Meinoud Rost van Tonningen

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Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, 1938

Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen (born February 19, 1894 in Surabaya , † June 6, 1945 in Scheveningen ) was a Dutch politician of the National Socialist party Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing (NSB). First representative of the League of Nations in Austria in 1923–1928 and 1931–1936 , he joined the NSB in 1936 and returned to the Netherlands, where he headed the NSB party newspaper Het Nationale Dagblad . During the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II , he worked intensively with the German occupation forces, initially trying to bring the Dutch workforce into line, then later as head of the Dutch financial affairs.

Career and work for the League of Nations

The father Bernardus Marinus Rost van Tonningen on a drawing, 1905

Rost van Tonningen was born in 1894 in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia ). He was the son of KNIL general Bernardus Marinus Rost van Tonningen , who had put down a revolt against Dutch rule in Lombok , Aceh (Atjeh) and Bali . When he was 15, Rost moved to Holland, where he attended a grammar school in The Hague . After graduating from high school in 1912, he began to study engineering at the Technical University of Delft , which he broke off after four semesters. After the start of the First World War , Rost volunteered for the army in August 1914. After stints at an officers' school in Amsterdam (August 1914 – summer 1915) and in Leiden , he was stationed as a first lieutenant in Noordwijk from February 1916 . After the end of the war, Rost began to study law at the University of Leiden in the spring of 1919 . His most important teacher there was Willem van Eysinga , with whom he received his doctorate in 1921.

After receiving his doctorate, he worked briefly for the American-Norwegian Arbitration Commission for Maritime Issues (July – September 1922) and the International Labor Office of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva (autumn / winter 1922). In 1923 he was offered the post of assistant to Alfred Zimmermann , General Commissioner of the League of Nations in Vienna. He carried out this activity until 1926. During this time he joined the demands of the Austrians to end the financial control of the League of Nations in Austria as quickly as possible. In 1926 the League of Nations finally decided to recall Zimmermann, but initially issued a two-year interim solution: Rost van Tonningen was Zimmermann's successor - albeit with significantly reduced competencies. In this function, which he successfully mastered, he campaigned for foreign loans for the Austrian Federal Railways . In 1928, however, Rost's activities in Vienna came to an end with the expiry of the transitional arrangement.

Rost then moved to the private bank Hope & Co. in Amsterdam. There, however, he was unable to really gain a foothold there, neither privately nor on business, so that he was increasingly dissatisfied with his work. In 1931 the Wiener Credit-Anstalt collapsed as a result of the global economic crisis . Austria then asked for international financial aid (the Lausanne bond ), so that a representative of the League of Nations was again sent to the country. The post was immediately offered to Rost van Tonningen, who initially took up his position in October 1931 as "Representative of the Finance Committee in Austria" before he was allowed to call himself "Representative of the League of Nations" from January 1, 1933. His main task in this function was to educate the League of Nations about Austrian financial policy. He also had a say in the question of whether Austria should continue to increase its national debt. He thus had a considerable influence on the granting of loans by foreign investors and thus also on the financial viability of Austrian economic policy.

In 1932 Engelbert Dollfuss became Austrian Chancellor. From the beginning, Rost felt deep respect for the Chancellor, who became his personal friend. He was enthusiastic about the end of parliamentary democracy, which Dollfuss achieved in March 1933. Rost did his best to support Dollfuss, for example in his conflict with the Austrian National Socialists, who wanted Austria to join the German Reich under Adolf Hitler . Rost could only do little with Catholicism , which was becoming increasingly important for Dollfuss . His situation changed suddenly with the murder of Dollfuss during the July coup in 1934. Rost was never able to develop a closer relationship with his successor Kurt Schuschnigg , so that his influence on Austrian politics waned. He turned to National Socialist Viennese circles around the writer Karl Anton Rohan and began to think about political engagement in his homeland. As early as the summer of 1935 he had his first conversations with Anton Mussert , the leader of the Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing (NSB). After the divorce from his wife, Rost finally gave up his representative position on August 3, 1936.

