On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, and the following day the Dutch government-in-exile declared war on Japan. These events sent immediate shockwaves throughout metropole and colony alike. Dutch colonial authorities in the colonial capital of Batavia placed the Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL) on high alert and, as a precaution, rounded up a few thousand Japanese men, women, and children who were then sent to Australia. Speaking in a radio broadcast from London on December 9, Queen Wilhelmina proclaimed her country’s solidarity with the British and Americans, pledging to lend any necessary military forces and supplies to her allies as they bravely fought Japanese aggression. She called on all Dutch citizens in the Indies, civilians and soldiers alike, to accept their pure and righteous mission, the success of which she had no doubt. However, despite this rousing call to arms, soon echoing in the pages of clandestine press, public responses in the German-occupied Netherlands evidenced trepidation, fear, and anger. Apparently, the Dutch Nazis were not alone in worrying that the government’s declaration of war would force Japan’s hand.

During the first weeks of December, civilian and military occupation officials repeatedly noted the presence of a generalized and mounting anxiety concerning the present position of the East Indies. On December 11, for instance, an official of the Aussenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP (the Foreign Political Office of the Nazi Party) in The Hague explained that “in spite of all omens” pointing in this direction, the outbreak of war in the Pacific Ocean had come as a great surprise to the Dutch. According to his vantage point, public opinion concerning the queen’s declaration of war was clearly ambivalent. Those who traveled in more anti-German circles saw the declaration as a positive contribution to the fight against the Axis powers, whereas others were convinced that “with Holland’s entry into the war in the Pacific, the colonial empire in the Far East has been lost, whether to Japan or to the United States.” Similarly, a staff member attached to the offices of General Christiansen, Commander of the Armed Forces in the Netherlands, explained that these events overseas had caused many Dutchmen to “begin to doubt whether the present political policy of alliance with England was correct.” In fact, so speculated this military staffer, the Germans could drastically improve their public image in the occupied country if they could convince the Dutch that friendship with Germany was the best guarantee of their economic welfare, now that a Japanese New Order in Asia was in the works.