The Dutch government has confirmed the authenticity of a Nazi party card held by Prince Bernhard, prince consort for decades after World War Two.
A former head of the palace archives, Flip Maarschalkerweerd, said he found the card while going through the prince’s things after his death.
Bernhard, a German aristocrat, repeatedly denied being a member of Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP political party.
However, historians gave little credence to his denials.
In 1996, a researcher at the Dutch institute for war studies (Niod) said he had found a copy of the card in a US university archive.
Gerard Aalders, who was widely criticised at the time for his revelation, said on social media that “Prince Bernhard lied to the bitter end about his Nazi past”.
Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld had married Dutch Princess Juliana in 1937 and escorted the Dutch royal family in exile when war broke out in 1940.
But he was never trusted by British security services, despite taking part in a Dutch royal broadcast via the BBC in 1943 and being put in charge of the unified Dutch resistance forces in 1944. He was even decorated for his role as a wartime RAF pilot.
When Juliana became queen in 1948, Bernhard became prince consort.
Bernhard went to his grave swearing he had never been a paid-up member of Hitler’s party. “I can declare with my hand on the bible: I was never a Nazi,” he said in an interview published (in Dutch) after his death in 2004.
Source: bbc.com
