Anton Mussert

Anton Mussert

Mussert and Hitler in 1941

Anton Adriaan Mussert (11 May 1894 – 7 May 1946) was a Dutch politician who co-founded the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) in 1931 and served as its leader until the party was banned in 1945. He collaborated with the German occupation government, but was granted little actual power and held the nominal title of Leider van het Nederlandsche Volk ("Leader of the Dutch People") from 1942 onwards. In May 1945, as the war came to an end in Europe, Mussert was captured and arrested by Allied forces. He was charged and convicted of treason, and was executed in 1946.

Life

Mussert was born in 1894 in Werkendam, in the northern part of the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. From an early age he showed talent in technical matters and after graduating from school he chose to study civil engineering at the Delft University of Technology. In the 1920s, he became active in several nationalist organisations, such as the Dietsche Bond which advocated a Greater Netherlands including Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium).

Foundation of the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging

On 14 December 1931, Mussert, Cornelis van Geelkerken, and ten others founded the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (Dutch: Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging in Nederland), a Dutch counterpart to the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

In 1934 the NSB rallied 25,000 demonstrators in Amsterdam. The NSB received 300,000 votes in the 1935 parliamentary elections, almost 8% of the national vote. In the 1937 election, it polled a little more than half as much.

1940

On 10 May, German troops invaded the Netherlands. Mussert was not appointed prime minister of the occupied nation. Instead, Austrian Arthur Seyß-Inquart was appointed as the Reichskommissar, while Berlin summoned Mussert to control his uncooperative countrymen. On 21 June 1940 Mussert agreed to have NSB members train with the SS-Standarte 'Westland'. On 11 September, Mussert instructed Henk Feldmeijer, to organise the Nederlandsche SS (Dutch SS) as a division of the NSB. Mussert had nothing to do with the raising of an all-Dutch volunteer SS unit, the SS-Freiwilligen-Legion Niederlande.

1941–1945

In February 1941, Mussert agreed to and oversaw the formation of the 23rd SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division Nederland, which trained in Hamburg. In November 1941, the formation was ordered to the Eastern Front near Leningrad, under the overall command of Army Group North.

On 8 December 1941, the independent Dutch administration in the Dutch East Indies declared war on Japan, the ally of National Socialist Germany. After the Japanese invasion and occupation and the subsequent internment of 100,000 Dutch civilians and 50,000 military personnel, Mussert requested a meeting with Hitler. On 13 December 1942, Hitler declared Mussert to be "Leider van het Nederlandse Volk" (Leader of the Dutch People).

Death

Upon the surrender of Germany, Mussert was arrested at the NSB office in The Hague on 7 May 1945. He was convicted of high treason on 28 November after a two-day trial, and was sentenced to death on 12 December. He appealed to Queen Wilhelmina for clemency. She refused. On 7 May 1946, exactly one year after his arrest and four days before his 52nd birthday, Mussert was executed by a firing squad on the Waalsdorpervlakte.