Queen Wilhelmina in London

On 13 May 1940, Whit Monday, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands left The Hague and boarded the British destroyer HMS Hereward at the port of Hook of Holland. That evening she came ashore at Harwich and travelled by train to London, where King George VI welcomed her at the station. A few hours after her, the ministers of Dirk Jan de Geer’s cabinet sailed from the Hook of Holland aboard the destroyer HMS Windsor. The day before, the heir to the throne, Princess Juliana, had left for England with her husband, Prince Bernhard, and their two small daughters. The government handed authority in the country to the commander-in-chief of the army, General Henri Winkelman.

War chronologies record two things under 13 May: that the queen “fled to Great Britain, seeking asylum”, and that a Dutch government-in-exile was set up in London. Both need qualifying. Wilhelmina did not ask for asylum as a private person: she left as the reigning queen, together with a government that never ceased to be the lawful government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, its colonies and its fleet. Moreover, when she went aboard she intended to sail not to England but to Zeeland, the only province in which the Dutch army was still expected to fight on. Nor was the government in London “established” on 13 May: the ministers sailed in the evening and reached England only on 14 May, and they held their first joint meeting with the queen on 15 May.

Three days in The Hague

The attack of 10 May surprised the Dutch only in its date. At about half past three in the morning the queen was woken with news of the German invasion, and by six she was discussing with her ministers a proclamation that Prime Minister de Geer had drafted in her name. “I hereby direct a flaming protest against this unprecedented violation of good faith and this breach of all that is decent in relations between civilised states,” it read. “I and my government will do our duty now too. Do yours.”

The Germans had reason to regard the queen herself as a target. The plan for the attack on the Netherlands provided for an airborne landing near The Hague, which was to seize the airfields around the city, then the capital itself, and detain the queen, the government and the high command. Dutch troops retook the airfields that same day, and the attempt to capture The Hague ended in defeat. Even so, in the first hours of the war the royal family moved from the Huis ten Bosch palace on the edge of the woods to the Noordeinde Palace in the city centre, spending the nights in a small shelter in its garden. Scattered groups of German paratroopers and airlanding troops were still hiding in the area, and rumours of a “fifth column” were circulating in The Hague.

The evacuation of the royal family had been in preparation since the autumn of 1939. According to Dutch research, the foreign minister, Eelco van Kleffens, had then asked the British government to give shelter, in the event of a German attack, to the queen, the government and the former German Emperor, and London had responded favourably. In that event the heir to the throne, Juliana, with her husband and children, was to leave for England at once. That is what happened, though with a delay: the first two attempts to reach the port of IJmuiden, on 10 and 11 May, were thwarted by German airborne troops on the roads. Only on 12 May did Juliana, Bernhard, two-year-old Beatrix and nine-month-old Irene reach IJmuiden in an armoured car belonging to the central bank and board the British destroyer HMS Codrington, which put into Harwich on the morning of 13 May. Van Kleffens and the colonial minister, Charles Welter, had been in London since 10 May: that morning they had flown to England in a seaplane from the beach at Scheveningen.

From 11 May the government had been considering whether it should itself leave the country. The constitution of 1938 laid down that “in no case may the seat of government be transferred outside the realm”. The ministers concluded, however, that no provision could oblige them to give themselves up into captivity, and that the government’s duty was to carry on the war, if need be from abroad.

13 May

The night of 12–13 May brought bad news. The Germans had broken through the line of fortifications on the Grebbeberg, and the German 9th Panzer Division was already advancing on Rotterdam across the bridge at Moerdijk. At about four in the morning Wilhelmina telephoned King George VI and asked for help. Van Kleffens and Welter had put the same request to Churchill the day before, but the British had no means of providing help quickly.

At a cabinet meeting that morning General Winkelman set out the position: ammunition was running low and resistance could not last long. The defence minister, Adriaan Dijxhoorn, was in favour of the queen leaving; Winkelman himself was at first against it. Wilhelmina refused her ministers. She did not trust them and wanted to hear from the commander-in-chief himself that the military situation was hopeless. Winkelman, as he testified after the war before a parliamentary commission of inquiry, changed his mind. He came to the queen with the news that The Hague was no longer safe and advised her to cross to Zeeland aboard a British destroyer.

At about ten o’clock the queen left The Hague under the escort of a detachment of military police and, after roughly an hour’s drive, reached the Hook of Holland, where the British were just preparing the defence of the port. Before noon she went aboard HMS Hereward and ordered it to sail for Breskens, on the southern shore of the Scheldt estuary. On the way reports arrived of heavy Luftwaffe raids over Zeeland, and it proved impossible to make contact with the commander there. After consulting the officers of her entourage, the queen concluded that she would be unable to direct anything from Breskens and that her presence would draw bombs on the town. The destroyer turned west, towards England. According to accounts of the voyage, German aircraft attacked her during the crossing, but the bombs fell into the sea.

In her memoirs Wilhelmina wrote that she had intended to remain at her post in The Hague and, should the worst happen, to withdraw southwards with the army, “as King Albert had once done” – that is, the Belgian monarch Albert I, who in 1914–1918 commanded his army on a sliver of unoccupied territory. Some historians, notably Nanda van der Zee, regard the Zeeland plan as a story invented later to cover a decision taken earlier: there were minefields in the waters of the Western Scheldt, and the evacuation to England had been in preparation for months. The queen’s biographer Cees Fasseur and most scholars accept her account as sincere. The question remains unresolved, but both sides agree on one point: at midday on 13 May the queen believed she would soon be back in her country.