NSB period, 1936–1940

NSB leader Anton Mussert 1936

After his return from Austria, Rost van Tonningen became a member of the Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing (NSB) on August 10, 1936. The well-known and experienced financial politician was extremely welcome in the party that had achieved the first major electoral success in the election of the Provinciale Staten on April 16, 1935 (7.9% of the votes cast); the party leader and unfortunately Anton Mussert greeted him personally in a letter. From the beginning, Rost was part of the more radical, pro-German and distinctly ethnic-racist wing of the party. As a result, he came into conflict with the group around NSB leader Mussert, who tended towards a less aggressive, Greater Dutch fascism. An example of Rost's radicalism were the thugs he founded (Mussertgarde, Freikorps-Rost, Sturmabteilung-Rost), which he repeatedly led to provocation in workers' or Jewish quarters. For Rost, it was not unfortunately Mussert who was the real reference person for his belief in the Führer , but Adolf Hitler, whom he even met twice in person .

Shortly after Rost's entry into the party, he became editor-in-chief of the newly founded NSB party newspaper Het Nationale Dagblad on November 2, 1936 . The newspaper should stand out from other right-wing newspapers such as Volk en Vaderland, which also belongs to the NSB, through its more serious and informative conception, and openly radical and extremist failures should be avoided. In this way it was supposed to compete with the traditional bourgeois-liberal press, but it did not succeed. Rost often instrumentalized the newspaper for his own interests vis-à-vis the party leadership. It had a decidedly pro-German orientation, which was expressed, for example, in the enthusiasm about the annexation of Austria in 1938. Again and again the newspaper also brought folk-motivated excursions into the Germanic prehistory.

In June 1937, Rost won a seat in parliament in the elections and was chairman of the NSB in the Second Chamber of the States General . Initially, the small faction of the National Socialists in the Chamber followed a rather adapted course, which changed suddenly in 1938: The NSB under Rost's leadership now acted extremely destructively and relied on confrontation, both in terms of content and appearance. Rost, for example, was fined four times and had to leave an ongoing meeting twice. On February 28, 1939, Rost physically attacked a member of parliament, thereby triggering a mass beating. The radical appearance of the NSB in parliament was, however, on the whole rather counterproductive and completely isolated the group.

The reaction was not long in coming. The political opponents accused the NSB of treason. The reason for the accusation was the party's increasingly pro-German stance, which also endorsed the large German annexations of Hitler in Austria and Czechoslovakia, which were particularly worrying for the Dutch. Rost van Tonningen in particular came under fire because he had particularly good relations with Germany. As early as March 1937 he had been in contact with Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , with whom he apparently had a personal friendship, and with the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop . In 1936, 1937 and 1938, Rost was received as an official guest at the Nazi party rallies in Nuremberg and he also frequently traveled to neighboring countries.

When the danger of an attack on the Netherlands increased, Rost was put on a list of "persons dangerous to the state" in 1940 because it could be assumed that he would cooperate with the Germans in the event of an attack. He was finally arrested on May 3rd and sent to a detention center on Overflakkee Island . A week later the Germans' campaign in the west began with an attack on the Netherlands . Rost and his fellow inmates were immediately evacuated and taken first to Belgium, then to northern France. The escape from the German army finally came to an end in Calais , France , which the Germans captured on May 26th. Rost, about which Himmler and Hitler had personally inquired, was released after less than a month.

Rust as a collaborator, 1940–1945

Political collaboration

Arthur Seyß-Inquart addressing the regulatory police in The Hague (1940)

On June 2, 1940, Rost van Tonningen returned to The Hague to the enthusiastic applause of 400 National Socialists who had gathered to greet them in front of the NSB party leadership building. He immediately began his extensive collaboration with the German regime. On the evening of June 2, he had his first talks with Himmler and the new Reich Commissioner for the occupied Netherlands, Arthur Seyß-Inquart . Here the foundations were laid for a plan that, according to German ideas, should help to “nazify” the Dutch population as quickly as possible and without too much external pressure. According to the concept developed primarily by Rost van Tonningen, the first step was to convince the workers of National Socialism. Once this goal has been achieved, he believes that “self-nazification” of the other social groups is relatively easy to achieve.

Rost van Tonningen played a leading role in putting these ideas into practice. Soon after the occupation, the Germans banned the Communist Party (CPN) and the Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party (RSAP). The assets of the two parties should go to the Social Democratic Party (SDAP). Rost, whom Seyss-Inquart appointed "Commissioner for the Marxist parties" on July 20, 1940, was commissioned with the liquidation. He was supposed to reshape the SDAP by removing it from its Marxist roots and winning over the workers organized in the party to the National Socialist cause. In order to achieve these goals, Rost was entrusted with the control of the socialist media, specifically over the radio station VARA and the publishing company De Arbeiderspers , which among other things published the high-circulation daily newspaper Het Volk .

