Het Parool - After The War

After The War

After the war Het Parool quickly became one of the leading and biggest newspapers in The Netherlands, partly because of the appreciation by large number of the population for being the most prolific resistance paper, partly because newspapers which collaborated with the German occupier were banned for publication.

Apart from its main publication, Het Parool participated in magazinepublishers and a publisher of local newspapers in The Netherlands. Alongside Het Parool a string of locally based newspapers were set up like Het Rotterdamsch Parool (1947–1971), Nieuw Utrechtsch Dagblad, Haagsch Dagblad and in the eighties Het Flevoparool. They all ceased to exist in the late sixties, early seventies (het Flevoparool in 1988) to be absorbed in the main publication.

Readership reached its peak in the mid-1960s with a subscribtion of over 400,000, making it the second biggest newspaper in the Netherlands at that time. In the latter part of the 1960s, the newspaper under its conservative editor in chief Herman Sandberg supported the Vietnam War vehemently, which alienated a substantial part of its mainly liberal and leftwing readership. This started a steady decline in subscribtions and readership, which persisted for almost four decades.