Hendrikus Colijn

Colijn was born on 22 June 1869 in the Haarlemmermeer to Antonie Colijn and Anna Verkuijl, who had migrated to the newly-created Haarlemmermeer polder from the Land of Heusden and Altena for religious reasons. He was the first of six children, all of whom were born in Haarlemmermeer. Colijn grew up in the Land of Altena.

At the age of 16, Colijn went to a military academy in Kampen for officer training, where he graduated as a second lieutenant in 1892. On 18 September 1893, he married Helena Groenenberg (23 September 1867 – 14 February 1947)^[1] and was sent to the Dutch East Indies. During his 16 years in the Dutch East Indies, he spent ten years in the colonial army. He served in the Aceh War as the lieutenant of J. B. van Heutsz and six further years in the colonial administration as a lieutenant when van Heutsz became Governor General in 1904.

Colijn's letters to his wife from his period on Lombok reveal that his participation in acts of brutality which by modern standards would be considered severe war crimes:

I have seen a mother carrying a child of about 6 months old on her left arm, with a long lance in her right hand, who was running in our direction. One of our bullets killed the mother as well as the child. From now on we couldn't give any mercy, it was over. I did give orders to gather a group of 9 women and 3 children who asked for mercy and they were shot all together. It was not a pleasant job, but something else was impossible. Our soldiers tacked them with pleasure with their bayonets. It was horrible. I will stop reporting now.^[2]

After his return to the Netherlands in 1909, Colijn was elected as an Anti-Revolutionary Party Member of Parliament for the district of Sneek (before 1918, the Dutch voting system was the same as the British).

In 1911, he was appointed Minister of War^[3] and revised the Dutch Selective Service System. In May 1918, he acted as an intermediary between the British and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to arrange an armistice, resulting in the Wilhelm gaining refuge in the Netherlands.

In 1910, the Holland Dakota Landbouw Compagnie was established,^[4] with Hendrikus Colijn and his brother Arie Colijn as the primary shareholders.^[5]

From 1914 to 1922, he served as CEO for the Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij (BPM). In 1925, he also became CEO of Royal Dutch Shell.

Colijn served as editor of De Standaard from 1922 to 1939.^[6]

In 1922, Colijn accepted the political leadership of the Anti-Revolutionary Party (Calvinist) from Abraham Kuyper. Only one year later, he succeeded the resigning Dirk Jan de GeerasMinister of Finance.^[3] In 1925, Colijn also became prime minister,^[3] but a year later, he had to step down when the House of Representatives accepted a resolution by Gerrit Hendrik Kersten of the Protestant Reformed Political Party that called for diplomatic mission to the Holy See to be recalled. That was unacceptable to the Roman Catholic State Party, which was then in government.^[7] Colijn then returned to the Senate and from 1927 to 1929 served as head of the Dutch delegation to the League of NationsinGeneva. At the election of 1929, he was elected for the House of Representatives, and he immediately became parliamentary leader of his party. That proved to be a success since at the election of 1933, the ARP gained two seats, and Colijn became prime minister again.^[3]

From 1933 to 1939, Colijn served four more times as prime minister. During the 1930s, his government faced the effects of the Great Depression, which took a heavy toll on the Netherlands. Colijn's government responded to the economic crisis with a strict protectionist policy, which continued to weaken the Dutch economy. Colijn's decision to adhere to the gold standard until 1936, long after most of the trading partners of the Netherlands had dropped it, was very unpopular with those in favour of government fiat money.

In 1939, Colijn's last cabinet, with Protestant and liberal ministers but without Catholic ministers, lasted only three days before a government crisis. He resigned as prime minister on 10 August, only three weeks before the outbreak of World War II.

After the Dutch defeat in the Battle of the Netherlands in 1940, Colijn published an essay entitled "On the Border of Two Worlds" (Op de Grens van Twee Werelden)^[8] in which he called for accepting German leadership in Europe immediately after the Royal House had fled to England and left him behind. His view was influenced by the tremendous show of force that the German blitzkrieg had shown and the relative weakness of the Allied forces. Soon thereafter, he tried to organize political resistance but was arrested in June 1941 and taken to Berlin for interrogation. The Germans tried to have him confess that he had conspired with the British to invade the Netherlands to serve as an excuse for the German invasion.

Late in the war, according to a grandson, after the tide had turned against the Germans, Heinrich Himmler wanted to keep Colijn available as a possible intermediary with the British, as he had done earlier for Wilhelm II. The very fact that the Gestapo allowed the visit suggests that Himmler was already making contingency plans in case of a German loss. In March 1943, Colijn was put under house arrest in a remote mountain hotel in Ilmenau, where he died on 18 September 1944.^[9][10]

Official

• (in Dutch) Dr. H. (Hendrik) Colijn Parlement & Politiek
• (in Dutch) Dr. H. Colijn (ARP) Eerste Kamer der Staten-Generaal
• Newspaper clippings about Hendrikus Colijn in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW