NATIONAAL SOCIALISTISCHE BEWEGING

Political party founded in 1931 by Anton Mussert and Cornelis van Geelkerken (1901–1976). It was the Dutch branch of Adolf Hitler’s German National Social ist Workers’Party. The NSB was not popular in the Netherlands; its maximum vote was 8 percent in 1935 (in the elections for the assem blies of the provincial States), which decreased to 4 percent in the parliamentary elections of 1939. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World WarII (10 May 1940–5 May 1945), the NSB had to cooperate with its German counterparts, although opinions dif fered about the future status of the Netherlands as a Dutch entity or as part of a greater German Reich. Several NSB leaders were later sentenced to death by war tribunals.

See also Collaboration.