Landverraders – “Traitors to the Fatherland” by Max Blokzijl. A pro-Nazi incitement booklet published in the Netherlands under German occupation. Nazi-Dutch publication of the NSB (Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging). Cover design features a blood-dripping knife stabbed into a map of the Netherlands. Introduction by N. Oostervan. Occupied Netherlands, c.1941. In Dutch.
The booklet’s author, Max Blokzijl, was a senior journalist who headed the press apparatus in occupied Holland and served as a Dutch propagandist who actively collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation. In this sharply worded and caustic booklet, he attacks Germany’s opponents and presents Nazi collaborators as “true patriots.” He defends those who sided with Germany as men who understood the “spirit of the times” and viewed Germany as the future of Europe. He denounces the former Dutch democracy and the free press of pre-war Holland. The Dutch people, he claims, are in a state of “spiritual confusion” that prevents them from recognizing their true national interests which include uniting the Netherlands into a single greater European community with Germany at its center. Blokzijl presents the world war as a long-term revolution that would ultimately benefit Europe’s inhabitants, portraying Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party as “a leader and his soldiers who succeed in everything.” Americans, he writes, are “shrewd and capable merchants, ” but “anything but good soldiers.” British victories, he claims, exist mostly in the propaganda studios of pro-British underground radio stations, and the inevitable failure of the Allies, he concludes, is assured.
Marius Hugh Louis Wilhelm “Max” Blokzijl [1884–1946] was a Dutch singer and journalist, one of whose grandmothers was Jewish. Born in Leeuwarden, he pursued a journalism career before settling in Berlin in 1918, where he worked in the German press until 1940 and simultaneously served as president of the Niederländischer Bund in Germany. Although living outside the Netherlands, Blokzijl, by then a committed Nazi joined the Dutch Nazi-Socialist movement (NSB) in 1935. He returned to the Netherlands after the German invasion and became head of propaganda for the NSB puppet regime. In February 1941, he was appointed editor of the Protestant newspaper De Standaard, but in reality, his role extended far beyond that—he was the de facto head of the press in the Netherlands. At the same time, he hosted pro-Nazi radio programs from Hilversum, known for their intense anti-British rhetoric. Blokzijl was sentenced to death and executed on March 16, 1946, for his collaboration with Nazi Germany. He was the first Dutch collaborator to be executed and died in Scheveningen.
32 pages. Very good condition.
