WEBVTT 00:00:06.115 --> 00:00:09.895 I'm Paul van Schoor, and in today's podcast, I'm speaking with Professor Rob 00:00:09.895 --> 00:00:13.855 van der Larsen about the cultural landscapes and competing memories involved in collaboration. 00:00:14.755 --> 00:00:19.615 Rob trained as a historian and in his research built bridges to cultural studies and anthropology. 00:00:20.255 --> 00:00:23.915 As Research Director of the Amsterdam School for Heritage and Memory Studies 00:00:23.915 --> 00:00:27.695 and Professor for War, Heritage and Memory at the University of Amsterdam, 00:00:28.035 --> 00:00:32.175 Rob takes a retrospective look at collaboration in the Netherlands during the 00:00:32.175 --> 00:00:33.535 period of the Second World War. 00:00:34.455 --> 00:00:38.175 So welcome, Rob. Great to have you here. Thank you, Paul. 00:00:39.355 --> 00:00:44.735 So Rob, maybe we could start with you giving us a quick sketch of your professional 00:00:44.735 --> 00:00:48.655 development that brought you to the point where you are today. 00:00:50.195 --> 00:00:55.195 You mean in collaboration? No, in general, just to understand a little bit the 00:00:55.195 --> 00:00:56.935 expertise that you bring to the discussion. 00:00:58.095 --> 00:01:01.955 I'm trained as a historian, and I worked actually for 20 years as a historian 00:01:01.955 --> 00:01:04.035 in the history department of the University of Amsterdam. 00:01:04.735 --> 00:01:10.215 And I've done a lot of things, broad periods and mostly theory, 00:01:10.415 --> 00:01:18.395 but also cultural history for long periods in Europe, in the Netherlands, etc. 00:01:19.035 --> 00:01:24.275 And from there, I moved into the cultural science department around 2000, 00:01:24.595 --> 00:01:26.035 which I found very interesting. 00:01:26.135 --> 00:01:29.035 I was a cultural historian, as I said, trained also as an anthropologist. 00:01:29.827 --> 00:01:33.607 And and there were a lot of new initiatives among them, for instance, 00:01:33.807 --> 00:01:36.307 media studies, which we founded at that time. 00:01:37.027 --> 00:01:41.887 I've been part of that of that department for, let's say, two years. 00:01:42.007 --> 00:01:47.967 And then I found some kind of new interest in in the yeah, let's say the whole 00:01:47.967 --> 00:01:55.087 fascination with the past, which you could find far outside history department at that time. 00:01:55.087 --> 00:01:59.527 Time, which of course we now all call heritage and memory, et cetera, 00:01:59.627 --> 00:02:02.407 which was quite new in the early 21st century. 00:02:03.007 --> 00:02:09.807 So I started at programs in master programs in heritage and memory studies and museum studies. 00:02:10.367 --> 00:02:16.607 And then we became a kind of apartment with restoration and conservation and curating expertise. 00:02:17.147 --> 00:02:21.187 Actually nowadays, a quite broad session, also part of the media studies, 00:02:21.327 --> 00:02:26.207 for instance, in archival sciences and in film studies. 00:02:26.787 --> 00:02:33.627 And then from all these expertise, we created a new kind of research institute 00:02:33.627 --> 00:02:37.347 called the Amsterdam School for Heritage and Memory and Material Culture, 00:02:37.667 --> 00:02:42.647 which is now one of the most advanced of the six faculty of humanity schools. 00:02:42.907 --> 00:02:48.427 It's completely facilitated and part of the faculty management structure. 00:02:48.927 --> 00:02:54.547 And after doing all that, I'm actually now moving in a sort of... 00:02:54.547 --> 00:02:57.007 I'm back to my earlier position. 00:02:57.307 --> 00:03:03.927 I'm now head of the Cultural Sciences Department, which actually needs some kind of refreshment. 00:03:04.427 --> 00:03:08.087 So they took the old guy like me to support that. 00:03:08.247 --> 00:03:13.007 That's basically my task now. But I have all the expertise, of course, 00:03:13.047 --> 00:03:15.007 in-house. And as you know, I'm. 00:03:15.559 --> 00:03:20.439 And also already from from at about 2000, 2010, in that period, 00:03:20.519 --> 00:03:22.099 we started large projects. 00:03:22.399 --> 00:03:26.339 And one of them, one of the largest was called Dynamics of Memory, 00:03:26.439 --> 00:03:29.499 was a big, broad NWO project in the Netherlands. 00:03:29.779 --> 00:03:34.859 Actually, some five years before, I already was a kind of advisor of the government, 00:03:35.119 --> 00:03:40.379 some government ministries of welfare and education, for instance. 00:03:40.379 --> 00:03:46.839 And um and in that um i was one of the advisors of the heritage of war program 00:03:46.839 --> 00:03:53.239 and from from that some huge national program in the netherlands started dynamics 00:03:53.239 --> 00:03:57.339 of memory which was which was broadly sponsored by all the ministries and by 00:03:57.339 --> 00:03:59.719 a lot of museums and heritage institutes and funds. 00:04:00.479 --> 00:04:06.979 And um and that brought me some for some five six years to let's say literally 00:04:06.979 --> 00:04:13.639 evaluating some 300 projects on new technology, digitization in particular. 00:04:14.679 --> 00:04:18.559 Which was absolutely new in 2005 by discussing that. 00:04:18.659 --> 00:04:24.119 The idea was actually that the war, the Second World War, was going with pension, as it was called. 00:04:24.319 --> 00:04:28.359 They would expect no new generation to be interested in that old stuff, 00:04:28.539 --> 00:04:33.479 so they said, yeah, we want to close actually those resistance museums and all that nonsense. 00:04:33.479 --> 00:04:40.099 And we have a sort of archive with the Red Cross, with the names of Red Cross victims. 00:04:40.439 --> 00:04:44.999 What can we do with it? Nielt at that time, the National Institute for War History, wasn't interested. 00:04:45.579 --> 00:04:48.879 And they said, well, there is some sort of fool at the University of Amsterdam 00:04:48.879 --> 00:04:50.919 who's interested in heritage. Go talk with him. 00:04:51.640 --> 00:04:56.940 Well, that became then the largest program ever created by Ministries Together 00:04:56.940 --> 00:04:58.820 in Science, the Heritage War Program. 00:04:59.700 --> 00:05:03.580 And we connected to NWO, which started Dynamics of Memory. 00:05:03.860 --> 00:05:07.600 And from that, everything changed slowly. 00:05:07.820 --> 00:05:11.020 I started international projects like Periscopes, for instance, 00:05:11.160 --> 00:05:12.400 which is still an existing network. 00:05:13.260 --> 00:05:16.840 Programs with Cambridge University, where they were also interested in heritage 00:05:16.840 --> 00:05:20.340 research. I've heard people like David Lowenthal at that time, 00:05:20.460 --> 00:05:23.400 a lot of expertise brought together. 00:05:23.560 --> 00:05:29.260 And that ended in the kind of collaboration with WeWork together, 00:05:29.480 --> 00:05:34.260 Paul, the assessing campscapes project, ICXS, which was a very interesting project. 00:05:35.100 --> 00:05:40.640 Here I funded an Horizon 2020, which brought together a lot of universities, 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:45.900 six European European universities and six campscapes, which grew, 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:51.380 of course, later on to some eight of each, and a lot of companies working in, 00:05:51.420 --> 00:05:55.280 especially also in fields of digital digitization and visualization. 00:05:56.580 --> 00:06:01.340 Well, there are other projects which I'm still in, working on, 00:06:02.200 --> 00:06:08.340 like on critical heritage, future of Europe, these kind of training programs. 00:06:09.220 --> 00:06:15.920 There is also a sort of, let's say, spin-off of this ICXS project, 00:06:16.140 --> 00:06:19.400 like Houses of Darkness, which worked with three of these campscapes together 00:06:19.400 --> 00:06:21.160 in visualization technology. 00:06:22.040 --> 00:06:28.400 So there's a lot being done, but there's also a lot still to collaborate, 00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:30.800 let's say, with future partners. 00:06:32.620 --> 00:06:36.240 You enter this discussion on collaboration, 00:06:36.580 --> 00:06:42.000 well prepared in the context of memory studies and conflict history, 00:06:42.280 --> 00:06:48.120 but what is collaboration and what purpose does it serve? 00:06:50.326 --> 00:06:53.326 Yeah, collaboration is, well, we know, of course, all about these collaborative 00:06:53.326 --> 00:06:55.986 research grants, like in Europe. 00:06:57.306 --> 00:07:01.046 Collaboration is a, well, let's say technically, it's an interesting Latin term, 00:07:01.126 --> 00:07:06.226 of course, which I think first became known in normal speech only in France 00:07:06.226 --> 00:07:09.946 at the end of the 19th century, the period of Ernst Renan, 00:07:10.206 --> 00:07:12.946 those nation-state building concepts, 00:07:13.346 --> 00:07:19.106 which means that collaboration was doing something bad. 00:07:19.106 --> 00:07:22.146 I mean, collaboration, we now see it as a positive term in Europe, 00:07:22.146 --> 00:07:25.306 as working together to achieve a lot of things like research. 00:07:25.766 --> 00:07:31.506 But collaboration had a long history already going back to this actually working 00:07:31.506 --> 00:07:32.866 with the enemy, you could say. 00:07:32.986 --> 00:07:36.486 It became very negative in the Netherlands. If people said to me, 00:07:36.606 --> 00:07:41.006 would you like to collaborate, then in the Dutch pronunciation, 00:07:41.446 --> 00:07:43.306 collaboratie, actually only 00:07:43.306 --> 00:07:46.886 means one thing, which is working with the enemy, the occupying forces. 00:07:47.686 --> 00:07:52.706 In a worse sense, that is, of course, now the nation state becomes less important. 00:07:53.026 --> 00:07:58.046 For many people now in our generation, it actually means working together in 00:07:58.046 --> 00:08:01.366 genocide processes or the Holocaust or something like that. 00:08:02.926 --> 00:08:05.786 Collaboration in that sense is a negative term in the Netherlands, 00:08:05.926 --> 00:08:09.886 but let's say the Anglo-Saxon and also in France, in the Anglo-Saxon culture, 00:08:10.086 --> 00:08:11.266 it has this double meaning. 00:08:12.206 --> 00:08:17.126 Some have found an escape on that. I think it's necessary sometimes to use that. 00:08:17.286 --> 00:08:21.166 We speak about collaboration and about collaborationism. 00:08:22.506 --> 00:08:24.846 Collaborationism is then what the Dutch called collaboratie. 00:08:25.866 --> 00:08:31.786 And collaboration is more what in Dutch language would be called samenwerking, working together. 00:08:32.946 --> 00:08:37.506 So in that sense, I think we can use the term collaboration in the European 00:08:37.506 --> 00:08:42.526 way. Well, knowing actually that some European countries with an occupying history 00:08:42.526 --> 00:08:46.106 have some sort of negative connotation with the term. 00:08:47.086 --> 00:08:52.406 But of course, this negative connotation is actually what you would mean with 00:08:52.406 --> 00:08:54.526 a concept like collaborationism. 00:08:54.726 --> 00:09:02.946 Could you unpack this a little bit with respect to these origins in the emergence of the nation state? 00:09:05.146 --> 00:09:10.226 Yeah, a nation-state is a 19th-century invention, although we, 00:09:10.306 --> 00:09:15.566 of course, as a historian, I can say, let's say, the department I was part of 00:09:15.566 --> 00:09:18.686 for some time was called the Dutch history, 00:09:19.766 --> 00:09:25.026 section, let's say, which means that every country in the world has since about 00:09:25.026 --> 00:09:31.146 1870, not before, chairs in national history. 00:09:32.006 --> 00:09:35.706 And how strange it seemed before then, there was no national history. 00:09:36.706 --> 00:09:40.746 There was a history, of course, a history of regions, of what was called states, 00:09:40.806 --> 00:09:42.586 also in a small country like the Netherlands. 00:09:42.806 --> 00:09:46.026 The term states was actually used for what we now call provinces. 00:09:47.130 --> 00:09:53.210 In Germany, you can still find the term states for the different duches, 00:09:53.310 --> 00:09:57.490 for example. The different parts of the country all had their own typical state 00:09:57.490 --> 00:10:00.810 organization, like you see also in the US, for instance. 00:10:01.090 --> 00:10:06.470 To call all that together a state, a nation, that is really a 19th century invention, 00:10:06.670 --> 00:10:08.770 starting, of course, in the late Romantics. 00:10:08.770 --> 00:10:12.090 After the French Revolution, you could say from, let's say, 00:10:12.130 --> 00:10:17.610 the 1820s, 1830s, there was this general idea that people were not living together 00:10:17.610 --> 00:10:23.530 simply because there was a king or an emperor or whatever who brought or created 00:10:23.530 --> 00:10:31.610 a kind of structure of all these different smaller noble estates or something like that. 00:10:31.610 --> 00:10:36.290 But there was also a kind of natural cooperation between people. 00:10:36.390 --> 00:10:41.210 There you see already a term like cooperation to drop off. 00:10:42.170 --> 00:10:45.810 And that idea is that people shared something, like a language, 00:10:45.910 --> 00:10:49.550 for instance, like a history, like a past. 00:10:50.590 --> 00:10:55.730 So, to create this kind of culture, this imagined community, 00:10:55.970 --> 00:11:00.990 as Benedict Anderson would call it, that really means you have to invent a history, 00:11:01.110 --> 00:11:03.730 which explains later on when this 00:11:03.730 --> 00:11:08.350 nationalism became more rigid and more competitive in a European context, 00:11:08.490 --> 00:11:11.310 especially between countries like Germany and France, for instance, 00:11:11.750 --> 00:11:16.170 that these histories became, let's say, were rewritten. 