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THE SECRET WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS

As in neighbouring Belgium, the stay-behind secret army of the Netherlands originated from the country's Second World War occupation experience. The Netherlands, as Dutch strategists later lamented, had not erected a stay-behind before the Second World War due to lack of money, lack of visions and concerns in the context of neutrality. Then in May 1940 the Netherlands were occupied by the German Army and the Dutch government together with the Dutch royals and privileged figures of the political, military and economic sphere had to leave Dutch soil hastily and chaotically for Great Britain. GS III, the Section Intelligence of the Dutch General Staff, had warned too late of the German attack and had thus failed bitterly in what would have been its most important task. Due to the hasty retreat there was logistic distress in many areas, and the Dutch ministers who in May 1940 arrived in London could hardly carry out their work for a lack of crucial documents. For many within the military and security services it was clear that such a chaotic escape was never to happen again and that after the war preparations against a potential future invasion had to be taken very seriously.

After the chaotic escape of the government in May 1940 the homeland was occupied for almost five consecutive traumatic years by the Germans. The Dutch government in London, which almost completely lacked reliable intelligence on its occupied home country, sent agents into the Netherlands with the task of collecting intelligence, organising resistance and engaging in small-scale covert action operations. As in Belgium these Dutch operations were carried out in close cooperation with the British, above all together with the newly created British Special Operations Executive (SOE). However, the Germans with disastrous effects quickly infiltrated the hastily created units. In one of the greatest disasters for the SOE, the so-called Englandspiel, the Dutch section of SOE was secretly penetrated by the Germans who thereafter controlled the transmitters and read the communication. Dozens of agents fell straight into enemy hands as a result and never returned.

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During the war the Dutch and the British established intimate ties and London advised the Dutch on the reorganisation of their destroyed and chaotic secret

service apparatus. According to the advice of the British two new services were created in the early 1940s during the London exile. The Bureau Inlichtingen (BI) was established in November 1942 wi t h the task of collecting intelligence. And the Bureau Bijzondere Opdrachten (BBO) was created with the task of carrying out special operations. Together w i t h the British SOE special units, the BBO parachuted into the occupied country. When the war was over both the BI and BBO were closed down. But in subsequent years much of their personnel was directly involved in setting up the Dutch stay-behind.

BI member C. L. W. Fock had insisted during the war that in the future the Netherlands had to be better prepared and in peacetime a stay-behind should be erected in the country. Also his superior J. M. Somer, chief of the BI in London, was convinced that after the end of the German occupation a stay-behind had to be erected in the Netherlands. 'I remember how Somer, Charles van Houten (Liaison officer between BI and Dutch Queen Wilhelmina), and I in 1944 already agreed that something like that must never happen again' Fock, aged 87, remembered during a Gladio interview in his apartment in the Hague in 1992. Looking back almost half-a-century later, Fock recalled: 'In this conversation it became clear that it would be better for the Netherlands to prepare for a new war. It was necessary to take actions into that direction as soon as possible.'

At the time of the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945 BI chief Somer figured amongst the most experienced men in the secret trade. Before the war he had served in the pre-war Dutch secret service GS III. During the war he had engaged in resistance operations on Dutch soil and in March 1942 had narrowly escaped the German Sicherheitsdienst, reaching safe haven London after an adventurous excursion. In London, Somer served as the first chief of the newly created Dutch wartime secret service BI. After the war Somer, now promoted to the rank of Colonel, put down his stay-behind thinking on paper and presented them to General J. Kruls, who in November 1945 had become Chief of the Dutch Chiefs of Staff. Somer's memorandum to Kruls was entitled: 'Lessons to be drawn from the period 1940-1945 in the field of Intelligence and Security Services.' A former involved remembers that 'It was one of the first pieces which Kruls as new chief of the Chiefs of Staff had to deal with in his new office.' Kruls was immediately won over for the idea. Fascinated by covert action Kruls in his book 'Peace or War' (Vreede of Oorlog) which he published a few years later during the time of the Korean War stressed that the 'greatest possible attention' had to be given to the 'preparations for covert action warfare'. As Kruls saw it Western Europe had to face 'the hard facts', meaning that if there should soon be a war, 'then the underground operations might be the decisive factor'.2

With the support of Kruls, Somer in September 1945 presented the stay-behind plan to Dutch Defence Minister J. Meynen. Somer did not stress the covert action and sabotage operations of a potential secret army but suggested the creation of

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an intelligence collection unit 'which should be able to collect military, political

and economic information and to send them by courier or on wireless networks' to the military command outside the occupied country. Somer explained that men should be recruited and trained in radio communication and encryption techniques, and insisted that these men should not be part of the regular Dutch military for only then they would be available for special operations in case of an invasion.3 Defence Minister Meynen agreed with the plan and Somer became the first commander of the Dutch stay-behind with the specific task to set up a secret army. At the same time Somer was given the task of closing down the wartime secret service IB that he had previously directed. The task gave him the perfect cover for his clandestine preparations. He attached the new stay-behind service to the old pre-war Dutch military secret service GS III and therefore the first Dutch stay-behind received the cover name GIIIC.

