‘In the interest of peace and quiet in Europe’: The military and strategic role of Dutch neutrality, 1890-1940

Abstract

The Netherlands is positioned amidst three major powers and controls the mouths of three main European rivers. Until the First World War, its choice for armed neutrality (1840-1940) seemed to be the most fitting answer to its security problem. After 1918, the Netherlands had difficulties adjusting to modern war, having decreased its defence budget substantially, and lacked a coherent political-military answer to the interwar strategic and operational challenges. Old notions of the Netherlands as a vital element of regional peace and as a country that could influence the behaviour of its large neighbours no longer fitted reality. Neutrality ceased to provide security to the country, thereby also endangering the stability in Western Europe to which the Dutch so wholeheartedly aspired.