00:11:16.330 --> 00:11:20.230 They were rewritten in a national context, in a national dynamic. 00:11:20.710 --> 00:11:24.910 Now, how remarkable this is, that when we started, for instance, 00:11:25.010 --> 00:11:27.110 Dynamics of Memory as a European project, 00:11:27.550 --> 00:11:33.130 that I was one of the co-editors of a volume, which we started with the idea 00:11:33.130 --> 00:11:37.070 that we tried to find out how this history of the Second World War, 00:11:37.310 --> 00:11:42.550 I mean, we talk about a world World War and the Holocaust were actually completely 00:11:42.550 --> 00:11:46.290 written in a different narrative in all these European countries. 00:11:47.302 --> 00:11:52.422 And that is quite remarkable. It means that even international phenomena are 00:11:52.422 --> 00:11:56.622 in Europe still up to today being understood from a national frame. 00:11:57.622 --> 00:12:00.542 And that has to do with the invention of the nation state. 00:12:00.762 --> 00:12:03.862 And this nation state, you could say, formally it's invention, 00:12:04.142 --> 00:12:06.722 let's say, at about 1813, 1815. 00:12:06.942 --> 00:12:11.642 But as a cultural concept with this notion of history that people felt to belong 00:12:11.642 --> 00:12:14.702 to each other, that dates from at about 1870. 00:12:15.062 --> 00:12:16.642 From that period on... 00:12:17.302 --> 00:12:23.042 What did the term really describe in that sense? 00:12:23.262 --> 00:12:28.862 Was it the identification of an individual with an opposing nation state, 00:12:29.162 --> 00:12:32.582 like in some sort of, in terms of an identity? 00:12:33.162 --> 00:12:35.862 So what purpose did it serve when it arose? 00:12:38.482 --> 00:12:42.362 Yeah, the remarkable thing is that people started to identify, 00:12:42.542 --> 00:12:45.942 of course, with a culture, which was originally a regional culture. 00:12:45.942 --> 00:12:48.402 And then it became nationalized. 00:12:49.402 --> 00:12:52.862 So in these different parts of one country, they're found to be friends. 00:12:53.702 --> 00:12:57.982 For instance, it's a great book written with an American historian, 00:12:58.202 --> 00:13:03.242 Eugene Weber, who called the title of the book is From Peasants into Friendsmen. 00:13:03.502 --> 00:13:07.042 And this whole process starts in 1870 and ends in 1914. 00:13:07.042 --> 00:13:12.062 So, you see, very late, French people who spoke all kinds of different patois, 00:13:12.062 --> 00:13:16.282 different dialects, were trained by the same school system, etc., 00:13:16.282 --> 00:13:18.862 to feel themselves French in the first instance. 00:13:19.942 --> 00:13:23.682 Now, that happened in many countries. And what happened is not only that they 00:13:23.682 --> 00:13:27.022 felt themselves to belong to one country, which is a nation, 00:13:27.142 --> 00:13:29.682 but also connected that to a state. 00:13:29.862 --> 00:13:33.762 So, the nation became a nation state. They became loyal to a state, 00:13:33.942 --> 00:13:39.262 which means that people started to fight for that state as in an army. 00:13:39.542 --> 00:13:43.942 Conscription armies also date only from after 1870. 00:13:44.709 --> 00:13:48.189 So only the First World War was the first moment that you could say that labor 00:13:48.189 --> 00:13:52.009 classes went to war, which was a tragedy, by the way, of course, 00:13:52.009 --> 00:13:56.269 because socialism was international at that time and couldn't expect it to happen. 00:13:56.269 --> 00:14:00.549 But what you see already then in 1914, the First World War was not only a clash 00:14:00.549 --> 00:14:08.449 between France and Germany, it was actually also already then the disaster of socialism, 00:14:08.549 --> 00:14:14.069 because it made perfectly clear to all the nation states that nationalism had won, 00:14:14.189 --> 00:14:16.429 that nationalism was stronger than socialism. 00:14:16.429 --> 00:14:20.809 Now, one guy, as we know, was very clever in understanding that the combination 00:14:20.809 --> 00:14:27.529 of these two, national socialism, was, of course, the winning formula. Exactly. 00:14:28.509 --> 00:14:33.429 Yeah, exactly. That is what happened. But let's say what you see from 1870 on 00:14:33.429 --> 00:14:38.269 and after this First World War is that people became more and more loyal to a state. 00:14:38.369 --> 00:14:43.489 They paid their taxes, which was completely, absolutely not done in the 19th 00:14:43.489 --> 00:14:46.649 century still. I mean, this is a very recent invention. 00:14:46.989 --> 00:14:51.129 And after the Second World War only, we created this welfare state that the 00:14:51.129 --> 00:14:53.249 state took care of all these people. 00:14:54.489 --> 00:14:58.949 But can we look under the hood? Can we look under the hood of this in terms 00:14:58.949 --> 00:15:02.189 of what are then the underlying features, right? 00:15:02.249 --> 00:15:08.469 So what defines that collaboration with the nation state? state. 00:15:09.509 --> 00:15:15.709 Yeah, that is the collaboration. The remarkable thing is that collaboration 00:15:15.709 --> 00:15:20.349 is actually what happened in behavior between the relationship between state 00:15:20.349 --> 00:15:22.229 and citizen became that of collaboration. 00:15:23.749 --> 00:15:28.729 But during the First World War and more especially during the Second World War, 00:15:28.869 --> 00:15:32.929 collaboration, which was already a phenomenon, which was actually the basis 00:15:32.929 --> 00:15:37.529 of the modern nation-state, suddenly became a negative concept. 00:15:38.129 --> 00:15:45.329 Because it means collaboration became working together as citizens or as states with occupying powers. 00:15:46.069 --> 00:15:50.049 So it means actually that you were collaborating with the occupier. 00:15:50.549 --> 00:15:54.749 And that had everything to do, of course, with the invention of the nation state. 00:15:54.749 --> 00:16:00.109 Because, let's say, in the 16th, 17th, 18th century, when a country was occupied, 00:16:00.569 --> 00:16:07.949 it was completely normal to collaborate with a new state, with a new authority. 00:16:08.289 --> 00:16:11.549 That was the general way everything works. 00:16:12.609 --> 00:16:15.949 Now, officially, this was even still so in the Second World War. 00:16:15.949 --> 00:16:19.769 When the Dutch government, for instance, took exile in London. 00:16:21.069 --> 00:16:25.109 They let know to the Dutch administration that they had to collaborate, 00:16:26.264 --> 00:16:31.104 with the German occupier. That was official policy and legitimized. 00:16:31.324 --> 00:16:36.284 So that happened. All these local and regional government institutes worked 00:16:36.284 --> 00:16:38.304 together with the Germans as if nothing had changed. 00:16:38.404 --> 00:16:43.524 They took over the national government, of course, appointed their own, 00:16:44.104 --> 00:16:51.404 fascist collaborators, so to say, in central crucial administrative position, 00:16:51.404 --> 00:16:56.104 But all the others, the thousands, ten thousands of others, including school 00:16:56.104 --> 00:16:58.764 teachers, et cetera, everyone stayed in business. 00:16:59.364 --> 00:17:02.164 And after the war, of course, we're accused of collaboration. 00:17:02.924 --> 00:17:06.844 I think also at economic collaboration, but in a certain way, 00:17:06.864 --> 00:17:08.144 even taxpaying was collaboration. 00:17:08.524 --> 00:17:12.624 Now, this is a sort of absurdity because collaboration was the normal way of 00:17:12.624 --> 00:17:13.884 working together in the state. 00:17:13.884 --> 00:17:19.004 But because of this negative impact of occupation, which was in many countries 00:17:19.004 --> 00:17:24.224 new in the sense that in many countries, nation states, let's say, before that was normal. 00:17:24.284 --> 00:17:29.084 But after the nation state, it was generally they only worked together with a nation state. 00:17:29.464 --> 00:17:33.364 So working together with an enemy nation state then became a negative concept, 00:17:33.624 --> 00:17:35.644 became a kind of treason. 00:17:35.644 --> 00:17:40.284 But because it was, on the other hand, completely legitimate behavior, 00:17:40.864 --> 00:17:46.324 up to today, among historians, there's a big debate about what actually collaboration is. 00:17:46.484 --> 00:17:50.844 Because economic collaboration or administrative collaboration at a certain 00:17:50.844 --> 00:17:52.564 level is completely normal. 00:17:52.724 --> 00:17:55.824 Without that, there would exist chaos. 00:17:56.124 --> 00:18:00.004 So to let trains do their work, et cetera, you need a kind of collaboration. 00:18:00.004 --> 00:18:05.124 But when the trains are transporting Jews to Auschwitz or Westerbork Auschwitz 00:18:05.124 --> 00:18:10.424 in the Netherlands, then this economic normal collaboration suddenly becomes 00:18:10.424 --> 00:18:13.364 a kind of morally wrong collaboration. 00:18:14.498 --> 00:18:18.738 Now, that's a debate which, after the Second World War, actually was not that strong. 00:18:18.938 --> 00:18:22.578 There were some kinds of, let's say, investigation communities. 00:18:22.918 --> 00:18:25.658 But how strange it is, let's say for France, for instance. 00:18:26.018 --> 00:18:31.818 We now, today, would say Vichy France was one group of collaborationists. 00:18:32.138 --> 00:18:35.638 I mean, these people were ideologically not going in resistance. 00:18:35.898 --> 00:18:41.738 They were actually serving the German occupying state. But because Vichy France, by the Germans, 00:18:41.998 --> 00:18:47.918 was given the illusion of being the continuation of a free France state, 00:18:48.158 --> 00:18:54.678 after 1944, when the Allied forces invaded France and liberated it from the Germans, 00:18:55.078 --> 00:19:01.358 Vichy immediately changed position and said, ah, we are still free. We didn't collaborate. 00:19:01.558 --> 00:19:04.938 So we now immediately start finding the collaborationists. 00:19:05.578 --> 00:19:08.438 Those people who ideologically were working for the Germans, 00:19:08.578 --> 00:19:11.938 thousands of them were already trialed in Vichy France. 00:19:12.218 --> 00:19:14.978 It's now forgotten because this is the wrong kind of memory, 00:19:15.138 --> 00:19:18.298 because now for us, whole Vichy France was actually collaborating. 00:19:18.918 --> 00:19:25.758 So I see that even after the Second World War, the term collaboration has changed extremely. 00:19:26.238 --> 00:19:30.918 I remember even from my own duty, for instance, that we had trials of those 00:19:30.918 --> 00:19:34.338 project developers working for the Germans in building the Atlantic Wall. 00:19:34.938 --> 00:19:40.498 They were not regarded in the end as collaborationists, because the general 00:19:40.498 --> 00:19:44.858 idea was actually they did a good job by giving the Germans the illusions that 00:19:44.858 --> 00:19:49.498 they worked for them with Dutch people who didn't have to go then to Germany, etc. 00:19:50.598 --> 00:19:54.698 So it was a kind of Robin Hood kind of, it was almost resistance. 00:19:54.698 --> 00:19:59.418 But you have two dimensions popping up here, right? 00:19:59.438 --> 00:20:03.338 Because that means on the one hand, there is a tension between collaboration, 00:20:03.818 --> 00:20:07.718 which seems to suggest some form of free will, and coercion, 00:20:07.718 --> 00:20:09.738 like you cannot do anything else. 00:20:09.738 --> 00:20:15.418 And then there seems to be a very decisive element of a moral judgment, 00:20:15.498 --> 00:20:21.978 which again, of course, is linked to whatever the root of history is at that point in time. 00:20:22.038 --> 00:20:24.758 So first is linked with coercion. 00:20:25.738 --> 00:20:29.818 In some sense, you could say, look, if I work within the context of a nation 00:20:29.818 --> 00:20:36.118 state, you might describe my engagement as collaboration, but there's nothing 00:20:36.118 --> 00:20:40.318 else I can do. I'm essentially coerced into going along, right? 00:20:40.418 --> 00:20:44.258 So how should we disentangle these two elements? 00:20:45.412 --> 00:20:53.392 And, yeah, let's say in trials, for instance, this term collaboration is still the general term used. 00:20:53.612 --> 00:21:01.332 That means that you always have to deal with the complexity that economic or 00:21:01.332 --> 00:21:06.992 administrative collaboration in a certain way is held on the same level as ideological collaboration, 00:21:07.372 --> 00:21:10.312 being a camp guard, for instance, or something like that. 00:21:10.312 --> 00:21:14.932 Or better said, that a camp guard or a camp commander would always position 00:21:14.932 --> 00:21:19.452 himself as being actually only the administrative collaborator. 00:21:19.672 --> 00:21:24.312 If I wasn't there, someone much worse than me would probably have taken over 00:21:24.312 --> 00:21:27.072 because I'm not anti-Semite or whatever. 00:21:27.592 --> 00:21:32.152 I'm not even pro-German or whatever. I did my job. on. 00:21:32.492 --> 00:21:40.372 And so that's the general idea everywhere in all occupied European countries was we were experts. 