After some months Somer started to dislike the organisational structure. He resented that his stay-behind network GIIIC was placed under the command of the Chiefs of Staff. Somer, little inclined to tolerate a section chief above him, stressed that such a structure represented a secrecy risk. 'Somer was of the opinion that his top-secret unit must exist, but can not officially appear', Dutch scholar Koedijk described the situation.4 In January 1948 it was therefore decided that the stay-behind section should no longer be mentioned in organisational charts of the Defence Ministry and the clandestine army came under the direct command of Somer. Furthermore the label of the Dutch Gladio was changed from GIIIC to G7. Somer furthermore insisted that his Gladio headquarters could no longer be in the headquarters of the Dutch General Staff which was located in the Prinses Juliana military complex half way between the Hague and the Dutch village Wassenaar. He was therefore allowed to search for an adequate building not too far from the headquarters of the Dutch General Staff. With less than total emphasis on secrecy he decided upon House Maarheeze in Wassenaar, an architectonic highlight and impressive villa built in 1916 by a Dutch businessman who had become wealthy in Indonesia. Located within an acceptable distance of five minutes' driving from the headquarters of the General Staff, Somer in May 1945 took up residence in the Villa Maarheeze, still officially under BI activities. In 1946 the Dutch Gladio GIIIC, shortly thereafter renamed G7, also moved into the same building.

Somer insisted that secrecy was of the utmost importance for the clandestine army. While he was in command no Roman Catholics for instance could become members of the secret unit, for Somer believed that their duty for confession stood in contrast to the principle of secrecy within the service. At the same time Somer made sure that the Dutch executive was informed of his clandestine preparations. Assisted by the Chief of Staff Kruls he debriefed Dutch Prime Minister Louis Beel when the latter took office in July 1946 to head the Dutch executive until 1948. Beel was soon convinced of the values of a stay-behind, and thus consented to the secret operation despite the fact that he considered the scenario of a Soviet invasion to be rather unlikely.

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the 'desirability of such proceedings' had been requested by the United Kingdom and the United States, whereupon the transmitters were quickly installed in the villa Maarheeze.

At the same time as Somer was setting up the G7 a second stay-behind was being secretly erected in the Netherlands, independent of G7. Immediately after the Second World War Dutch secret service circles under the influence of the British MI6 had approached Prince Bernhard with the suggestion of erecting a stay-behind in the country with the tasks of sabotage, liquidation and armed resistance in case of invasion. Sympathetic to the suggestion Prince Bernhard saw to it that Louis Einthoven, the first chief of the Dutch post-war domestic security service BVD was to carry out the preparations. Einthoven with the consent of Dutch Prime Minister W. Schermerhorn set up the Dutch stay-behind code-named 'O', recruited and trained agents and erected secret arms caches.9

Born in 1896 Louis Einthoven had served as a senior officer with the Rotterdam police before the war and during the war was an active resistance fighter against the German occupation. Until his death in 1973 he remained an ardent Cold Warrior, repeatedly stressing the danger of Communism. He introduced 'security checks' in order to control the ideological reliability of his Gladio and BVD agents. Einthoven's position as chief of the BVD provided him not only with the perfect cover for his top-secret function as chief of the secret army. It also gave him during the 16 years that he directed both units, at least potentially, the opportunity to use the Gladiators domestically also in the absence of an invasion. Einthoven was constantly alert that his secret army could be infiltrated by agents of the Soviet Union and thus placed much emphasis on counter-intelligence. 'The double function of Einthoven as chief BVD and of O was of course very valuable for us', a former Dutch Gladiator remembers.10 For as most domestic secret services, the BVD had the task to spy upon elements of the Dutch society that could pose a threat to the state and government and to collect and monitor political movements including that of the far right and the far left. As of now no documents or testimonies are available on Einthoven's secret army and what it did remains almost completely in the dark.