Rost failed with his project due to the resistance of the Dutch workers. On the one hand, the party and, above all, its leadership did not allow themselves to be brought into line without resistance, which became clear in a dispute between party chairman Koos Vorrink and Rost. On the other hand, the clear vote of the newspaper subscribers of De Arbeiderspers, who no longer wanted to read the now controlled and censored workers' newspapers, showed that large sections of the workforce were not ready to collaborate: the number of subscribers fell by more than half in just one year. That is why Rost chose a different path in September 1940, namely the establishment of the Dutch Socialist Working Group under the leadership of Tjerk van der Zees , a former Social Democrat. But this organization also remained largely insignificant and dissolved itself in October 1941. On July 5, 1941, the occupying power finally banned all parties, including the SDAP, which also made a "Commissioner for the Marxist Parties" superfluous.

At the same time as Rost's influence on German occupation policy, the NSB party leader Anton Mussert's distrust of internal party rivals also grew. After a scandal over a text that in the controlled rust newspaper Het Volk appeared and Mussert heavily criticized, ended the Unfortunately, on 30 August 1940, the activity rust as editor of Het Nationale Dagblad . Mussert's mistrust increased when, on October 1, 1940, at Seyss-Inquart's instigation, Rost was appointed NSB's trainer. But he also had to give up this post after he emphatically praised Hitler and the SS in a speech to NSB functionaries on February 8, 1941, which earned him the charge of a lack of patriotism. Rost had now been ousted from almost all political functions; he was only allowed to keep the nominal post of Second Deputy NSB Leader, which he had held since September 1940.

Treasury and banking, fight and death

After the end of his activity as NSB trainer, Rost volunteered on February 19, 1941 to be deployed at the front with the Waffen SS . Since neither Mussert nor Seyß-Inquart appreciated this step, which Rost was clear from the start, he was offered high positions in finance instead. On March 26, 1941, he was appointed Governor of the National Bank of the Netherlands and Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, where he was responsible for budget and monetary matters. Rost now had the entire Dutch financial sector in hand. Nevertheless, he was highly dependent on the German occupiers and was unable to realize all of his ideas. What he achieved nonetheless led to a partial modernization of the financial sector, because Rost did not rely primarily on National Socialist convictions in his office, but rather on professional considerations and his experience in Austria. Its monetary policy was based on the principles of public austerity and the careful control of wages and prices for inflationary trends, with the money supply expanding moderately.

The Dutch government calculated the cost of the occupation of the country to be 9,488,000,000 Reichsmarks after the war. In addition to this sum, an amount of 5,750,000,000 Reichsmarks flowed back in loans that had not previously been repaid from the Netherlands to Germany, so that a total of 14,500,000,000 Reichsmarks flowed to Germany. (Comparison: France 43,250,000,000 RM and Belgium 11,070,000,000 RM). On April 1, 1941, the currency barriers and on September 1, 1941 the last obstacles between the Netherlands and the Third Reich with regard to the common currency market were removed. This meant that the Germans could have used all the gold from the Dutch National Bank for trading if most of the gold bars had not already been transported from the Netherlands to other countries (e.g. Canada ) before the war .

As Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance , Rost van Tonningen was involved in the establishment of the Nederlandse Oost Compagnie (NOC). This organization was supposed to promote the settlement of Dutch farmers in the occupied eastern territories in accordance with Hitler's Germanic policy on greater areas. However, this project also failed due to the lack of interest from potential donors and settlers, only about 200 Dutch people actually moved to the east.

After the Allied invasion of Normandy ( Operation Overlord ), Rost reported again in 1944 for service with the Waffen SS. From June 22nd to August 8th 1944 he was stationed in 's-Hertogenbosch , where he attended an officers' course. He then returned to the Netherlands for the time being and to his position at the National Bank. In the course of a political cleansing operation, Mussert dismissed him from the position of Second Deputy NSB Leader, to which he responded with bitter protests, which, however, no longer helped him. In March 1945, Rost finally went to the front and fought against the advance of the Allies. On May 8, 1945, he was captured by Canadian units and taken to a POW camp in Elst . When it became known who he was, he was sent to a prison in Utrecht . After a first suicide attempt, he was transferred to Scheveningen , where he committed suicide on June 6, 1945 by jumping off a balcony.