00:21:40.532 --> 00:21:43.472 We were asked. We did our best job. We were neutral. 00:21:44.212 --> 00:21:46.632 We were Fachleute, to say it in German. 00:21:48.132 --> 00:21:53.672 And that is possible. I mean, it's possible to use the term in that way as if 00:21:53.672 --> 00:21:58.952 you You were simply still in the normal existing collaboration with your own state. 00:22:00.812 --> 00:22:08.612 But because there was also resistance and resistance was something working against that state, 00:22:08.852 --> 00:22:15.972 there has been, let's say, a moment to see this occupying state no longer as a legitimate state. 00:22:16.252 --> 00:22:19.812 So that was a state with in the end laws. That's always a good thing, 00:22:19.872 --> 00:22:22.892 of course, when the state, when it would have won the war, Germany, 00:22:23.052 --> 00:22:24.712 we wouldn't have this debate, of course. 00:22:24.932 --> 00:22:27.412 So it's all relative, let's say, history. 00:22:28.432 --> 00:22:33.012 But it's also a moral dimension. That is, in resistance is already a moral, 00:22:33.052 --> 00:22:37.052 a political moral dimension of being a good patriot or not. 00:22:37.272 --> 00:22:43.372 I mean, in many countries, they were called, let's say, fighters for martyrs 00:22:43.372 --> 00:22:45.652 for the nation, even on all the monuments. 00:22:46.272 --> 00:22:51.152 Monuments and partisans. And the problem is, of course, that also national socialists 00:22:51.152 --> 00:22:55.612 collaborating with the Germans, even fighting against the Russians, for instance, 00:22:55.872 --> 00:23:05.732 in the Russian wars in Eastern Germany and Russia, were also keeping themselves for being patriots. 00:23:06.568 --> 00:23:12.568 They also call themselves partisans sometimes. The craziness is that there is 00:23:12.568 --> 00:23:17.308 almost nothing to divide because this is, again, if you think back at the First World War, 00:23:17.548 --> 00:23:21.848 you could say this is the kind of nationalism that won that war. 00:23:21.848 --> 00:23:25.828 And that nationalism could be seen as very strongly focused on those countries 00:23:25.828 --> 00:23:29.528 occupied, you're a partisan where you fight against the occupier, 00:23:29.648 --> 00:23:34.768 but it could also be ideologically transmitted to fighting for that country 00:23:34.768 --> 00:23:36.508 which had the best national ideas. 00:23:37.568 --> 00:23:42.568 Let's say the national socialists who had better ideas than the communists. 00:23:42.608 --> 00:23:47.928 So fighting against Dutch communists would then be a patriot thing to do. 00:23:48.708 --> 00:23:55.748 Now, in that sense, terms like collaborations were very difficult to use in trials. 00:23:56.508 --> 00:23:59.628 And you see them used very much in public debates because there's always this 00:23:59.628 --> 00:24:02.788 moral dimension that in some way it's bad. 00:24:03.148 --> 00:24:07.668 And it gets a new kind of dimension after the 1970s, 00:24:08.188 --> 00:24:14.428 80s with the Holocaust narrative Because then it's no longer only working for the occupying country, 00:24:14.648 --> 00:24:20.648 whatever you think about that, but it's also being part of the SS or supporting 00:24:20.648 --> 00:24:27.288 by whatever, even if you were only, let's say, exploiting labor camps, for instance, 00:24:27.488 --> 00:24:34.608 like some that's almost government organizations have done, the Heidemaatschappij, the Moor Company. 00:24:34.608 --> 00:24:39.428 Company, these created a lot of these camps in which Jews, for instance, 00:24:39.628 --> 00:24:47.148 were already having to work before the deportations to the extermination camps started. 00:24:47.268 --> 00:24:49.208 All that kind of collaboration. 00:24:50.679 --> 00:24:56.239 Has been reviewed, you could say, reframed from the perspective that we know 00:24:56.239 --> 00:24:57.239 what happened afterwards. 00:24:57.519 --> 00:25:02.899 We know in the end where it leaded to. And that makes collaboration, again, morally wrong. 00:25:03.179 --> 00:25:06.659 And that is now the general, let's say, the general opinion, 00:25:06.799 --> 00:25:10.619 I think, which is shared by most Dutch people, at least, and most French people. 00:25:10.779 --> 00:25:16.219 But that seems to be more a colloquial, informal definition because you also 00:25:16.219 --> 00:25:19.619 highlighted already that in the actual court cases, 00:25:20.719 --> 00:25:23.679 apparently as a concept it didn't hold 00:25:23.679 --> 00:25:26.759 so can you can you explain that was it really rejected 00:25:26.759 --> 00:25:33.059 offhand was it investigated and yeah but you saw immediately after the war was 00:25:33.059 --> 00:25:38.039 of course that collaborators that the term was immediately used for for treasoners 00:25:38.039 --> 00:25:42.399 um national treasons of the nation you could say what in dutch is called land 00:25:42.399 --> 00:25:45.959 for others um these were generally called collaborators, 00:25:46.919 --> 00:25:49.719 and they were sent then to the camps. 00:25:49.839 --> 00:25:54.979 When the Jews were liberated from the camps, you could say, the National Socialists 00:25:54.979 --> 00:26:00.399 and this specific group of collaborators were immediately sent and turned to 00:26:00.399 --> 00:26:01.839 these former concentration camps. 00:26:03.439 --> 00:26:07.079 But in the end, you see that almost all trials failed. 00:26:07.659 --> 00:26:11.159 Because, yeah, what is a collaborator? I mean, a member of a National Socialist 00:26:11.159 --> 00:26:16.339 Party, it's clear that you're You aren't ideologically collaborating with that regime. 00:26:16.579 --> 00:26:19.759 That is possible, even if you personally never collaborated. 00:26:19.999 --> 00:26:21.779 I mean, it happened quite often. 00:26:22.539 --> 00:26:25.839 Let's say small farmers, for instance, in some parts of the country, 00:26:25.959 --> 00:26:30.419 who for whatever reasons became a member of an organization that actually became 00:26:30.419 --> 00:26:31.799 a National Socialist organization, 00:26:32.339 --> 00:26:36.599 were, of course, accused of ideological collaboration, although they never probably 00:26:36.599 --> 00:26:40.919 ever worked for any German organization or did anything in that sense wrong. 00:26:40.919 --> 00:26:45.899 But those people who actually collaborated would say, okay, we collaborated 00:26:45.899 --> 00:26:49.939 because we had a position already before the war in the state apparatus. 00:26:50.994 --> 00:26:54.394 And we continue to do that because we wanted to keep the country together. 00:26:54.814 --> 00:26:58.954 And we were legitimized by the government in London. I mean, 00:26:58.954 --> 00:27:00.974 we actually collaborated for them. 00:27:01.994 --> 00:27:09.494 So that is very, very difficult to explain that there is something. What is the graduation? 00:27:10.234 --> 00:27:15.794 You can do that only at the moment when you really find proof that people also 00:27:15.794 --> 00:27:17.014 ideologically collaborated. 00:27:17.014 --> 00:27:21.814 So, when this collaboration ended in, let's say, a membership of a National 00:27:21.814 --> 00:27:26.294 Socialist Party or organization, okay, then you could say, now we know that 00:27:26.294 --> 00:27:28.514 you actually worked for the occupier. 00:27:29.154 --> 00:27:34.214 But this is, you can see, this is not a general way to fight. 00:27:34.214 --> 00:27:40.874 However, there were also cases against so-called traitors, Dutch citizens who 00:27:40.874 --> 00:27:46.014 actually directly worked for, let's say, the German Secret Service, 00:27:46.154 --> 00:27:51.214 the Gestapo, to infiltrate, let's say, resistance movements and get people arrested. 00:27:51.394 --> 00:27:54.334 These were cases that really also led to convictions. 00:27:54.894 --> 00:28:02.174 Yeah. And those cases, were these also seen collaborators or was that then called treason? 00:28:03.571 --> 00:28:07.731 Yeah, because these people, collaboration is only possible when you have a position 00:28:07.731 --> 00:28:13.391 already in the state apparatus on whatever level, and then you start collaborating with the enemy. 00:28:13.811 --> 00:28:18.691 Let's say a government, well, let's say Denmark, for instance, 00:28:18.871 --> 00:28:21.411 or Norway, these governments who stay there, 00:28:21.671 --> 00:28:25.971 Belgium in a certain way, these governments collaborated with the Germans, 00:28:26.171 --> 00:28:31.931 the Balkans, for instance, the Ustasha regime or the Ukrainian nationalists, they collaborated. 00:28:33.571 --> 00:28:39.431 But if you start making a career as a secret agent without having a position 00:28:39.431 --> 00:28:46.671 before in the Netherlands, you could say you're just only your workforce for an enemy organization. 00:28:47.591 --> 00:28:53.271 So that is treason. Then you are in the service of another country's, 00:28:53.271 --> 00:28:59.191 of the occupier, let's say the occupier's military or police organization. 00:28:59.191 --> 00:29:04.611 But that is a strange concept, because the same concept is also used against 00:29:04.611 --> 00:29:10.551 communists who went in the 1930s to Spain to fight against the fascists. 00:29:10.591 --> 00:29:15.311 They lost their citizenship in the Netherlands, and they only received it back, 00:29:15.491 --> 00:29:18.511 some of them only in the 1970s. 00:29:19.011 --> 00:29:23.731 Even though they were active resistance fighters during the Second World War, 00:29:23.951 --> 00:29:28.171 you couldn't be more patriot than that, you could say, but they never earned that back. 00:29:28.171 --> 00:29:32.471 And they lost their jobs, actually, to National Socialists who came back from 00:29:32.471 --> 00:29:39.411 the camps in the early 50s or the late 40s, because then Cold War started. 00:29:39.911 --> 00:29:45.871 And also because of that, they were still not held for trustful citizens. 00:29:45.871 --> 00:29:52.831 So, collaboration can take very, very strange ways, but also this kind of treason 00:29:52.831 --> 00:29:56.151 because these people were also accused of having been served, 00:29:56.451 --> 00:30:02.891 not an enemy state, but simply a foreign state and fought against the Germans, 00:30:02.951 --> 00:30:06.671 which was still, before the Second World War, still a befriended nation. 00:30:06.671 --> 00:30:17.051 So, if you fought against German army, for instance, in Spain in 1936 to 1938 or whatever. 00:30:18.100 --> 00:30:21.740 Then you were actually fighting in the service of a Spanish government, 00:30:21.880 --> 00:30:25.260 although officially Spain was a befriended nation, the Republic. 00:30:25.800 --> 00:30:28.960 The Netherlands, for instance, forgot that and said, OK, no, 00:30:29.020 --> 00:30:31.680 but you were fighting against our Germans and that's a befriended nation. 00:30:32.080 --> 00:30:36.700 So you see, this concept is also absolutely weird. 00:30:37.160 --> 00:30:40.820 And there is another way, of course, to escape it. Let's say many of these people 00:30:40.820 --> 00:30:46.240 working for the Germans, police people or whatever, after the war, 00:30:46.420 --> 00:30:48.160 they simply went to Germany. 00:30:48.200 --> 00:30:50.960 If these people lived in Groningen, for instance, or in Asche, 00:30:51.100 --> 00:30:57.320 near the German frontier, or in Limburg, they simply had to move 50 kilometers. 00:30:57.980 --> 00:31:02.540 And they lived in Germany. And many of them, most of them have now, of course, died. 00:31:02.980 --> 00:31:08.840 But let's say up to not too long ago, many of them lived there in a completely normal life. 00:31:09.340 --> 00:31:13.540 They had a death sentence or whatever in the Netherlands. But the Netherlands 00:31:13.540 --> 00:31:18.020 was not able to catch them because the German government were not allowing them 00:31:18.020 --> 00:31:19.940 to deliver them to the Dutch state. 00:31:20.760 --> 00:31:26.080 And that is, I mean, this is another case of the complexity of what it means. 00:31:26.800 --> 00:31:30.480 Collaboration for, let's say the Germans would say they collaborated in a positive 00:31:30.480 --> 00:31:33.820 way for us. They collaborated in the interface. 00:31:34.120 --> 00:31:38.820 But in the Netherlands, the collaboration was not the worst thing. 00:31:38.820 --> 00:31:41.900 You could not be trialed very seriously for collaboration. 00:31:43.380 --> 00:31:49.680 It was more what actually they did, that was working for a foreign occupying organization. 00:31:50.860 --> 00:31:57.140 And let's say, be taken part in killings of resistance fighters, for instance. 00:31:57.360 --> 00:32:00.300 That was most of the job which they were accused of. 00:32:00.300 --> 00:32:06.680 Right. But now, if you step back from the nation-state perspective in collaboration, 00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:13.020 then defining features are, for instance, shared goals, right? 00:32:13.080 --> 00:32:17.380 Entities, agents can collaborate because there's a shared goal. 00:32:18.260 --> 00:32:22.560 But now in this context, there's an asymmetry because we speak of a nation-state 00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:27.500 or the idea of a nation-state and all its organizations and an individual. 