The two Dutch secret armies, the one commanded by Einthoven directly integrated into the BVD, and the other commanded by Somer located in Villa Maarheeze, in 1948 reached a formal agreement of cooperation with the MI6. A similar agreement on clandestine stay-behind cooperation was reached with the newly created CIA in 1949. Whether the agreements, as in other stay-behind countries, directed the two Dutch secret armies to fight Communism and political parties on the left also in the absence of a Soviet invasion, has still not been clarified.11 But when the Dutch stay-behind network was discovered in 1990 these secret agreements lead to much criticism in the Netherlands as the argument was raised that MI6 and CIA had controlled the Dutch secret army, a suggestion which was unacceptable to most Dutch politicians valuing their sovereignty. In 1992 an unnamed former member of the Dutch Gladio insisted therefore that despite the close contacts with both London and Washington the Dutch secret armies

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had always been sovereign: 'Neither the British nor the Amnican secret service should have been able to locate and agent of our stay-behind. That's the way it had

a general idea of the strength of the stay - behind in our country.'13 Contrary to these claims rumours surfaced at the same time that the top-secret identity of all secret soldiers in all countries in Western Europe, including the Dutch stay-behind agents, was known to the CIA and the MI6.

In 1948 dramatic events overseas drew commander Somer away from his stay-behind activities in the Netherlands. Indonesia, the richest and oldest colony of the Netherlands, was at that time desperately and successfully fighting for independence, similar to many other European colonies. On the orders of General Spoor, covert action specialist Somer therefore left for the Far East and in late spring 1948 became Director of the dreaded NEFIS, the Dutch military secret service in Indonesia. NEFIS engaged in brutal covert action operations but was unable to stop Indonesia from becoming independent from the Netherlands in 1949. Somer returned to the Netherlands and wrote a book about 'his' service, the IB and his wartime memoirs. Published in 1950 under the title Zij sprongen buj nacht (They jumped by night), the book contained names of numerous agents and descriptions of several covert action operations. The Dutch Defence Department later criticised Somer for these disclosures.

'The Government knew of nothing', a former secret soldier highlighted the secrecy of both Dutch stay-behinds, adding that 'only very few Secretary Generals within the Executive were informed, as the Ministers above them could change quickly'.14 The evidence available suggests that those who knew of the secret army included at times the civilian Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the Secretary-Generals if the stay-behind commanders trusted them, as well as regularly the military Chief of Staffs and the Directors of the foreign and domestic Dutch secret services. 'Politics can at times nominate strange people', another anonymous stay-behind agent reflected. 'But it is only normal that a new official is being informed on everything. Yet for these sensitive issues the civil servants make an exception and first observe what kind of meat they have in their bowl.'15 Parliament and its specialised committees were kept in the dark. Neither the secrecy bound 'Permanent Commission for secret service and security services', nor the 'Ministerial Commission for secret service and security' of the Dutch parliament were informed on the existence of the stay-behinds before the 1990 revelations.16

To replace Somer as commander of the secret army J. J. L. Baron van Lynden, a 35-year-old instructor with the Dutch cavalry was selected. Finding a successor had not been easy. Most former senior BI members refused, for they had simply no intention to again lead a secret life with all its awkwardness and double standards. When Baron van Lynden on June 1, 1948 officially replaced Somer as chief of the Dutch stay-behind G7 quite a few within the intelligence community were surprised about the choice. For van Lynden in total contrast to his predecessor

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Somer was a complete newcomer to the field. He had been suggested by IDB Director Fock, who 40 years later recalled 'I am a bit proud of this finding of mine', praising the Dutch stay-behind commander's xcellent character traits.17 Van Lynden's glory was based on his wartime resistance In 1940 he had belonged to a small unit of 50 Dutch senior officers who in a group of 2,000 had refused to promise to the Germans that they would do nothing against the occupiers, whereupon he had been sent to a German prisoners of war camp. In the Stanislau prison in Poland he met with British War hero Airey Neave, a contact which both cultivated also after the war. For Neave after the war directed the SAS which in numerous instances trained with the national secret armies in Europe, until he was killed by an IRA car bomb in the parking of the British parliament in March 1979. At the time of van Lynden's nomination as staybehind commander the Baron was working for Prince Bernhard, the husband of Queen Wilhelmina. Van Lynden continued his bonds with the Queen and the cavalry, both of which served as a handy cover for his secret main function as commander of the Dutch secret army. In 1951 he was nominated adjutant of the Queen, and several times a week he travelled to the royal palace in The Hague. The Baron was a very gifted horseman, a passion he shared with Prince Bernhard. In The Hague in 1951 van Lynden became Dutch champion in horseback riding and in Rotterdam in 1955 he was a member of the Dutch equip which won the international jumping contest, a success he was particularly proud of.

