As Reichskommissar for the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945, Arthur Seyss-Inquart had the distinction of being the only civilian governor of a territory under German occupation in Western Europe. Seyss-Inquart would at first seem an unlikely candidate to fill such a lofty position. He was a prominent Austrian lawyer and therefore outside the circle of “old fighters” that developed around Adolf Hitler in Munich. Though strongly affiliated with similar groups in Vienna since the early 1930s, Seyss-Inquart did not officially join the National Socialist German Workers Party until 1938 and had no power base within the party. Seyss-Inquart was not disconnected from the party though, serving as intermediary between Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg and Hitler prior to 1938. He took office as interior minister just before the Anschluss and served until just before the outbreak of war as governor (Reichsstaathalter) of the new Ostmark. Seyss-Inquart also served briefly (and apparently unhappily) under Hans Frank as the civilian leader in the Krakow military district before being sent to the Netherlands.
Johannes Koll convincingly argues that the keys to Seyss-Inquart's success were his talent for self-promotion and his unwavering loyalty to Adolf Hitler and National Socialist racial principles. As governor, he represented the economic and military interests of Greater Germany with single-minded zeal and strove to integrate the Netherlands into a German-dominated European order. Koll succeeds in placing Seyss-Inquart within the context of ongoing debates about the nature of National Socialist rule. He immediately situates Seyss-Inquart as an important member of the “middle tier” (Zwischeninstanz) of the Nazi state so crucial to its operation. Seyss-Inquart typified the “desktop criminal, who, out of ideological commitment and notable personal ambition, led an occupation regime that was marked by an increasing radicalization and brutalization” (15). Seyss-Inquart's career also puts the role of personality in the polycratic and Darwinian National Socialist state on display. In addition to these contributions to our understanding of German history, Koll intervenes frequently in Dutch debates concerning the history and legacy of the German occupation, particularly in chapters on the coordination (Gleichschaltung) of Dutch society, politics, and culture and on relations with Dutch collaborators in the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging.
Under Koll's biographical lens, Seyss-Inquart appears as talented lawyer and politician, though his political talents were insufficient to square the circle of a German occupation policy that sought to promote voluntary Nazification among a population deemed racially valuable but simultaneously terrorized and exploited that population for German ends. Seyss-Inquart was also a committed antisemite, unrepentant of his racial view of the world until the very end. Seyss-Inquart's Catholicism is a frequent theme as well, absorbing some of his legal and political energies in the 1930s and providing apparent solace as he faced execution in 1946. Koll does not neglect to mention that Seyss-Inquart's Christian faith did little to ameliorate the violence of his policies of economic exploitation and Jewish deportation, nor did it temper his response to growing Dutch resistance. Of course, in such hypocrisy, Seyss-Inquart was hardly alone.
Many chapters conclude with a refutation of Seyss-Inquart's Nuremburg defense. At his trial, Seyss-Inquart claimed, among other things, not to have known the fate of Jews deported to the east and to have spared “his Netherlands” an even worse fate by resisting Reich demands for resources and labor as well as Wehrmacht demands to flood the country in 1945. With Koll's in-depth analysis of each issue, such claims are easily proven false, and a later chapter entirely devoted to the International Military Tribunal adds detail to the extent of Seyss-Inquart's culpability.
Johannes Koll offers his readers 630 pages (not including bibliography and index) primarily on Arthur Seyss-Inquart's five-year term governor of the Netherlands. As a credentialing exercise (it is based on the author's Habilitationsschrift), the work is impressive. By my count, Koll visited twenty-six archives in six different countries, including Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands as well as Poland, Great Britain, and Canada. He consulted more than fifty published works by Seyss-Inquart, as well as more than a dozen unpublished manuscripts, some written while on trial at Nuremburg. The bibliography alone is thirty-six pages. Too often, such heft only serves to obscure an argument. But in this case, a well-organized manuscript and well-written introduction and conclusion ensure that the reader does not lose sight of Seyss-Inquart's crucial role as a skilled administrator, a committed racist, and a zealous National Socialist.