00:32:28.300 --> 00:32:33.040 So would you think also in that context there's still a sense of a shared goal, 00:32:33.760 --> 00:32:36.040 or should we just redefine that. 00:32:37.501 --> 00:32:42.121 That's a good question, Paul, because the strange thing of the concept is also 00:32:42.121 --> 00:32:43.401 that it's used for states, 00:32:43.601 --> 00:32:49.121 governments collaborating with the occupying countries or collaborating not 00:32:49.121 --> 00:32:52.741 with an occupying country, but with the access countries, for example, 00:32:52.741 --> 00:32:54.981 by the promise of being independent, 00:32:55.221 --> 00:33:00.261 like VC regime or like some of the Eastern European countries or Denmark. 00:33:01.281 --> 00:33:06.061 Denmark delivered its Jews, for instance, on the promise of being independent. 00:33:06.301 --> 00:33:08.581 And even social democrats were in the governments there. 00:33:09.241 --> 00:33:12.961 I mean, they also delivered the communists. That was good for the social democrats 00:33:12.961 --> 00:33:14.941 because they were competitors, of course. 00:33:15.641 --> 00:33:21.741 You see, collaboration on the government level was also quite normal and usual during wartime. 00:33:22.201 --> 00:33:26.081 But, of course, we generally used the term in the Netherlands, 00:33:26.261 --> 00:33:28.181 for instance, collaboration, not on that level. 00:33:28.761 --> 00:33:34.181 Although this is probably the only level which you can really use it in a neutral 00:33:34.181 --> 00:33:39.461 way, let's say, because this is something which you really can define. 00:33:40.841 --> 00:33:45.861 But generally, in public speech, the term is mostly used for this citizenship, 00:33:46.241 --> 00:33:49.601 these citizens who collaborate with the enemy. 00:33:50.341 --> 00:33:54.861 And there it becomes blurred because what's collaboration for one citizen is 00:33:54.861 --> 00:33:58.861 not collaboration for another citizen. For instance, the famous case of the 00:33:58.861 --> 00:34:03.801 major in wartime, the burgemeester in the oorlog. 00:34:04.021 --> 00:34:10.621 This is just the Dutch concept to make clear how problematic some things could be. 00:34:11.261 --> 00:34:16.621 Suppose you're a burgemeester, you're a major of a small village or a larger town, 00:34:17.581 --> 00:34:21.901 and people want you to stay because they trust you during this occupation, 00:34:21.901 --> 00:34:27.781 and they know that you can probably help to, let's say, to moderate the situation. 00:34:29.221 --> 00:34:31.701 Which is actually, of course, based on negotiations. 00:34:33.001 --> 00:34:38.441 Then after the war, formally, you could be accused, and they have been accused, of collaboration. 00:34:39.401 --> 00:34:44.641 Now, this was, in that sense, not ideological collaboration and not morally 00:34:44.641 --> 00:34:51.541 wrong, Because they probably, some of them even, hid a lot of Jews, 00:34:51.761 --> 00:34:54.081 for instance, and they supported that. 00:34:54.981 --> 00:34:59.901 Of course, others were ideologically wrong. They were really collaborating in 00:34:59.901 --> 00:35:02.381 the sense that they worked the other way around, but these were mostly appointed 00:35:02.381 --> 00:35:03.561 by the occupying regime. 00:35:04.607 --> 00:35:07.847 Now you see that even their collaboration already is blurred, 00:35:08.047 --> 00:35:09.987 but what happens with all these cases, 00:35:10.187 --> 00:35:14.087 let's say a famous case is the Jewish Council, the Yotzerat, 00:35:14.107 --> 00:35:16.467 the Jewish Council, that the 00:35:16.467 --> 00:35:22.307 Germans invented based on some members of the Jewish elite in Amsterdam, 00:35:22.667 --> 00:35:28.147 famous among the Jews themselves, already before the war in support in German 00:35:28.147 --> 00:35:29.847 Jews, for instance, refugee camps. 00:35:29.847 --> 00:35:34.747 They were also, of course, those people who created Westerbork in that sense, 00:35:34.847 --> 00:35:37.247 originally as a German Jewish refugee camp. 00:35:37.567 --> 00:35:41.247 Now, these people became then appointed by the Germans after the occupation 00:35:41.247 --> 00:35:45.507 as representing the Jews in the Netherlands, in particular in Amsterdam. 00:35:45.507 --> 00:35:48.787 Them and um and slowly they 00:35:48.787 --> 00:35:52.287 became instead of representing became collaborating 00:35:52.287 --> 00:35:55.267 in making the list in in 00:35:55.267 --> 00:36:02.387 in registration in selecting those people to be sent to the camps every time 00:36:02.387 --> 00:36:06.867 at every new step with the idea now yeah we take this this thousand for for 00:36:06.867 --> 00:36:11.867 this week and maybe then we save some 500 others up to the moment that no one 00:36:11.867 --> 00:36:14.387 was left and they had to be sent themselves to the camps. 00:36:17.407 --> 00:36:22.767 But this is an important step, right? Because that means the German occupier 00:36:22.767 --> 00:36:30.987 put in motion a process where they also engineered this collaboration as you just described it. 00:36:31.127 --> 00:36:34.107 Would you agree with that? This was an engineered process? 00:36:34.787 --> 00:36:40.587 This is exactly what it was and it shows the cleverness of the German occupier. 00:36:41.647 --> 00:36:47.027 I mean, I mean, what I always want to make clear to students and colleagues 00:36:47.027 --> 00:36:54.967 is that fascism has nothing to do with primitivism or with backwardness or with 00:36:54.967 --> 00:36:57.367 people who are against change and, 00:36:57.487 --> 00:37:01.047 you know, what you often find also now in interpretation of populism. 00:37:01.107 --> 00:37:05.327 These are those people who, like with Brexit, for instance, who don't want to 00:37:05.327 --> 00:37:07.027 be part of Europe because it's modern. No. 00:37:07.807 --> 00:37:14.347 National socialism, like fascism in Italy, were extremely modernist and extremely 00:37:14.347 --> 00:37:19.007 supported by people like us, for instance, by intellectuals, 00:37:19.007 --> 00:37:22.247 by professors, by political powers. 00:37:23.387 --> 00:37:28.187 There was a lot of knowledge here, and they knew very, very well how to deal and how to occupy. 00:37:28.427 --> 00:37:33.227 They were really experts, maybe brilliant experts, and maybe the best occupiers 00:37:33.227 --> 00:37:37.687 ever existed. I mean, they did everything faster than the Roman Empire, 00:37:37.907 --> 00:37:38.847 for instance, than Napoleon. 00:37:40.227 --> 00:37:45.987 What they did was unbelievable. I mean, it's not comparable to anything on a world scale. 00:37:47.867 --> 00:37:54.847 And it could have been successful if not some stupid mistakes were made in the end. 00:37:55.727 --> 00:37:59.227 But, I mean, successful in their own terms. For us, it would be disastrous. 00:38:00.147 --> 00:38:02.207 So, also in this whole... 00:38:03.644 --> 00:38:05.144 Let's say what they created was 00:38:05.144 --> 00:38:09.724 Jewish self-destruction, a system that you give the illusion to people. 00:38:09.864 --> 00:38:16.424 And this is exactly collaboration, like that we would be invited in Europe to 00:38:16.424 --> 00:38:20.324 work together with some other groups in a collaborative project. 00:38:20.624 --> 00:38:24.864 But actually, the collaborative project is selecting ourselves, 00:38:25.084 --> 00:38:31.404 possibly, to send yourself into a kind of unknown destruction machine. 00:38:31.664 --> 00:38:35.364 But you don't know it yourself. You think you're actually doing the right thing. 00:38:35.504 --> 00:38:40.384 Maybe in a certain way you think, well, maybe it is better for Jews to live 00:38:40.384 --> 00:38:46.124 somewhere in a new state like Israel, but then in the East, let's say. 00:38:46.824 --> 00:38:51.444 By all these strange illusions, I mean, there were so many plans also in the Netherlands. 00:38:51.704 --> 00:38:56.244 Why not sending the Jews to Suriname, for instance, where they had so many of these plans? 00:38:57.364 --> 00:39:03.564 What's the mechanics here? So May 40, German invasion in Holland. 00:39:04.204 --> 00:39:08.924 Then they wait quite a while, actually, before they really start to ramp up 00:39:08.924 --> 00:39:12.264 this process of engineering collaboration. 00:39:12.964 --> 00:39:18.364 So what, in your mind, are then the key steps in that process that led to, 00:39:18.424 --> 00:39:22.404 in that sense, the auto-destruction of the Jews? 00:39:23.324 --> 00:39:27.864 These key steps were taken very slowly. Yeah, that is, of course, 00:39:27.864 --> 00:39:33.924 everyone from now looking back, you could say, why were people not immediately 00:39:33.924 --> 00:39:38.304 going, leaving the country already, let's say, from the 1st, from May 1940? 00:39:38.904 --> 00:39:43.644 Because everyone could know, especially those people knowing the German Jews 00:39:43.644 --> 00:39:47.644 and Austrian Jewish refugees, what happened in Germany, in the German Reich, 00:39:47.864 --> 00:39:49.964 especially also after the Anschluss. 00:39:50.144 --> 00:39:56.004 I mean, all Jews losing their jobs, losing their fundings, their houses, etc. 00:39:56.564 --> 00:40:01.504 So in that sense, everyone could expect what would have happened. 00:40:01.784 --> 00:40:07.184 And not only Jews, of course, in Germany, the project started with the persecution 00:40:07.184 --> 00:40:11.364 of political enemies, with socialists and communists, even liberals. 00:40:11.564 --> 00:40:15.384 I mean, even already in 1933, von Papen was already persecuted. 00:40:15.624 --> 00:40:19.384 I mean, those people who were supporting Hitler themselves from the central parties. 00:40:19.884 --> 00:40:22.584 So everyone could have known what would have happened. 00:40:23.204 --> 00:40:27.624 But it's the illusion always that you think, well, we know the Germans, 00:40:27.724 --> 00:40:31.604 they are a civilized people, they will occupy, they will do strange things in 00:40:31.604 --> 00:40:33.544 their own countries. We'll never do that in the Netherlands. 00:40:33.724 --> 00:40:37.304 We are in peace already since the Habsburg period, let's say. 00:40:37.864 --> 00:40:39.984 So this was one big disillusion. 00:40:41.904 --> 00:40:48.224 And yeah, what is the mechanism? The mechanism is that the Germans, 00:40:48.384 --> 00:40:52.704 before they entered the Netherlands, had already made an Anschluss in Austria. 00:40:55.221 --> 00:40:58.921 Seyss-Inquart. Don't forget, he was the leader of the Anschluss of Austria. 00:40:59.281 --> 00:41:04.861 Then Seyss-Inquart, the same Seyss-Inquart was sent in 1939 with Coutre-France 00:41:04.861 --> 00:41:11.921 to Poland to make the annexation of Poland possible, of parts of Poland, the Schwarzengau, etc. 00:41:12.941 --> 00:41:17.041 And then Seyss-Inquart was sent from Poland to the Netherlands. 00:41:17.521 --> 00:41:24.861 So this was a very experienced staff which he had. I mean, No other one in the whole Europe. 00:41:25.261 --> 00:41:28.621 Maybe some people, especially in the Netherlands or England, 00:41:28.841 --> 00:41:34.921 with experience in, let's say, the Dutch Indies or India, have ever witnessed anything like this. 00:41:35.261 --> 00:41:40.121 But in European context, it never happened that the same people were responsible 00:41:40.121 --> 00:41:45.661 for creating a kind of occupation, onslaught, annexation, whatever you would 00:41:45.661 --> 00:41:49.361 call it, from one country to another, step by step. 00:41:49.361 --> 00:41:52.581 So when Seisingquart entered the Netherlands, he knew exactly how to deal with 00:41:52.581 --> 00:41:58.401 it, how to work slowly into a kind of new kind of juridical structure, 00:41:58.681 --> 00:42:00.881 change the courts, for instance. 00:42:01.081 --> 00:42:04.961 I mean, all the processes we now see in Hungary and Poland, let's say, 00:42:05.101 --> 00:42:08.561 were in the same way happened in the Netherlands. 00:42:08.741 --> 00:42:15.081 At a certain moment, Nuremberg laws were officially also being part of the system 00:42:15.081 --> 00:42:19.161 and nobody believed it because it was so completely different. 00:42:19.361 --> 00:42:21.181 Than anything you could believe. 00:42:21.681 --> 00:42:26.041 But another thing was, of course, the use of camps. They were in the Netherlands already. 00:42:26.621 --> 00:42:29.481 As we know, of course, also from this research of Leon Tokke, 00:42:29.641 --> 00:42:35.381 all that kind of information, which is still every time strange to combine. 00:42:35.761 --> 00:42:39.321 But there was a social security system already since the unemployment, 00:42:39.341 --> 00:42:42.021 since the crisis of the 1930s. 00:42:42.621 --> 00:42:47.821 Especially for people in the cities to work on the land, And reclamation work 00:42:47.821 --> 00:42:50.961 by this Moore company had a Heidemaatschappij. 00:42:51.261 --> 00:42:58.481 And so unemployed people, young people, were constantly sent from the cities to these camps. 00:42:58.621 --> 00:43:01.621 Now, these camps were taken over by the Germans immediately from 1940. 00:43:01.921 --> 00:43:05.401 They knew exactly where they were because they were already long before the 00:43:05.401 --> 00:43:10.261 Second World War in the Netherlands, investigating all the spots. 00:43:10.501 --> 00:43:14.161 They knew everyone, every person, everything they could use. 00:43:14.961 --> 00:43:20.941 This was not an unknown country for them. And so what you see is that this whole 00:43:20.941 --> 00:43:25.601 unemployment system, which was governed, administered by social security officers 00:43:25.601 --> 00:43:27.281 in all Dutch communities, 00:43:27.601 --> 00:43:30.061 was completely taken over by the Germans. 