The ministers, apart from two who at first wished to stay, left The Hague at around half past twelve and at the Hook of Holland had to wait for orders from England before they could board the destroyer HMS Windsor. The last cabinet meeting on Dutch soil was held in the harbour fort. The ministers decided to travel together in order to preserve the continuity of government, and they handed full authority in the country to the military command: General Winkelman was to fight on and lay down his arms only when resistance proved “pointless and useless”. This authority was transferred to him in the name of the queen and the government by the economics minister, Max Steenberghe, who in the end, together with the agriculture minister, also joined his colleagues. Windsor cast off at about 7.20 p.m. On board were also officials, diplomats and representatives of Dutch firms.

The government-in-exile

On 14 May Wilhelmina issued a proclamation to the nation in London, drafted by Van Kleffens. In it she explained that it was not cowardice that had made her leave the country, but that it had been necessary to take “the hard but necessary decision to transfer the seat of government abroad”, so that it would not become the occupier’s hostage. “The Netherlands, with God’s help, will one day regain all its territory,” she assured her people. That same day the Germans bombed Rotterdam, and on 15 May Winkelman signed the capitulation of the Dutch army, except for Zeeland, which was still fighting. Also on 15 May, in the garden of Buckingham Palace, where the queen stayed during her first days, the first meeting of the government in England attended by her took place. It was to be the only meeting of the entire war at which the monarch and her ministers deliberated together.

At home the departure was received with bitterness. On 15 May the former prime minister Hendrikus Colijn wrote in his newspaper, De Standaard, that by leaving the country the government had lost the trust of the population. The Dutch government was the first of the lawful governments of occupied states to settle in London. The Polish authorities had been operating in France since the autumn of 1939, and in Norway King Haakon VII and his government were still fighting in the north of the country. A few days earlier Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg had also left her homeland when the Germans occupied her state.

Behind the decision of Wilhelmina and her government lay considerations that did not apply to the Danes, who remained in their country under occupation. The Kingdom of the Netherlands was a colonial empire: the Dutch East Indies had oil, rubber and tin, Surinam had bauxite, and Curaçao and Aruba had great refineries. It also possessed one of the largest merchant fleets in the world and a navy whose ships for the most part managed to escape to England. A government in London could place all of this at the disposal of the Allies. A government that had stayed in The Hague would have had to give orders to its colonies and ships under German supervision.

In the first weeks there was talk of moving on to Canada or to the Dutch East Indies. Wilhelmina wanted to remain in England for as long as possible and carried her point. Only Juliana and her daughters sailed to Canada, at the beginning of June, to safeguard the continuity of the dynasty. The seat of the government became Stratton House in Piccadilly.

An offer to Wilhelm II

Among those to whom the British were ready to give shelter in May 1940 was one exceptional figure. Since 1920 the former German Emperor Wilhelm II had lived at Doorn, in the province of Utrecht (before that in nearby Amerongen); the Netherlands had granted him asylum after the fall of the monarchy and refused to hand him over to the Allies. For more than twenty years Queen Wilhelmina had avoided all contact with him. In April 1940, however, when a German attack seemed imminent, she let him know that he need no longer regard himself as interned and could go wherever he wished. The de Geer government urged him several times to move somewhere further from the expected combat zone.

According to the widespread version, on 11 May he was offered asylum in Great Britain by Winston Churchill, who had become head of the government the day before. That is how numerous chronologies and biographies relate the matter. According to other sources, the invitation came from the British court and rested on the consent London had given the Dutch back in the autumn of 1939. The details, including the exact date and the channel through which it was conveyed, are uncertain, but the answer is not. The eighty-one-year-old Wilhelm II thanked them and declined. He explained that he was too old to travel and wished to face whatever awaited him at Doorn. In his circle, moreover, there was no lack of sympathy for the victorious Wehrmacht, in which several of his sons and grandsons were serving.

According to some sources, German soldiers appeared at his estate, Huis Doorn, as early as 14 May. On Adolf Hitler’s orders the house was surrounded by a guard of the Secret Field Police. The former emperor was treated with respect, but he could leave the estate only briefly and under supervision. In June, when France asked for an armistice, he sent Hitler a telegram of congratulations.

Significance

The departure of 13 May divided the Dutch for years. Its critics, led by Colijn, regarded it as an unconstitutional flight that had left the nation to fend for itself. After the war a parliamentary commission of inquiry judged it differently: thanks to it the Netherlands kept its international standing, could support the resistance and prepare for liberation. The sharpest dispute concerns its consequences for the Dutch Jews. Some historians argue that the departure of the monarch and the government opened the way for a German civil administration, headed by Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart, under which the Holocaust claimed about three-quarters of the country’s Jewish inhabitants. Others point out that the fate of the Jews was decided by factors that the government’s presence in The Hague would not have changed.

For the course of the war, the significance of the departure was plain. The Netherlands remained in the Allied camp, and its merchant fleet, its warships, the oil of the Indies and the bauxite of Surinam served the struggle against Germany and, from December 1941, against Japan as well. When in August 1940 Prime Minister de Geer concluded that Britain would lose the war and wished to seek an accommodation with Germany, Wilhelmina brought about his dismissal and entrusted the government to Pieter Gerbrandy. From July 1940 she addressed her compatriots over Radio Oranje and in time, like Churchill in Britain or Haakon VII in Norway, became a symbol of resistance in her occupied country. She returned to the Netherlands in the spring of 1945, on the eve of liberation. Wilhelm II, who had turned down the British invitation in May 1940, died at Doorn in June 1941 under the guard of German soldiers.

On the afternoon of 13 May, while HMS Hereward was crossing the North Sea, Churchill made his first speech as prime minister in the House of Commons, in which he offered the nation “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. London soon became the capital of occupied Europe: alongside the Dutch, the governments of Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland and Czechoslovakia operated there, and after the fall of France the Free French as well.