The Stichting Oud Politieke Delinquenten ("Foundation for Political Delinquents"; abbreviated SOPD) was a Dutch right-wing organization founded by and for formerly jailed and convicted war criminals, collaborators who were associated with the German overlords during World War II. The SOPD was the first[1] and the largest of the collaboratist organizations in the country, "numbering perhaps a hundred former internees."[2]
The SOPD was founded in 1951 by Jan Hartman, formerly of the NSB,[3] the fascist party that allied itself with the German Nazi movement after the occupation of the Netherlands in 1939. Hartman became the organization's secretary. A co-founder was the lawyer Jan Wolthuis, another former NSB member who had been a "peace judge" during the German occupation,[3] essentially a political office meant to render Anton Mussert immune from prosecution.
The organization was "tolerated" by the Dutch government, but a political party, founded by SOPD member Paul van Tienen,[4] the Nationaal Europese Sociale Beweging ("National European Social Movement"), was banned by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in 1954[1]/1955.[2] The party had numbered between 100 and 400 members, all "old comrades", and was banned on the basis of a 1944 decree signed by Queen Wilhelmina, the "Resolution concerning the Dissolution of Treasonable Organisations".[4]
See also
References
- ^ a b Schans, Wil van der (2011-07-12). Monitor Racisme and Extremisme: Extreemrechts in Amsterdam. Amsterdam UP. p. 17. ISBN 9789085550495. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
- ^ a b Art, David (2011-02-21). Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe. Cambridge UP. p. 78. ISBN 9780521720328. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
- ^ a b Roos, Jan de; Roos-Van Rooden, Thea (2010). Moed en overmoed: een biografie van burgemeester Dirk Frans Pont. Uitgeverij Verloren. pp. 193 n.14. ISBN 9789087041847. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
- ^ a b Mudde, Cas (2003-02-22). The Ideology of the Extreme Right. Manchester UP. pp. 117–18. ISBN 9780719064463. Retrieved 1 May 2012.