Although scepticism had surrounded the start of the newcomer, van Lynden took off well in the secret services community. 'He was a natural talent in security affairs', an admirer recalled. And people who knew him in his job and outside sketch a picture of a strong but friendly personality that united 'character, knowledge and expertise'. Van Lynden's phlegmatic and philosophical views - during his time in the prisoner of war camp he had 'studied' with a woman who later was to become professor of philosophy - were not typical for the military and secret services field.18 When speculations arose in the community what exactly the mysterious G7 unit was doing in Villa Maarheeze next to the IDB of Fock, the Baron for secrecy reasons on July 1, 1949 changed the label of G7 to SAZ, short for Section for General Affairs (Sectie Algemene Zaken), which he thought sounded harmless. Van Lynden also thought that after an invasion it would have been comparatively easy for the Soviets to identify former resistance and secret service members and he therefore made it an imperative to recruit new faces and unknown names, replacing most of the former colleagues of Somer with unknown men.

During his time in office van Lynden stressed that he needed more money to pay for the technical equipment of his stay-behind. Especially communication machines were expensive. Chief of the General Staff Kruls had asked already in 1946 for such funds. The money came in 1948 after Lynden had replaced Somer as chief of SAZ and sophisticated equipment was thereafter being developed in cooperation with departments of the Dutch technology firm Phillips. In exchange for their cooperation van Lynden saw to it that leading Phillips technicians

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involved in the development of SAZ high-tech equipment were not sent to the brutal colonial battle in Indonesia. 19 Interestingly enough van Lynden, leader of

the SAZ stay-behind, was being kept unaware of the second and more mysterious stay-behind that his fellow Dutchman and BVD commander Einthoven was running. Tellingly it was the Briti s h who in 1949 informed van Lynden in London that a second parallel stay-behind network under the command of Einthoven existed in the Netherlands. Van Lynden, who was mightily surprised, immediately insisted that both secret armies must be coordinated, for otherwise serious complications could result. This advice was followed and van Lynden's SAZ was fused with Einthoven's stay-behind into the Dutch secret army 'Intelligence and Operations' (Intelligence en Operations), short I&O, the label under which the Dutch stay-behind also became known in 1990. The two branches were nevertheless kept apart. The SAZ net became synonymous with the I unit, while Einthoven's stay-behind was the O unit. According to internal sources, Einthoven who followed his own secretive agenda allegedly strongly resented the cooperation of his unit with van Lynden's SAZ and little cooperation between Intelligence and Operations took place as long as Einthoven was in command of Operations.21

As the Dutch secretly agreed with the British, I&O had the general task to function as a stay-behind in case of foreign occupation of the Netherlands. 'The main attitude at the time was that we were both [British and Dutch] facing difficult times, and that the British would solve it all, as they had the expertise in the field', a former Dutch agent later recalled.22 Within the Dutch stay-behind tasks were split. The Intelligence (I) unit under van Lynden was responsible for the collection and transmission of intelligence from occupied areas, preparations and running of exile bases and evacuation operations of the royalty, the government and the security apparatus including personnel of I&O. The Operations (O) unit under Einthoven had to carry out sabotage and guerrilla operations, strengthen the local resistance and create a new resistance movement. Most sensitively O also had the task to make people sensitive to the danger of Communism during times of peace. O was therefore trained in covert action operations, including the use of guns and explosives, and possessed independent secret arms caches.23 Most of the costs of the Dutch stay-behind were covered by a secret budget of the Dutch Defence Ministry with the spendings being controlled personally by the chairman of the General Accountancy Department (Algemene Rekenkamer).

During his time in office, Van Lynden actively sought a suitable exile base, where his SAZ Gladio unit would have taken the Dutch government and other selected individuals in the event of an occupation. England, a safe place during the Second World War, could not be assumed to be a safe place in a future war. Lynden searched for a suitable place for a long time. In the end he decided that in Europe only Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula were potentially suitable, while more secure overseas bases included the Dutch colony Curacao in the Caribbean, as well as the United States and Canada. In the early 1950s van Lynden made several trips to the United States. The base could not be situated close to a strategic

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area, such as an industrial zone, or and important military facility, for these would

have ranged among the first Soviet targets. While the location of the base in the USA remains unknown it is known that van Lynden found a base and that important documents of the Dutch executive were copied and transferred to the secret exile base. The Dutch stay-behind headquarters had been set up in the USA with the consent of the CIA. A former Dutch official relates how reluctant the CIA was on the topic: 'When the time comes, one can speak about that', he recalls the first contacts. 'But we insisted that we had to talk now. Finally the CIA agreed after a few months to give us what we wanted', whereupon a Dutch staybehind command centre was set up in the USA.24