00:43:30.241 --> 00:43:35.281 They were giving new instructions by no longer sending Dutch boys to these camps, 00:43:35.421 --> 00:43:37.721 but only Jews from all ages. 00:43:38.321 --> 00:43:43.421 And that happened. Within a few months, around Amsterdam, some 20 of these camps 00:43:43.421 --> 00:43:45.001 were already filled with only juice. 00:43:46.081 --> 00:43:48.441 And then the second instructions were, 00:43:49.637 --> 00:43:55.137 change the number of camps, we bring them together, let's say we integrate some 00:43:55.137 --> 00:43:57.097 20 camps, we make them into five, 00:43:57.297 --> 00:44:03.077 and then bring them to the middle of the country, or to the new lands, 00:44:03.397 --> 00:44:06.717 let's say the new polders, broader. 00:44:08.077 --> 00:44:11.757 Larger projects, what the Germans call the West Polynesia zone. 00:44:11.897 --> 00:44:14.917 I mean, the Polish project is called the Oost Polynesia zone. 00:44:16.137 --> 00:44:21.717 So from there, Then the camps became concentrated in the eastern part of the country. 00:44:21.937 --> 00:44:28.177 So from Groningen to Limburg, already quite near Germany. And Westerbork was in between. 00:44:29.257 --> 00:44:34.637 So this happened already before the camps were emptied in 1942. 00:44:35.537 --> 00:44:41.197 And everyone had to be sent to Westerbork. And suddenly from that moment on, 00:44:41.257 --> 00:44:42.157 Westerbork was taken over. 00:44:42.157 --> 00:44:46.217 Up to that time, it was still, how strange it seems, a German Jewish refugee 00:44:46.217 --> 00:44:49.337 camp with a Dutch director governing 00:44:49.337 --> 00:44:53.097 this camp, but having people which he didn't know what to do with it. 00:44:53.437 --> 00:44:59.417 And then suddenly new barracks were built, and this whole large group of some 00:44:59.417 --> 00:45:02.417 8,000 people from the unemployment camps were arriving. 00:45:02.417 --> 00:45:09.317 And a few weeks later, the Jewish Council had sent the addresses to the Hague 00:45:09.317 --> 00:45:14.117 of the children and the wives of all these male persons. 00:45:14.417 --> 00:45:20.837 And the 8,000 male persons then suddenly were accompanied in Westerbork by trains 00:45:20.837 --> 00:45:23.337 from Amsterdam by their wives and children. 00:45:23.597 --> 00:45:28.077 Now, let's say they all had a wife. That's 16,000. They all have one, two, three children. 00:45:28.397 --> 00:45:32.657 So there we are. We are already at some 20,000, 30,000 people, 00:45:32.837 --> 00:45:35.437 maybe. That's a third of the whole Holocaust. 00:45:35.737 --> 00:45:40.937 This happened without any kind of formal pogrom or institutionalization. 00:45:42.177 --> 00:45:47.457 That is a large collaborative effort. Exactly, exactly. 00:45:48.629 --> 00:45:55.849 Is that achieved as a planned project? Is that achieved by shifting the norm, 00:45:55.949 --> 00:45:57.929 by smoothly shifting the norm? 00:45:59.169 --> 00:46:04.769 Because what is surprising, okay, in Holland, there was the strike of February 00:46:04.769 --> 00:46:11.509 41, which was a big response, especially in Amsterdam, against these measures against the Jews. 00:46:11.809 --> 00:46:17.629 So in some sense, you could argue this is where maybe Seyss-Inspord misread 00:46:17.629 --> 00:46:22.489 how easily society would go along in that process? 00:46:22.669 --> 00:46:28.749 Or do you think that was for them just a blip that could easily be suppressed and not a real concern? 00:46:29.789 --> 00:46:34.849 Well, this is the February strike. The problem is that the February strike is, 00:46:34.889 --> 00:46:39.029 of course, in history, it has been very much politicized. 00:46:39.969 --> 00:46:43.189 So we all know that members of the Communist Party were organizing it, 00:46:43.229 --> 00:46:46.249 but after the war that was not done, to make that too clear, 00:46:46.249 --> 00:46:52.129 Because, yeah, there was, of course, always this general notion of how could they have organized it? 00:46:52.189 --> 00:46:58.449 Because we had this Revitrop-Molotov Pact, the Germans and the Soviet Union were working together. 00:46:58.589 --> 00:47:01.569 So it's impossible that the communists were doing this, actually. 00:47:01.929 --> 00:47:04.469 But, of course, the communists were organizing it. And they were the only one 00:47:04.469 --> 00:47:07.529 who could do it because they were the only one being underground already. 00:47:07.529 --> 00:47:14.749 They were in this command, and they have this control within the Amsterdam tram 00:47:14.749 --> 00:47:20.689 lines, within the harbour, for instance, all those people who were actually actively organising. 00:47:20.809 --> 00:47:25.549 But of course, supported by students and by all other kinds of groups, 00:47:25.629 --> 00:47:29.389 and Jews themselves, of course, not to forget, against what you could see as 00:47:29.389 --> 00:47:33.829 the first programme. because this is another element which is not widely known. 00:47:33.969 --> 00:47:38.989 But what happened was that Amsterdam not only contained already in February 00:47:38.989 --> 00:47:45.309 of 1941 Jews from Amsterdam, but they also had brought already Jews from neighboring 00:47:45.309 --> 00:47:47.469 cities like Edam, for instance, 00:47:47.729 --> 00:47:53.269 or Zaan, the Zaan part of the Netherlands, the northern part of the Netherlands, 00:47:53.349 --> 00:47:55.589 were all brought already to Amsterdam. 00:47:55.589 --> 00:48:01.189 And they created and called that ghettos, officially in German Judenkartier. 00:48:01.549 --> 00:48:05.549 So there were planned two of them, one in the south and one in the center of the city. 00:48:05.789 --> 00:48:08.489 Most known is, of course, that one in the center of the city, 00:48:08.549 --> 00:48:10.229 the oldest Jewish part of the city. 00:48:10.909 --> 00:48:14.909 And from there, you could get in, but you could not get out as a Jew. 00:48:16.169 --> 00:48:21.429 So that was already being done at that moment. And there were NSB, 00:48:21.509 --> 00:48:26.389 National Socialist Youth Organizations, walking there with marshes and, 00:48:26.409 --> 00:48:30.769 you know, teasing these Jews and making jokes and that kind of thing. 00:48:31.769 --> 00:48:38.149 And left-wing Jews in particular, who also were trained themselves in karate, fighting sports, etc. 00:48:38.989 --> 00:48:45.089 Of course, at that time, when nothing happened before, this was before the programs, were fighting back. 00:48:46.000 --> 00:48:50.740 And at a certain moment, one of these fascists was killed by a Jewish boxer. 00:48:52.040 --> 00:49:00.420 And that was the moment when fascists started to create a kind of riots in this neighborhood. 00:49:01.720 --> 00:49:07.400 And the Germans had brought Jews from a kind of Zionist training camp in the 00:49:07.400 --> 00:49:12.040 north of the country, also to Amsterdam, who were themselves Zionists, 00:49:12.060 --> 00:49:16.580 not communists, but also militants. and this created an explosive atmosphere. 00:49:17.500 --> 00:49:25.480 And what happened that this riot then for the Germans was a kind of testing 00:49:25.480 --> 00:49:30.280 ground to find out what happened if we get them up in a kind of program, 00:49:30.460 --> 00:49:34.800 which we were trained doing that, of course, in Poland already for two years. 00:49:35.060 --> 00:49:42.260 And we take them all and send them to a new camp. This first camp was built 00:49:42.260 --> 00:49:48.820 in the Dune area in Schagen, this area in North Holland. 00:49:49.040 --> 00:49:52.180 It's an unknown camp because it stayed only there for a year. 00:49:52.260 --> 00:49:54.900 It was only meant for communists and for this first group of Jews. 00:49:55.860 --> 00:50:01.660 And so they were kept out of there. And that was the moment when this strike 00:50:01.660 --> 00:50:05.540 started, this first strike in Europe against Jewish pogrom. 00:50:05.900 --> 00:50:10.440 And this had an enormous impact. And then the Nazis became very much irritated, 00:50:10.540 --> 00:50:16.360 but also shocked, because even for, let's say, National Socialists, 00:50:16.380 --> 00:50:20.700 they had this strange idea that the Dutch actually were also an Aryan people, 00:50:21.120 --> 00:50:23.380 actually kind of German people. 00:50:23.380 --> 00:50:29.360 In the past, in the Habsburg period, there had always been one empirical state, 00:50:29.660 --> 00:50:35.080 so why not having the Jets as a sort of even a kind of elite, 00:50:35.240 --> 00:50:38.040 maybe even in the German state? They had high respect for the Jets. 00:50:38.680 --> 00:50:43.360 Then suddenly, this happened in the capital, and not only between communists 00:50:43.360 --> 00:50:50.240 or whatever, but a broad support from Amsterdam people, don't do anything to our Jews. 00:50:51.240 --> 00:50:58.380 We will fight back. That was a signal which was so strong that immediately created 00:50:58.380 --> 00:51:03.760 an idea we have now to operate in a very systematic way because the Dutts are 00:51:03.760 --> 00:51:06.480 stronger in resistance than we think. 00:51:06.600 --> 00:51:10.040 They have a kind of secret resistance, not the kind of thing you find in, 00:51:10.660 --> 00:51:12.960 let's say, in other countries where they shoot back all that, 00:51:13.040 --> 00:51:15.480 but they have this kind of community approach. 00:51:15.920 --> 00:51:19.480 So it was very important to use the mechanism of collaboration collaboration. 00:51:20.426 --> 00:51:25.906 Finding out those Dutch people which you could use by creating something which 00:51:25.906 --> 00:51:31.366 was almost, it was not like in Poland, let's say, by making it too explicit, 00:51:31.746 --> 00:51:38.486 but using the Dutch police, you know, to find the Jews and using Dutch organizations. 00:51:38.486 --> 00:51:42.766 Organizations, and of course, create this fiction of the Jewish council by having 00:51:42.766 --> 00:51:44.766 them, the fiction of self-control. 00:51:45.026 --> 00:51:50.926 What you see in Poland, for instance, in these ghettos like lots, that kind of system. 00:51:51.286 --> 00:51:56.326 That's what they use here, but in a way which looked more like the Dutch system of polarization. 00:51:57.166 --> 00:52:03.586 Like almost from, look, we have this socialist and we have the Christians and 00:52:03.586 --> 00:52:08.126 the Catholics. And now you get also your organization, that we have a sort of 00:52:08.126 --> 00:52:11.866 context in the Hague and that we don't have to have all these different. 00:52:12.426 --> 00:52:15.606 So that sort of spirit was behind it. Right. 00:52:15.686 --> 00:52:24.826 And it also means that says in court and his lieutenants had two models that they had to manage. 00:52:24.926 --> 00:52:29.906 On the one hand, there's a model of how does a society respond and how do we shape that? 00:52:29.906 --> 00:52:35.686 But also a model almost at the individual level, which is how do we make sure 00:52:35.686 --> 00:52:39.666 the members of a Jewish council keep on going along, 00:52:40.046 --> 00:52:46.806 settling all sorts of very conflicting challenges between, let's say, 00:52:46.806 --> 00:52:48.906 their own survival and that of other people. 00:52:48.906 --> 00:52:54.166 So, were these two models there? 00:52:54.366 --> 00:52:57.986 Was this also in some sense formalized by them? Was there really a rulebook 00:52:57.986 --> 00:53:00.066 for that? Or how did they play that out? 00:53:01.215 --> 00:53:06.235 I think you could say there are two interpretations here. 00:53:06.475 --> 00:53:10.515 One is absolutely, it's true, there were these two models. 00:53:11.215 --> 00:53:19.035 One is, let's say, conciliation, moderation, tempering, being in contact, negotiations. 00:53:20.075 --> 00:53:24.255 And the other is what happened directly, for instance, after this February strike, 00:53:24.415 --> 00:53:30.015 is operating in a very, very aggressive, terrorized way. 00:53:31.075 --> 00:53:34.435 But you use another kind of instrument for that. For instance, 00:53:34.535 --> 00:53:39.235 the SS, an organization which normally is not to be found on the streets. 00:53:39.895 --> 00:53:42.915 So, as you could say, okay, we had to do that, that was not… Now, 00:53:42.975 --> 00:53:49.935 the second thing is, you could say, maybe these are the same people doing this, using these two models. 00:53:50.215 --> 00:53:53.055 I'm myself quite sure it works this way. 00:53:53.575 --> 00:53:57.715 But for Dutch historians in general, they have a more friendly interpretation. 00:53:57.715 --> 00:54:00.775 Reputation, and they would say, now you had good guys and bad guys. 00:54:01.575 --> 00:54:05.095 Now, I'm not sure about that. I think good guys are very good at also being 00:54:05.095 --> 00:54:08.195 bad guys, but it has to do a lot also with Dutch trials. 00:54:08.455 --> 00:54:14.855 Let's say Gemmeker, the commander of Westerbork, sending these 60,000 Jews to Auschwitz. 00:54:15.135 --> 00:54:20.155 He was sentenced only for six years because actually he behaved like a gentleman, 00:54:20.315 --> 00:54:21.155 like a kind of atmosphere. 00:54:21.555 --> 00:54:27.115 Now, this is the way Dutch people generally like to see the situation. 00:54:27.475 --> 00:54:32.635 That's very ironic, right? Because it means also current historians still believe 00:54:32.635 --> 00:54:36.055 the image that the Germans purposefully created. Yeah. 00:54:36.535 --> 00:54:39.375 This is a very effective image. 