Our pick of the latest military history books
MY SINS GO WITH ME
Author: Martin Sixsmith Publisher: Simon & Schuster Price: £22 (Hardback) Released: Out now
In 2019, author Martin Sixsmith met a 99 -year-old Dutch woman on a cruise ship. Her name was Anna-Maria van der Vaar t and as they spoke, she began to reveal details of her earlier life to him. How, as a young woman in 1940s Holland, she’d witnessed the Nazi invasion and had risked her life as a member of the Dutch Resistance.
While van der Vaart’s stories of hiding downed pilots and carrying out acts of sabotage were familiar enough to Sixsmith, her account contained a darker truth. One that revealed the true depth of Dutch support for the Nazis during the war. “The Dutch turned more Jews over to the Nazis than any other nation,” van der Vaart, told a stunned Sixsmith. “There were traitors in every resistance cell.”
Intrigued, Sixsmith set out to write a full account of what van der Vaart had told him, seeking to tell not only the story of the resistance but also the collaboration. The result is this fine, if somewhat unconventional book.
Although arranged chronologically and into chapters, Sixsmith’s version of events isn’t written as a continuous story. Instead, it’s presented as a series of linked vignettes made up of narrative non-fiction, eyewitness testimony or bits of official documentation. Interspersed throughout are photos as well as ephemera ranging from propaganda posters and identity cards to receipts for captured Jews.
The result is a dramatic, often intimate read that gradually unveils the truth. And, as political realities and personal dilemmas are brought into sharp focus, two distinct stories emerge, one that shows humanity at its best and the other at its worst. The first, of course, belongs to van den Vaart, her comrades and their courageous struggle against tyranny. The second deals with the scale and nature of the collaboration.
Almost as soon as the Nazis captured Holland they set about transforming Dutch life. As the country’s liberal and democratic institutions were swept away, its laws were altered and its values attacked. Dutch opposition to these changes was minimal – in fact, many welcomed the occupation. Within weeks, 90 per cent of the nation’s police officers had sworn allegiance to the new regime and as the propaganda flowed, many Dutch citizens bought into the myth of Aryan supremacy and joined their racist crusade. By the end of the war, no less than 50,000 Dutchmen had served in the Waffen SS, the highest number of volunteers from any occupied state. Many more Dutch citizens, meanwhile, betrayed resistance members in their own communities or willingly shopped their Jewish neighbours in return for a quick buck. And while all this was happening, the rest of the population seems to have largely turned a blind eye in the name of self-preser vation.
