Prince Bernhard in Canada in 1942.
AMSTERDAM--Despite his categorical denials, irrefutable proof of the late Prince Bernhard’s membership of Germany’s Nazi party has been found in his private archives.
Former Director of the Royal Archives Flip Maarschalkerweerd found the original membership card when making an inventory of the Prince’s private papers some years before his retirement in 2019.
Maarschalkerweerd makes the revelation in his book De Achterblijvers, or “Those Who Stayed Behind” in English. The book was published on Wednesday.
Prince Bernhard had always denied he was a member of Adolf Hitler’s national socialist party, despite a copy of his membership discovered in the United States in the 1990s.
Letters discussing the termination of his membership in 1936, the year in which he became engaged to then-Princess Juliana, have also been found.
“I swear on the bible: I was never a Nazi. I never paid party dues. I never had a membership card,” Prince Bernhard told newspaper De Volkskrant in an interview published after his death in 2004.
He did admit to having been an aspiring member of paramilitary groups Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS), ostensibly because he could not graduate unless he “participated a little”.
Maarschalkerweerd said he was surprised to find the card among the papers because they were part of a German file.
But he also quickly found an explanation in a note from 1949 from Lucius Clay, the military administrator of the American occupation zone in Germany.
“Dear Prince Bernhard. I kept this in my safe for years. As I was about to destroy it, I thought you have earned the right to destroy it yourself,” the note read.
The Americans must have found the documents in Germany, made copies, and sent the originals to Prince Bernhard, Maarschalkerweerd said.
“For me personally this is good to hear,” historian Gerald Aalders, who discovered the copy in the United States, told newspaper NRC. “I was accused of all sorts of things at the time. A week before he died, Bernhard rang me to deny everything. He tried to deny what could not be denied.”
Aalders said he did not think the card was a fake and used by the Germans to blackmail Prince Bernhard during the war.
“There is also the correspondence between his friends who had to make sure his membership was stopped. No, this is beyond any conspiracy theory,” Aalders told the paper.
Biographer Annejet van der Zijl, who uncovered Prince Bernhard’s membership card of a Nazi-affiliated student association, said it would have been “illogical” if the Prince had not been a Nazi party member.
“A man of his background, a playboy, would not have had the insight that it might be better for him not to join. But the truth has slowly emerged and that is a feather in the cap for Maarschalkerweerd, as well as the royal family,” she said.
Current Dutch King Willem-Alexander gave Maarschalkerweerd access to all documents relating to the war for a book about Queen Wilhelmina’s exile in Great Britain, which only mentions the discovery of the membership card in a foot note.
The card and correspondence will soon be put in the public domain, as access to the royal private archives will be extended to September 6, 1948, at the beginning of next year. It is currently restricted to the death of Queen Emma in 1934.
