no choice but to deny it, as head of the resistance. It’s nice that reality is now gradually emerging. That is worth a compliment for Flip Maarschalkerweerd and for the royal family.”
The king gave Maarschalkerweerd access to all documents in the Royal House Archives relating to the war. He made his discovery a few years before his retirement in 2019. In his book, which is mainly about Wilhelmina, Bernhard only plays a supporting role. Maarschalkerweerd reports the discovery of the membership card in a note at the back of the book. Researchers will soon be able to request the map and associated correspondence. On Tuesday, the RVD announced that the public access period for the private archives of the Royal House will be extended from January 1 to September 6, 1948. Documents are now public until the death of Queen Emma in 1934.
A version of this article also appeared in the October 4, 2023 newspaper.