00:54:40.515 --> 00:54:44.455 It has a big impact in Dutch history that. 00:54:45.767 --> 00:54:51.587 Because it is difficult to understand, of course, that the same person can be a Jekyll and Hyde. 00:54:52.107 --> 00:54:57.247 But it is completely understandable when you know also colonial regimes, how they work. 00:54:57.407 --> 00:55:01.127 They always work with collaboration, creating elites like the Dutch, 00:55:01.167 --> 00:55:05.827 the Indo elites, the mixed race people. Of course, they collaborate. 00:55:06.147 --> 00:55:09.687 They work in the Dutch Royal Army. and on 00:55:09.687 --> 00:55:12.407 the other you have the groups where these same people are 00:55:12.407 --> 00:55:15.347 used to send people to camps or to fight 00:55:15.347 --> 00:55:18.447 terrible wars but these are invisible for 00:55:18.447 --> 00:55:21.607 the others and that's that's how it works now let's 00:55:21.607 --> 00:55:25.947 say for jews the system was quite harsh from the beginning and for communists 00:55:25.947 --> 00:55:32.907 but for normal dutch people um it wasn't bad at all i mean of course there were 00:55:32.907 --> 00:55:37.267 there were bad situations and especially the last the last years of the war 00:55:37.267 --> 00:55:40.567 were not that nice, but also because of the war events. 00:55:42.367 --> 00:55:50.347 This regime worked in double ways. That is a general approach. 00:55:50.827 --> 00:55:53.107 Let's say one of my family members, 00:55:55.507 --> 00:56:00.567 I was born in Aalsmeer, was sent to one of these sub camps of Neuengamme. 00:56:01.327 --> 00:56:06.247 And they were doing no more than some illegal journalist work. 00:56:07.327 --> 00:56:13.027 And these guys then, when nobody expected it, were suddenly catched up somewhere 00:56:13.027 --> 00:56:15.467 in October 1943 or something like that, 00:56:16.247 --> 00:56:19.507 sent in a bad time to this camp and then had to work in the sub-camp working 00:56:19.507 --> 00:56:23.607 on the Frisia Wall, a kind of Atlantic Wall project near Denmark. 00:56:24.603 --> 00:56:28.663 And this whole system was based that these people were probably in the Netherlands, 00:56:28.863 --> 00:56:34.863 let's say, friendly, interrogated and been sent away with the promise that they 00:56:34.863 --> 00:56:36.623 had to do some work in the labor camp. 00:56:36.743 --> 00:56:39.083 But you know how it is, within a few years, you're back. 00:56:39.683 --> 00:56:42.823 They arrived there. And within three months, they were dead. 00:56:43.983 --> 00:56:47.983 The same way the people from Putten, all these male people from Putten, 00:56:48.123 --> 00:56:50.143 this whole village was fired. 00:56:50.843 --> 00:56:57.043 Nobody knows why. But the mail was sent to the same sub-camps of Neuengamme 00:56:57.043 --> 00:57:01.563 and it worked in the same way in the same period of the year and all died within a few months. 00:57:01.903 --> 00:57:05.803 So these were actually extermination camps, death camps, which we don't know. 00:57:05.923 --> 00:57:09.823 Nobody has described the history of these camps because they are not fitting in the image. 00:57:10.543 --> 00:57:13.583 You think of Jews being killed in these camps. 00:57:13.683 --> 00:57:18.043 Nobody speaks about Dutch people being killed in comparable ways or Russians, 00:57:18.083 --> 00:57:19.823 for instance, in these Russian camps. 00:57:19.823 --> 00:57:26.683 But now, Rob, if we bring it back to the theme of collaboration in this case, 00:57:26.803 --> 00:57:32.983 you gave a really very clear sketch on how this slowly played out in the Netherlands, right? 00:57:33.023 --> 00:57:41.323 And how the German occupier gained control using collaboration from these older nation-state roots. 00:57:41.323 --> 00:57:48.183 And would you say that's also a recipe they followed within Germany itself and 00:57:48.183 --> 00:57:49.803 other Western European states? 00:57:49.903 --> 00:57:52.623 It was a generic approach that they took? 00:57:53.843 --> 00:57:57.503 Yeah, but you could say that generally in the East, in the Eastern European 00:57:57.503 --> 00:58:00.443 parts, there was a lot of collaboration. 00:58:00.523 --> 00:58:02.923 But this was ideological collaboration. 00:58:03.103 --> 00:58:05.303 You could say this is collaborationism. 00:58:06.761 --> 00:58:10.401 And there was a lot of terror. 00:58:10.561 --> 00:58:16.581 So the combination of collaborationism, let's say by Catholic nationalists in 00:58:16.581 --> 00:58:27.021 the Balkan states or Ukrainian nationalists in Ukraine being very anti-communist, etc. 00:58:27.021 --> 00:58:32.421 All that sort of collaboration worked together with an extreme lot of terror, 00:58:32.641 --> 00:58:36.981 communists, the Jews, the minority groups, ethnical terror. 00:58:37.481 --> 00:58:42.581 And in the West, ethnical terror was not part of the system. 00:58:42.661 --> 00:58:45.501 It happened, of course, to Jews, but they were killed not in the West. 00:58:45.541 --> 00:58:50.421 They were killed in the East. They were first sent there to where terror was already normalized. 00:58:51.101 --> 00:58:57.101 In the West, you could say people, the only terror they knew were actually some 00:58:57.101 --> 00:58:59.761 bombings during the first part of the war. 00:59:01.181 --> 00:59:05.521 For instance, in the Netherlands, the battles at the Grebbeberg, 00:59:05.761 --> 00:59:09.761 but also the bombing of Rotterdam, one of the first cities to be completely 00:59:09.761 --> 00:59:13.361 bombed by the Axis, by the Germans. 00:59:13.721 --> 00:59:17.181 Of course, the first was Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. 00:59:17.181 --> 00:59:23.221 But in combination with what happened in England, which was officially not occupied, 00:59:23.561 --> 00:59:30.461 but had a lot of these bombings, you could say this is the experience in the West for normal people. 00:59:30.861 --> 00:59:35.981 And of course, the Battle of Arnhem later on in the second part of the war, the Liberation War. 00:59:38.141 --> 00:59:45.041 But the pogroms and the deportations of the Jews, these were very specific. 00:59:45.701 --> 00:59:50.501 These people were isolated in first instance, taken from their original neighborhoods 00:59:50.501 --> 00:59:57.021 and cities and towns, concentrated in these ghettos in some big towns like Rotterdam and Amsterdam. 00:59:57.561 --> 01:00:02.621 And from there, for instance, let's say I live myself in a small Dutch town 01:00:02.621 --> 01:00:07.181 where some 50 Jews were killed in Auschwitz. 01:00:07.941 --> 01:00:14.681 And so we were. But there was never a memorial up to the mid-60s for them. 01:00:15.041 --> 01:00:19.421 There was a monument for those people in resistance being killed, 01:00:19.521 --> 01:00:22.921 some 10 persons, but not for these Jews. 01:00:23.081 --> 01:00:27.021 Why not? I asked later on, why did it never happen? 01:00:27.221 --> 01:00:30.181 He said, yeah, but these Jews were not, when they were killed, 01:00:30.441 --> 01:00:33.861 they were already not living in this place. 01:00:33.921 --> 01:00:37.081 They were sent to Amsterdam. them so where they actually they 01:00:37.081 --> 01:00:40.101 were sent from a ghetto to a camp which 01:00:40.101 --> 01:00:43.981 means that the original place where they live we're not regarding them as their 01:00:43.981 --> 01:00:47.621 as their own victims they didn't belong because we were no survivors there was 01:00:47.621 --> 01:00:54.541 also no family to so we only have but if you look at the system in the netherlands 01:00:54.541 --> 01:00:58.021 and and we would do some counterfactual reasoning on this, 01:00:58.121 --> 01:01:05.381 what could have been the response of Dutch society to disrupt this plan? 01:01:09.097 --> 01:01:13.877 Well, the problem is, of course, when you don't have terror against total population, 01:01:13.917 --> 01:01:15.157 like in Poland, for instance. 01:01:15.277 --> 01:01:20.337 I mean, the Poles were not very friendly to Jews, but they suffered the same 01:01:20.337 --> 01:01:27.297 kind of occupying terror as the Jews themselves or the Ukrainians. 01:01:27.417 --> 01:01:29.377 So in that sense, that's what they shared. 01:01:29.537 --> 01:01:33.017 It means that all of them were in a certain way in resistance. 01:01:34.137 --> 01:01:38.057 In the Netherlands, there was resistance only from, let's say, 01:01:38.077 --> 01:01:41.717 from 1942 onwards, but most of the Jews were already sent to camps. 01:01:42.597 --> 01:01:47.797 It was, of course, based partly on finding hiding places for Jews, 01:01:48.037 --> 01:01:52.457 later on hiding places also for Dutch boys in particular being threatened to 01:01:52.457 --> 01:01:53.697 be sent to the Eastern Front. 01:01:54.677 --> 01:02:00.557 But that was a kind of situation which was indirect terror. It was terror, 01:02:00.697 --> 01:02:02.137 but it was indirect, it was invisible. 01:02:03.077 --> 01:02:10.277 And which means that being in resistance was even, it was risky, 01:02:10.417 --> 01:02:15.537 but it was also against the sort of mentality people had because they were very 01:02:15.537 --> 01:02:18.417 brave people and very civilized people. 01:02:18.597 --> 01:02:22.077 And you had to do what the government says. 01:02:22.277 --> 01:02:26.037 Also, even if the government is an occupying government, it's still a government. 01:02:26.797 --> 01:02:30.477 So it's not that easy to come into resistance. In the same way, 01:02:30.497 --> 01:02:33.837 when, let's say, when a neighboring village would have been completely terrorized, 01:02:33.937 --> 01:02:38.657 then I would expect the whole population to go in resistance. It will not happen to us. 01:02:39.097 --> 01:02:45.597 But when something like that is not happening, but only some few civilians, some few young, 01:02:46.077 --> 01:02:50.557 radicals were taken out, some communists, yeah, I wouldn't say who cares because 01:02:50.557 --> 01:02:54.757 people cared, but they knew it would not happen to me. 01:02:54.757 --> 01:03:00.397 Because I am a normal, I'm doing my job, I've never been in politics and whatever. 01:03:01.417 --> 01:03:04.957 So that made this whole situation in the Netherlands, the resistance movement 01:03:04.957 --> 01:03:08.937 was actually very much related to some political parties underground, 01:03:09.917 --> 01:03:13.257 not even social democrats. They were generally not in resistance. 01:03:14.217 --> 01:03:18.597 Some groups were in resistance, but they could not trust themselves because 01:03:18.597 --> 01:03:23.317 the greatest trade union was actually collaborating with the Germans. 01:03:24.406 --> 01:03:30.006 What would have done? More strikes? More strikes? Or put more people in hiding? 01:03:30.686 --> 01:03:34.086 Yeah, it would have made a big, big difference. If, for instance, 01:03:34.246 --> 01:03:39.686 these trade unions were, like in some other countries, were supporting resistance, 01:03:40.126 --> 01:03:42.566 that would have made a big, big, big change. 01:03:43.386 --> 01:03:49.666 But by a lot of these former political parties and party members being not openly 01:03:49.666 --> 01:03:53.826 in resistance, I mean, some of them were not able to because they were taken as hostages. 01:03:54.406 --> 01:03:57.706 To some of the camps in Vught, for instance, in Birols-Gestel. 01:03:58.406 --> 01:04:02.506 So that happened in many countries, of course, you take the elite the most and 01:04:02.506 --> 01:04:06.186 you bring them together to a camp so they can no longer lead their own parties, 01:04:06.286 --> 01:04:08.306 then you see this party's fragment. 01:04:09.586 --> 01:04:13.446 It happened also to the communists. The communists were working together even 01:04:13.446 --> 01:04:16.046 with liberals, et cetera, in the underground. 01:04:17.426 --> 01:04:22.146 So everyone had to find new kind of collaborations operations in resistance, 01:04:22.266 --> 01:04:24.586 to use the same term also for the resistance movement. 01:04:25.046 --> 01:04:28.826 And you know how difficult it is, because you never know who you can trust. 01:04:29.106 --> 01:04:33.266 I mean, you work together with people who are also, but they could also be, 01:04:33.286 --> 01:04:35.506 of course, secret agents. Many of them were. 01:04:36.326 --> 01:04:41.086 And if they weren't, they were kept for a moment, sent to what is called one 01:04:41.086 --> 01:04:43.546 of these prisons, interrogated, martyred. 01:04:43.546 --> 01:04:46.966 And let's say and of 01:04:46.966 --> 01:04:49.626 course they became they had to 01:04:49.626 --> 01:04:52.526 become almost if they wanted to stay alive a kind 01:04:52.526 --> 01:04:56.266 of spy or whatever so this happened 01:04:56.266 --> 01:05:00.066 in a very massive scale and the intelligence of Germans was quite good also 01:05:00.066 --> 01:05:04.706 because of the cooperation of all these local police people I mean in Amsterdam 01:05:04.706 --> 01:05:09.446 for instance resistance was almost impossible because on every corner on the 01:05:09.446 --> 01:05:12.726 street there were police people the whole day. 01:05:12.946 --> 01:05:16.266 And they were all trained in Avigar. And Avigar was a center, 01:05:16.446 --> 01:05:19.326 which was an SS training center. 01:05:19.486 --> 01:05:22.106 They even had a Jewish camp there, of which almost all Jews, 01:05:22.346 --> 01:05:26.886 when they were in the end sent to Westerbork, even camp commander Jammerker, 01:05:27.026 --> 01:05:30.626 had never seen people in such a worse condition, 01:05:30.846 --> 01:05:35.186 that he first sent them to the hospital of Westerbork before sending them to Auschwitz. 01:05:36.406 --> 01:05:39.706 I mean, the irony of all this is so crazy. 