Furthermore van Lynden set up a secret exile base in Spain then ruled by fascist dictator Franco. 'If he had allowed us we would have build our exile base even in Franco's very home', a former Dutch secret soldier remembers.25 Staybehind commander van Lynden convinced stay-behind commander Einthoven to carry out the sensitive mission, whereupon the latter disguised as tourist in 1959 travelled to Spain and with the help of the contacts of former Dutch ambassador to Spain, W. Cnoop Koopmans, set up a secret Dutch exile base. The evidence remains fragmentary and further contacts concerning an exile base seem to have taken place with Canada and Great Britain. The post-invasion escape preparations were taken very seriously, and ships and airplanes were kept ready for that task. 'I remember that around 1950 I had to test and judge quite a few yachts whether they were seaworthy', a former member of the Dutch Marine and staybehind officer recalled after the discovery of the network in 1990.26

Symbolising its strong connection to the British the official SAZ insignia of the Dutch Gladio featured the Tudor rose next to the motto of Somer 'We will never give up.' 'We had no intention of fighting the next war under British command', a former Dutch secret soldier nevertheless highlighted Dutch independence. 'Van Lynden was very strong. They could not push him aside. Neither could later the Americans do that as towards the end of the 1950s they started to play an increasingly important role. But van Lynden understood that a certain consensus had to be reached between the parties, and in his mind it was up to the respective chiefs who had to determine how they wanted to work together while keeping at the same time their own sovereignty.'27 In the top-secret meetings in the NATO stay-behind coordination and planning centres ACC and CPC, the Dutch Gladio I&O at all times aimed to present itself as a single harmonic unit with two branches. The Dutch had some experience on how to work with the dominant MI6 and CIA, for after the war the United Kingdom and the United States had formalised their secret cooperation with the Dutch in a trilateral secret forum labelled TCH, in which the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands each had a seat. Parallel to the creation of this secret coordination committee on March 17, 1948 the so-called WUCC had been erected with the task of carrying out peace time preparations in the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and France against an eventual Soviet invasion. In April 1951 the early stay-behind command centre WUCC handed over its functions

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to the CPC, closely lin ked to NATO, within which the Dutch secret service also had a seat.28

Van Lynden during his time in office very actively promoted the contacts between the European secret services and their secret armies and insisted that cooperation was mandatory when it came to the erection of international escape

and evasion routes. To this purpose the Baron travelled Europe extensively for numerous years after having become commander of the Dutch secret army. He was much praised for his efforts among the security services and with this encouragement admitted that he would much like to become the first secretary of the CPC. Yet the British who distrusted the liberal and open-minded van Lynden blocked his nomination.29 In 1957 CPC members Great Britain, the United States, France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands under the participation of van Lynden erected the so-called Six Powers Lines Committee, which like the CPC had the task to organise and coordinate stay-behind preparations with a focus on international communication and escape lines. The Six Powers Lines Committee became the ACC, which was founded in 1958 in Paris. ACC coordinated the international Gladio exercises which were carried out clandestinely with the participation of the different networks. In case of an invasion there was an ACC basis in the United States, and one in the United Kingdom from where the units in the occupied territory could be activated and commanded. ACC manuals instructed stay-behind soldiers on common covert action procedures, encryption and frequency-hopping communication techniques, as well as air droppings and landings. The chairmanship of ACC changed every two years. Through the TCH, the CPC and the ACC, the Dutch Gladio I&O had standing contacts with both the CIA and the MI6.30

The CIA and the MI6 by the 1950s collaborated closely in covert action operations and in 1953 overthrew the Iranian government of Mossadegh who had attempted to distribute parts of the oil wealth to the population. At the same time the CIA and MI6 feared that European Communists and the Soviet secret service might apply the same techniques to Western Europe and hence they attributed much importance to their secret armies on the old continent. In 1953 the CIA instructed van Lynden that several changes had to be carried out in order to make his units more professional. 'It was literally a blue print, a collection of thick blue books' which were given to the Baron, a former agent recalls. 'Van Lynden studied the texts extensively. They contained information on take over techniques which the Soviets had practised in Eastern Europe. The examples illustrated which sort of persons the Soviets were particularly focusing on. Consequently such persons could obviously not be recruited as secret agents. On this basis van Lynden had to terminate the contact to a certain number of agents, which had been recruited by Somer.'31

Yet it was not only from the CIA but also from within the Dutch security apparatus that van Lynden faced pressure. In February 1951 General Kruls, who had been actively involved in the erection of the Dutch stay-behind as the superior of both Somer and van Lynden, was replaced after serious disagreements with

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