Afterlife

Rost's widow Florentine, 2003

In the Netherlands, the name Rosts is still known to many today. It is associated with National Socialism in its most radical, völkisch-racist form, with collaboration and treason. Knowledge of the rest of his life, such as his time in Austria, is not very widespread.

His second wife, Florentine Rost van Tonningen , whom he married in 1940 in the presence of his best man Heinrich Himmler , remained a staunch National Socialist until her death in March 2007. She regretted the fall of the Third Reich and continued to fight for "racial purity". Until the end of her life, she vehemently held the view that Rost had not committed suicide, but had been murdered.

In the program Het Zwarte Schaap ("The Black Sheep") broadcast in 2000 , AJ van der Leeuw, a former employee of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), reported that the prisoners were subjected to severe torture, including sexual ones. The prison guards were recruited from members of the Inland Strijdkrachten (Inland Armed Forces) commanded by Prince Bernhard . According to Van der Leeuw, Rost van Tonningen was so severely tortured that it drove him to suicide.

swell

The estate of Rost van Tonningen, consisting of private and business correspondence, autobiographical notes and diaries as well as copies of official letters, is in the Amsterdam Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies . The Rost van Tonningen collection there comprises over 200 folders and files. Part of his correspondence has already been published:

  • Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen: Correspondentie .
    • Part 1: 1921 – May 1942 . Edited by Ernst Fraenkel-Verkade in collaboration with Anthonie Johannes van der Leeuw. Nijhoff, s'Gravenhage 1967 ( PDF ).
    • Part 2: May 1942 – May 1945 . Edited by David Barnouw. Walburg Pers, Zutphen 1993, ISBN 90-6011-854-5 ( PDF ).

literature

  • David Barnouw : Rost van Tonningen. Fout tot het bitter one . Zutphen 1994.
  • Peter Berger: In the shadow of the dictatorship. The financial diplomacy of the representative of the League of Nations in Austria, Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen 1931–1936 . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2000.
  • Peter Berger: Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen, representative of the League of Nations in Austria. A research report . In: zeitgeschichte 18, 1990/91, pp. 351–378 ( online version from Anno (Austrian Newspapers Online) ).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ On rust in Vienna 1923–1928 cf. Berger, Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen , pp. 354f .; in detail Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , pp. 49–136.
  2. ↑ See Berger, Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen , p. 356 with note 16 (p. 373).
  3. ↑ Berger, Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen , p. 356.
  4. ↑ On friendship and cooperation with Dollfuß, cf. Berger, Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen , pp. 356f.
  5. ↑ Berger, Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen , p. 358.
  6. ↑ On the ideological conflict between Rost and Mussert cf. for example Berger, Im Schatten der Diktatur , pp. 512-514. Also briefly Friso Wielenga , The Netherlands: Politics and Political Culture in the 20th Century , Münster 2008, pp. 130f. On the first audience with Hitler on August 20, 1936, Berger, Im Schatten der Diktatur , p. 494.
  7. ↑ See Berger, Im Schatten der Diktatur , p. 496.
  8. ↑ On this in detail Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , pp. 498–502.
  9. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , pp. 502f.
  10. ^ Gerhard Hirschfeld , Foreign Rule and Collaboration. The Netherlands under German occupation, 1940–1945 , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1984, pp. 167f.
  11. ↑ On Rost's contacts in Germany cf. Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , pp. 493–495, 504.
  12. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 505.
  13. ↑ On Rost's plan and its background, cf. Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 506f. On the meeting of June 2, cf. also Hirschfeld, Fremdherrschaft und Kollaboration , p. 170 f.
  14. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 509.
  15. ↑ On the conversation between Rost and Vorrink cf. David Barnouw, Rost van Tonningen , p. 62, and Hirschfeld, Fremdherrschaft und Kollaboration , p. 65.
  16. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 509; Wielenga, The Netherlands , p. 188.
  17. ↑ See Berger, Im Schatten der Diktatur , p. 510. On the attempted synchronization of the Dutch workforce, cf. also Hirschfeld, Fremdherrschaft und Kollaboration , pp. 64–68.
  18. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , pp. 514f.
  19. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 515.
  20. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 515 f.
  21. ↑ On the Eastern Company, cf. Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 518 f.
  22. ↑ Berger, In the shadow of the dictatorship , p. 519 f.
  23. ↑ See Berger, Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen , p. 361.
personal data
SURNAME Rost van Tonningen, Meinoud
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rost van Tonningen, Meinoud Marinus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch National Socialist
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Surabaya
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1945
Place of death Scheveningen