Queen Wilhelmina, Heart and Soul of the Dutch Resistance
As ruler of the Netherlands for more than fifty years, Queen Wilhelmina was hardly an unknown figure in her country or the world. But the strong-willed monarch had virtually no power or authority: as the head of a constitutional monarchy, she was almost totally ignored by the Dutch government. All that changed when the Netherlands was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, and Wilhelmina escaped to London.
From there, she became the heart and soul of her country’s resistance, delivering passionate, fiery anti-Nazi broadcasts over the BBC to her people back home. Early in the war, the prime minister and several other members of the Dutch government-in-exile wanted to approach Hitler to seek a separate peace. Wilhelmina, as I write in Last Hope Island, was determined to fight on. After she informed the Dutch prime minister she had lost all confidence in him, he resigned and she appointed the only member of the government she thought shared her fierce hatred of the Nazis and determination to fight them to the end. Given the chance to exercise real leadership, Wilhelmina made the most of it. She stopped her defeatist government from capitulating, kept the Netherlands in the fight, and inspired and united her people. In doing all this, as one Dutch historian said, she “won a place in Dutch history second to none.”