01:05:39.986 --> 01:05:48.086 But this was a training camp for Amsterdam police people to become, let's say, Jew hunters. 01:05:48.586 --> 01:05:52.046 So many of these Amsterdam police, and don't forget, these Amsterdam police 01:05:52.046 --> 01:05:55.246 people were not trialed after the war, and they were still there, 01:05:55.326 --> 01:05:58.746 many of them, during the 1960s Provo movement. 01:05:58.966 --> 01:06:03.686 This is one of the explanations why Provo was provocating the police, 01:06:03.886 --> 01:06:08.286 because these were military-trained, SS-trained police people. 01:06:10.006 --> 01:06:14.606 That's amazing. They were even honoured after the war. Wow. Yeah. But now we're up so... 01:06:15.863 --> 01:06:22.423 But what you're describing is that this notion of collaboration is an automatic 01:06:22.423 --> 01:06:28.383 consequence of having this relationship between a nation state and its citizens. 01:06:28.623 --> 01:06:33.523 So that means given that structure in which we exist, we are all collaborating 01:06:33.523 --> 01:06:36.843 continuously by necessity. 01:06:36.843 --> 01:06:43.843 But also, it shows also a vulnerability in that system because the citizen is 01:06:43.843 --> 01:06:49.483 collaborative with this abstract construct of a nation state based on a sense 01:06:49.483 --> 01:06:51.863 of trust, a trust in that system. 01:06:51.863 --> 01:06:56.523 Like the system is well-intentioned towards us and the common good. 01:06:56.783 --> 01:07:02.163 And that's in some sense what the German occupier co-opted, 01:07:02.223 --> 01:07:08.603 because people could not break out of that assumed relationship of trust between 01:07:08.603 --> 01:07:12.583 themselves and the nation state. Would that be a correct interpretation? 01:07:13.863 --> 01:07:18.583 Yeah, exactly. This is absolutely correct. And it's not only on the kind of 01:07:18.583 --> 01:07:22.403 system as we now describe for the camps, for instance, which were not guarded 01:07:22.403 --> 01:07:24.043 by Germans, don't forget. 01:07:24.763 --> 01:07:28.183 Inside these camps, there were Jewish kapos. 01:07:28.483 --> 01:07:33.943 So they were sent, Jews themselves sent other Jews into the trains. 01:07:35.403 --> 01:07:40.363 But outside, for instance, in Westerbork and other camps, also in Germany, 01:07:40.523 --> 01:07:47.183 in Westerbork with two police commands, battalions, the battalions were one 01:07:47.183 --> 01:07:48.903 from Bremen, German city, 01:07:49.783 --> 01:07:52.543 a reserve battalion which already had been fought in the Eastern Front, 01:07:52.783 --> 01:07:55.423 experienced in the Russian war. 01:07:55.683 --> 01:08:00.883 And the others were an Amsterdam battalion, which probably also had some Eastern 01:08:00.883 --> 01:08:02.663 experience and were trained in Avergord. 01:08:02.663 --> 01:08:09.543 So, actually, there were only 40 Germans who did the whole job sending 107,000 01:08:09.543 --> 01:08:12.623 people to the extermination camps. 01:08:13.982 --> 01:08:19.302 This explains everything about the term collaboration. But then there is also 01:08:19.302 --> 01:08:22.782 a positive kind of collaboration, not positive in the moral sense, 01:08:23.342 --> 01:08:26.182 but the Germans were also doing a lot of things. 01:08:26.262 --> 01:08:30.062 They were not only occupying and stealing and robbing, which they also did. 01:08:30.142 --> 01:08:37.362 They looted everything from the Jews and sending the political enemies to the 01:08:37.362 --> 01:08:40.062 camps and the intellectuals and whatever you want. 01:08:40.062 --> 01:08:47.302 But also a lot of intellectuals and architects and engineers and whatever you 01:08:47.302 --> 01:08:49.222 want to have worked with them together. 01:08:49.282 --> 01:08:54.182 We're very happy because if you look, for instance, to the restoration of Amsterdam City, 01:08:54.322 --> 01:08:57.962 if I look out of my window here, if I would change my screen, 01:08:58.082 --> 01:09:02.362 you would see all these buildings which were actually rebuilt during wartime 01:09:02.362 --> 01:09:05.302 in a city like Amsterdam, which was not destroyed. 01:09:05.302 --> 01:09:12.542 Because this was the golden period of heritage business of what the Germans 01:09:12.542 --> 01:09:14.922 called Detmalschus. These were all collaborating. 01:09:15.902 --> 01:09:22.022 What they did was actually finding out what was... And that was their escape 01:09:22.022 --> 01:09:24.862 route after the war. There were some trial investigations. 01:09:25.402 --> 01:09:27.662 And they said, yeah, you collaborated with the Germans. 01:09:28.242 --> 01:09:34.482 You worked in the kind of Heimatarchitectural works rescheduling. 01:09:35.042 --> 01:09:39.082 But yeah, the problem was the Germans loved Rembrandt. The Germans loved the Dutch Golden Age. 01:09:40.042 --> 01:09:45.522 And so what all these architect said, no, we were actually playing with them. 01:09:46.042 --> 01:09:51.282 Because the Germans didn't see that we were very Dutch nationalists. We were patriots. 01:09:51.362 --> 01:09:54.702 We were building in an old Dutch style. 01:09:56.042 --> 01:09:59.082 And that was their escape route. They didn't say, of course, 01:09:59.102 --> 01:10:04.782 that the Germans loved this old Dutch style. It was especially what they wanted them to do. 01:10:05.702 --> 01:10:09.922 But now given the model and the history behind it that you sketch on collaboration, 01:10:10.402 --> 01:10:16.982 now in the European context, we are shifting partially away from a nation-state 01:10:16.982 --> 01:10:20.682 concept to one of a federated Europe. 01:10:20.682 --> 01:10:24.782 So what would be the consequences then of the sense of collaboration? 01:10:24.942 --> 01:10:31.322 Because it also means we have to reorient people's loyalties to an even more 01:10:31.322 --> 01:10:35.082 abstract entity of a European Union. 01:10:35.442 --> 01:10:40.282 So do you see that these forms of collaboration will then change as a result? 01:10:41.520 --> 01:10:45.400 Yeah, this is the same. This is actually the same process as what happened in 01:10:45.400 --> 01:10:48.580 the 19th century with the invention of the nation state. 01:10:49.760 --> 01:10:53.440 In first instance, you could say this was a cultural process. 01:10:53.740 --> 01:10:58.020 I mean, for some countries like Germany, this is also the official idea that 01:10:58.020 --> 01:11:01.340 there was already a kind of German people, starting with Herder, 01:11:01.400 --> 01:11:06.020 etc., from the late 18th century in music and in poetry and in philosophy. 01:11:06.020 --> 01:11:09.340 Philosophy and after that came slowly the national 01:11:09.340 --> 01:11:13.120 german empire empire state but um 01:11:13.120 --> 01:11:15.900 but this was of course not really how 01:11:15.900 --> 01:11:21.220 it really happened because um there is always this this this combination of 01:11:21.220 --> 01:11:24.860 political power and culture because we all know culture is used also on the 01:11:24.860 --> 01:11:29.140 micro level always use you don't build an opera hall because people like it 01:11:29.140 --> 01:11:32.800 that you want to show the opera enterprise already bringing you in the kind 01:11:32.800 --> 01:11:34.940 of mood, it creates power, it creates the. 01:11:35.420 --> 01:11:41.180 Image of those people who are creating it, of the elite sitting there on the 01:11:41.180 --> 01:11:43.620 balcony, and those, et cetera. 01:11:43.880 --> 01:11:47.620 So in that sense, this is also going on in Europe. 01:11:47.660 --> 01:11:51.180 Europe has been for a long time believed in the myth, you could say, 01:11:51.380 --> 01:11:55.820 of a Europe of different culture, different nations, as they call it, 01:11:55.880 --> 01:11:58.100 of regions, different regions. 01:11:58.100 --> 01:12:05.300 The idea was the nation-state will slow down and then what comes up for it is regional context. 01:12:05.520 --> 01:12:11.240 Let's say people in Germany could share some things with France in the same 01:12:11.240 --> 01:12:13.620 kind of regions, like Elsbeth Lotharingen, for instance, 01:12:13.920 --> 01:12:19.800 or the Dutch in Limburg and those people in Eastern Gelderland or whatever it's 01:12:19.800 --> 01:12:24.940 called in Germany, or in Belgium, Limburg, these could also share some sort 01:12:24.940 --> 01:12:27.620 of historical comparative culture, 01:12:28.500 --> 01:12:30.520 maybe even a dialect or something like that, 01:12:32.120 --> 01:12:35.080 Northern Italy with Austria, et cetera. 01:12:35.240 --> 01:12:40.100 Now, we all know that this is a big mistake because if. 01:12:42.115 --> 01:12:46.355 Ethnic war happens. It's always exactly in these regions. 01:12:46.875 --> 01:12:54.295 Let's say former Balkan wars in the 1990s. What happens is that neighbors are killing each other. 01:12:54.475 --> 01:12:57.895 Those people who share the same culture, they share the same language, 01:12:58.095 --> 01:13:03.235 but don't feel themselves still different because there is some sort of identification 01:13:03.235 --> 01:13:04.995 with another religion or whatever. 01:13:04.995 --> 01:13:08.215 It's always that it doesn't work 01:13:08.215 --> 01:13:10.895 this way culture is more let's say 01:13:10.895 --> 01:13:13.635 is as much divisive as it's 01:13:13.635 --> 01:13:18.935 as it is as it is shared and it's it's not a base to build something on you 01:13:18.935 --> 01:13:24.935 have to really start from from from the structure itself and in european now 01:13:24.935 --> 01:13:28.455 you could say it's complete failure you you can say there are many cultures 01:13:28.455 --> 01:13:32.015 now working together in europe but maybe there is more affinity between, 01:13:32.115 --> 01:13:36.135 let's say, Geert Wilders or Thierry Baudet, this populist in Western European countries, 01:13:36.295 --> 01:13:41.715 with Viktor Orban in Hungary than with their own prime minister. 01:13:41.955 --> 01:13:47.115 This culture of trust has been completely lost in a certain way. 01:13:47.395 --> 01:13:52.515 You even see it nowadays with this COVID-19 situation, that people create a 01:13:52.515 --> 01:13:55.815 kind of identity by being against vaccination, for instance. 01:13:57.075 --> 01:14:01.395 What could be before anti-Brexit or could be Brexit in England. 01:14:01.555 --> 01:14:06.075 It is a sort of mostly regionally based also in Northern Italy, 01:14:06.255 --> 01:14:10.275 for instance, with Lega Nord, which then became suddenly a national party. 01:14:10.475 --> 01:14:15.095 And then suddenly also people in Sicily started to drop up and support that 01:14:15.095 --> 01:14:19.955 same party, which was five years before, if there was anything Lega Nord people 01:14:19.955 --> 01:14:21.075 hated, it were Sicilians. 01:14:21.075 --> 01:14:24.175 Experience so you see this cultural element 01:14:24.175 --> 01:14:26.895 is a fixing floating thing it's not 01:14:26.895 --> 01:14:32.375 something which really goes back to a past all these past are invented i mean 01:14:32.375 --> 01:14:36.295 everything which people believe of being i'm really dutch or i'm really french 01:14:36.295 --> 01:14:41.575 it's very nice but this can change just as much as state borders can change 01:14:41.575 --> 01:14:44.395 and that is the big issue of europe of course that. 01:14:45.184 --> 01:14:51.204 That it is based in a very, very meager program because it brings together very, 01:14:51.324 --> 01:14:56.824 very different states of nation states together, you could say, 01:14:56.864 --> 01:14:58.864 which still, for a big part, 01:14:59.064 --> 01:15:01.244 are still being creating this nation state. 01:15:01.424 --> 01:15:04.424 I mean, in Western Europe, you could say, OK, the nation state is in fatigue. 01:15:04.584 --> 01:15:06.504 It's already slowing down. 01:15:06.744 --> 01:15:11.204 It's an old concept, which people don't believe anymore. more. 01:15:11.284 --> 01:15:15.264 Western Europeans probably were ripe after the Second World War to start together 01:15:15.264 --> 01:15:17.284 and create something on a new base together. 01:15:17.824 --> 01:15:25.144 But Eastern Europe, after the fall of communism, is only now reinventing its nation state. 01:15:25.364 --> 01:15:29.104 It's now using the models of the 19th century as being completely new. 01:15:29.384 --> 01:15:33.164 I mean, these people like Orban or all these small dictators, 01:15:33.664 --> 01:15:39.884 their models are those dictators from the 1920s, 1930s, or whatever, 01:15:40.084 --> 01:15:44.164 who were dictators because they were fighting the outcome of the First World War. 01:15:44.464 --> 01:15:49.224 The Trianon Treaty, for instance, in Hungary, they wanted to become really big Hungary again. 01:15:49.364 --> 01:15:53.184 Or the Poles who probably want to have Lithuania, whatever, being their old 01:15:53.184 --> 01:15:56.364 borders back. They probably want to go to Odessa again. 01:15:57.064 --> 01:16:02.964 I mean, the craziness of this nationalism, that is what is in the head of people 01:16:02.964 --> 01:16:07.004 and not being part of Europe. I mean, the Hungarians are part of Europe because 01:16:07.004 --> 01:16:10.144 they know that they earn a lot of money by Europe, and Europe is simply giving 01:16:10.144 --> 01:16:11.864 it to them without any kind of restriction. 