Dutch Underground Press

The Dutch underground press was part of the resistance to German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

After the occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the Germans quickly took control over the existing Dutch press and enforced censorship and publication of Nazi propaganda. Independent Dutch citizens organized themselves into publishing their own illegal papers. These papers were cherished by the population, and were better trusted than the official papers (even though one might argue that they were equally slanted). Issues were distributed and passed on, even though there were heavy penalties (including the death penalty) for those involved with illegal anti-Nazi publications.

Some of today's main paper and magazine titles (Trouw, Het Parool, Vrij Nederland) originate from this period.

A collection is maintained in The British Library.

Famous quotes containing the words dutch, underground and/or press:

    ‘Tis probable Religion after this
    Came next in order; which they could not miss.
    How could the Dutch but be converted, when
    The Apostles were so many fishermen?
    Besides the waters of themselves did rise,
    And, as their land, so them did re-baptize.
    Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

    Political correctness is driving machismo underground and recalling effeminacy from exile.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.
    Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)