Trains - Netherlands (1939-1945): Books - History

De Nederlandse Spoorwegen in oorlogstijd 1939-1945 - Rijden voor Vaderland en Vijand

On 17 September 1944, the Dutch Railway Strike began. On the orders of the government in exile, more than 30, 000 people on the Dutch Railways stopped working. In this way, they hoped to support the Allied offensive towards Arnhem, known as Operation Market Garden.

In the first week of the strike, the Germans were seriously hampered by the lack of rail transport, but later they managed to regain some control over the supply of equipment and personnel with their own people.
Market Garden largely failed, but the strike continued. Financing the strike, by continuing to pay the salaries of railway workers in hiding, was a huge operation that was successfully completed thanks to the largest bank robbery in Dutch history.

In this book, Guus Veenendaal (former company historian of the Dutch Railways) and David Barnouw (historian, previously affiliated with the NIOD as a researcher) describe the run-up to the strike, the strike itself, but also the image of the strike after the liberation.
Dirk Mulder (director of the Westerbork Camp Memorial Center) writes about the transport by rail of Jews, Roma, prisoners of war and other groups on behalf of the Germans.

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Hummel Hummel-Zügen en zo: de zoektocht naar het in de Tweede Wereldoorlog weggevoerde spoorwegmaterieel

Even before the liberation of the Netherlands North of the major rivers, it was clear that the occupying forces had systematically, structurally and on a large scale removed the most diverse goods from the Netherlands.
Approximately 90% of these were removed from the country after the start of Operation Market Garden and the railway strike on 17 September 1944. During that period, the Germans plundered many factories and the railways, but also evacuated cities and villages, such as Arnhem.
Against this background, the Dutch government established the Commissariat-General for Dutch Economic Interests in Germany in April 1945, which was tasked with tracing and returning removed goods and promoting the economic interests of the Netherlands in Germany.

This book tells the story of the search that took place in the period 1945 to 1951 for the deported property of the Dutch Railways and the associated exchange of (mainly) German railway equipment captured in the Netherlands or left behind.
The book also discusses the railway equipment that was not returned ("missing") and left behind in the GDR, Poland and other Eastern European countries, about which more and more has become known since the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is supported by many photos and overviews.

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