01:16:12.324 --> 01:16:18.004 But now, what were the steps for Europe and the European Commission to guide 01:16:18.004 --> 01:16:20.284 this process in a constructive way? 01:16:20.384 --> 01:16:24.904 What would you see as the three most important measures they should take? 01:16:26.664 --> 01:16:31.124 Yeah, this is a complex question because you know that in our programs, 01:16:31.324 --> 01:16:38.264 we only wanted to highlight many of these kinds of cultural conflictive processes. 01:16:38.824 --> 01:16:42.504 I mean, I'm a historian, I'm a cultural scientist, and most people think I love 01:16:42.504 --> 01:16:43.644 history and I love culture. 01:16:43.804 --> 01:16:49.224 So in many of the debates in the past decades I've been, they always said, 01:16:49.304 --> 01:16:53.304 yeah, but you wanted to have more of this in education, for instance, of school. 01:16:54.404 --> 01:17:01.804 I remember once being said that it's better even than to stop history and no 01:17:01.804 --> 01:17:06.284 longer talk about culture because there's nothing more divisive when people 01:17:06.284 --> 01:17:08.564 start to define themselves in these terms. 01:17:09.104 --> 01:17:12.444 So if I belong to this culture and you belong to another culture, 01:17:12.884 --> 01:17:14.984 it means we don't share a heritage, for instance. 01:17:15.244 --> 01:17:18.884 If you start a European project, you know how it worked in Europe. 01:17:18.884 --> 01:17:23.364 They really believed in a value community, not only an economic community, 01:17:23.564 --> 01:17:24.764 but also a value community. 01:17:25.820 --> 01:17:31.040 Now, that is beautiful, but how can you start a value community with all these 01:17:31.040 --> 01:17:35.400 politicians having their cultural agendas, these churches which still exist, 01:17:35.740 --> 01:17:37.060 all these national organizations, 01:17:37.780 --> 01:17:41.560 all these national histories, all these national culture projects, 01:17:41.820 --> 01:17:49.540 and broadcasting companies, etc., mostly owned by national politicians. 01:17:49.540 --> 01:17:55.220 Politicians, that is completely impossible because every politician knows you 01:17:55.220 --> 01:18:01.840 have to create a certain way, like in sports, a certain competition to win. 01:18:02.580 --> 01:18:07.240 So you start by making clear what the difference is between your party and the others. 01:18:07.500 --> 01:18:10.480 Now, in Western Europe, of course, we all know there is no difference. 01:18:10.520 --> 01:18:15.820 So there is no difference at all, not at least between a Christian Democrat, 01:18:15.960 --> 01:18:22.840 a social Democrat, and whatever you can imagine else, it's simply the same. 01:18:23.020 --> 01:18:25.320 I mean, when they govern, they do the same thing. There's no difference. 01:18:25.440 --> 01:18:30.120 Even in the United States, you could say, in the end, in geopolitics, 01:18:30.680 --> 01:18:33.160 there is hardly any difference, even between Trump and Biden. 01:18:34.180 --> 01:18:39.740 It's, in the end, the whole way they treat Russia or China or Europe, there is not that. 01:18:39.800 --> 01:18:44.000 There is a difference in tone, in style, but not in interest, 01:18:44.160 --> 01:18:45.760 not in long-term policy. 01:18:46.020 --> 01:18:52.380 Now, that is what lacks in Europe. Europe has not had any debate in geopolitical 01:18:52.380 --> 01:18:57.600 sense because Europe is a weak, soft community of people with idealized ideas, 01:18:57.940 --> 01:18:59.880 no more Second World War. 01:19:01.082 --> 01:19:05.482 Believing in culture and history, have this idea that they have this rich history. 01:19:05.762 --> 01:19:09.762 Forget that they have a rich history basically based on war and on terror. 01:19:09.982 --> 01:19:14.222 I mean, every European country has been in war together or been in civil war. 01:19:15.822 --> 01:19:17.282 And that's where all this art 01:19:17.282 --> 01:19:20.662 comes from. They loot it. In every museum in Europe, you find looted art. 01:19:21.322 --> 01:19:24.262 In that sense, they don't have to give it back to Africa, all of them. 01:19:24.282 --> 01:19:25.902 They can also give back it to each other. 01:19:26.362 --> 01:19:30.142 I mean, take the famous Jeroen Bosch painting. You're now in Spain. 01:19:30.142 --> 01:19:33.562 I mean, El Bosco, it's all looted art. 01:19:33.682 --> 01:19:38.162 It's looted by Alfa from the palaces of the Orange family. 01:19:38.362 --> 01:19:40.702 Well, the Orange family is still there. They're monarchs. If they would have 01:19:40.702 --> 01:19:43.822 some curts, they would go to the Spanish friends of them and say, 01:19:43.842 --> 01:19:45.142 well, give me our paintings back. 01:19:46.622 --> 01:19:50.002 That's a good suggestion. But Rob, in that perspective, 01:19:50.202 --> 01:19:58.942 do you believe that if we take the European meta nation state that people pursue now, 01:19:59.122 --> 01:20:05.642 do you see that European citizens will be able to collaborate in that context 01:20:05.642 --> 01:20:09.182 in a sustainable and constructive way? Is it even possible? 01:20:10.302 --> 01:20:17.242 Yeah, the double answer is actually that in the same way as you could make a 01:20:17.242 --> 01:20:24.022 difference between culture and collaboration on a citizen level and on a national state level, 01:20:24.142 --> 01:20:27.722 you could say the national state level by fixing, 01:20:27.982 --> 01:20:31.662 by connecting these nation states to cultures, 01:20:31.982 --> 01:20:33.622 that is the worst thing. 01:20:33.622 --> 01:20:40.102 If you forget that and you can get people out of that frame and make clear that 01:20:40.102 --> 01:20:44.482 they share a common aim in Europe, which is make Europe safe. 01:20:45.851 --> 01:20:49.731 Make it sustainable, also in terms of climate, et cetera. 01:20:50.191 --> 01:20:54.731 You do all these things with people's share on whatever level. 01:20:55.571 --> 01:21:02.271 You create welfare systems that I think the European project will be a big success, 01:21:02.351 --> 01:21:06.791 as the European economic project before the EEG was a big success. 01:21:07.051 --> 01:21:11.851 For instance, after the Second World War, by its agrarian reconstruction. 01:21:11.851 --> 01:21:17.151 I mean, a continent completely devastated in two or three decades was actually 01:21:17.151 --> 01:21:20.951 became one of the richest of the world that nobody would have expected that. 01:21:21.051 --> 01:21:26.871 The ending of this embassy between Germany and France, for instance, had a lot to do with that. 01:21:26.931 --> 01:21:30.471 How to deal with sharing coals and mine, all these resources. 01:21:30.471 --> 01:21:35.831 Now, we discussed it, I remember, some years ago together already. 01:21:36.271 --> 01:21:43.091 What strange it is that we don't have such a complete lack of discussion about these main things. 01:21:43.911 --> 01:21:48.611 I mean, you see it in geopolitics. Conflicts now in the Southeast area between 01:21:48.611 --> 01:21:50.951 China, the US, Australia, 01:21:51.471 --> 01:21:55.831 the Southeast states, Indonesia, it's all based on resources, 01:21:55.951 --> 01:22:00.971 on trade systems, like the Silk Road, for instance, between China, 01:22:01.091 --> 01:22:02.991 but all these European states. 01:22:03.191 --> 01:22:07.011 I mean, the harbor of Athens, which has been bought by the Chinese. 01:22:07.631 --> 01:22:13.891 How the fuck is it possible that a European, that Europe will make this possible? 01:22:13.951 --> 01:22:19.951 It's crazy that you make such big mistakes, that there is no discussion on that. 01:22:20.131 --> 01:22:25.371 That people like us, for instance, are not hired only to have this competition 01:22:25.371 --> 01:22:27.451 with research research foundations, 01:22:27.851 --> 01:22:32.331 et cetera, ask us to be in an advisory board to discuss these things and to 01:22:32.331 --> 01:22:34.131 think about long-term developments, 01:22:34.451 --> 01:22:38.211 not from a political party system because that's, of course, 01:22:38.231 --> 01:22:45.831 how it works today, but really as a kind of long-term, like it is in the U.S. 01:22:45.831 --> 01:22:50.051 And all these normal other countries, that you bring these expertise together 01:22:50.051 --> 01:22:52.431 and think about how to create. 01:22:52.491 --> 01:22:56.391 This can be the big issue, the only big question, How to survive Europe for 01:22:56.391 --> 01:22:58.391 the 21st century. Right. 01:22:58.551 --> 01:23:02.231 Because we're really not going in the right direction. Okay. No, no. 01:23:03.191 --> 01:23:07.051 You're right. There are concerns here. But now, as my last question, 01:23:07.231 --> 01:23:10.851 if you could change one thing by magic, right? 01:23:10.891 --> 01:23:15.651 You could change one thing to make this project sustainable and successful. 01:23:15.971 --> 01:23:17.851 What's the one thing you would change? Yes. 01:23:18.575 --> 01:23:20.855 The strange answer is collaboration. 01:23:26.515 --> 01:23:31.735 Because what we actually have in Europe, you know, you work yourself in international 01:23:31.735 --> 01:23:34.415 projects and you know how it works. 01:23:35.175 --> 01:23:38.695 You have cooperation. We have a cooperation system, actually. 01:23:39.495 --> 01:23:44.675 Countries cooperate together. But it's not collaboration. And collaboration, 01:23:44.855 --> 01:23:49.235 if you would do it in the right way, it would mean like those projects of us, 01:23:49.315 --> 01:23:52.115 which we have, we do field work. 01:23:52.235 --> 01:23:55.415 We work on the same site and we think about it and we discuss it. 01:23:55.475 --> 01:24:02.375 Of course, let's say we need much more time and much more funding to make it 01:24:02.375 --> 01:24:05.395 really into a big success if we want to make it. 01:24:05.835 --> 01:24:08.735 But what works is when you have people 01:24:08.735 --> 01:24:12.715 from all these different parts of Europe together and 01:24:12.715 --> 01:24:16.535 bring them together and let them not speak their own language in this parliament 01:24:16.535 --> 01:24:21.655 and being part of these fictive parties that you have people from former communists 01:24:21.655 --> 01:24:26.635 from Romania or whatever being part of the social democratic faction in the 01:24:26.635 --> 01:24:30.695 European parliament who don't have any idea the background of these people they 01:24:30.695 --> 01:24:31.695 speak different languages. 01:24:32.415 --> 01:24:36.175 That is that I mean this is a guarantee for 01:24:36.175 --> 01:24:38.835 failure and the only thing to let it 01:24:38.835 --> 01:24:41.955 make into to a success is to let these people collaborate 01:24:41.955 --> 01:24:45.835 and to collaborate not only on that level but everywhere 01:24:45.835 --> 01:24:49.015 on every european level if it's a school system or 01:24:49.015 --> 01:24:53.515 whatever also this that let's say even the secondary school maybe already the 01:24:53.515 --> 01:24:58.215 primary schools you could create these kind of collaboration not fictive like 01:24:58.215 --> 01:25:01.815 like what you now have with the dutch town and that french town and the eastern 01:25:01.815 --> 01:25:06.515 european town and they have a kind of cooperation of course this is nonsense but really 01:25:06.615 --> 01:25:10.615 make it into a collaboration that you could say, okay, we share expertise. 01:25:11.155 --> 01:25:15.855 What can we do to fix these kinds of problems, let's say, with sustainability? 01:25:16.395 --> 01:25:19.555 It could be very practical sustainability of buildings, let's say, 01:25:19.675 --> 01:25:22.355 of natural resources, of forests, whatever. 01:25:22.515 --> 01:25:24.675 How do you do that in Romania? What do you do in Poland? 01:25:25.135 --> 01:25:29.855 You have this old Polish forestry. A student of mine is doing an internship there. 01:25:29.995 --> 01:25:33.315 It's absolutely fabulous. but that you 01:25:33.315 --> 01:25:36.155 want to have on on you know in a very very 01:25:36.155 --> 01:25:39.535 keen way in politics in geopolitics 01:25:39.535 --> 01:25:43.175 and i think this is this kind of collaboration this 01:25:43.175 --> 01:25:47.475 is then the the man this this is we should reinvent the term let's say in that 01:25:47.475 --> 01:25:51.755 sense what you would really mean with collaboration if you're if you're a company 01:25:51.755 --> 01:25:55.095 for instance you want you don't want to have your people in different departments 01:25:55.095 --> 01:25:59.235 and they don't know what they do for each other like university it still works 01:25:59.235 --> 01:26:00.875 with this craziness of disciplines. 01:26:01.415 --> 01:26:03.735 But what happens when you bring people 01:26:03.735 --> 01:26:08.955 together? You let them share this information. And that is what I mean. 01:26:09.275 --> 01:26:13.095 And I think the nice thing about European Research Project is that actually 01:26:13.095 --> 01:26:16.475 there you see a glimpse of what it could be. 01:26:17.782 --> 01:26:22.462 As scientists, we even have a difficulty explaining to our own colleagues in 01:26:22.462 --> 01:26:24.122 our own university what we're actually doing. 01:26:24.742 --> 01:26:28.842 We are sort of, maybe we're the only Europeans, Paul. 01:26:30.382 --> 01:26:33.382 Rob van der Laarze, thank you very much for this conversation. 01:26:34.162 --> 01:26:38.422 Okay, it's been my pleasure. Hi, you listened to one of our podcasts in the 01:26:38.422 --> 01:26:43.982 series on collaboration produced by the Ernst Trommel Forum and the Convergent Science Network. 01:26:44.662 --> 01:26:47.622 You can find more episodes on our website.