Promoting Amsterdam between mobilization and occupation

Since the seventeenth century, Amsterdam has attracted a substantial share of domestic and international tourists, eager to admire and enjoy its rich cultural life, its beautiful cityscape and its impressive artistic heritage. Active promotion by tourist associations and local authorities took off relatively late. After a few bourgeois citizens founded the first two tourist associations (in 1885 and 1895), in 1902 entrepreneurs of the tourism industry established a competing, more professional association called ’t Koggeschip, which aimed ‘to serve Amsterdam interest in general and particularly those of tourism’. In 1920, this third association merged with the second and subsequently received a modest annual municipal subsidy, justified by the growing conviction that tourism increasingly added to the city’s economy. In 1937, on municipal initiative, ’t Koggeschip further evolved into a public–private association ‘Vereeniging tot Bevordering van het Vreemdelingenverkeer Amsterdam’ (Association for Tourism Promoting Amsterdam). Generous subsidies of fl. 12,500 from the municipality and fl. 10,000 from the local Chamber of Commerce accounted for 75 per cent of its annual budget. The new General Board consisted of three representatives of the municipality, three representatives of the Chamber of Commerce and only three representatives chosen by the association’s members.Footnote ¹²

The new director, Jan Nikerk, a 49-year-old engineer with working experience in Germany, the Dutch East Indies and Japan, energetically professionalized Amsterdam tourism promotion to international standards. In the brand new Tourist Office in the prominent ‘Industria’ building at the Dam Square/Rokin, his bureau of eight employees developed a wide variety of activities. They gave information by mail, telephone and at the Tourist Office; distributed press releases, press-ready news items, press photos and attracted journalists to Amsterdam; gave radio talks, sent mobile window exhibitions throughout the country and abroad; awarded prizes and organized contests; attracted conferences and co-organized major events; collected and processed statistical data; created walking routes, commissioned new tourist guides and monitored the quality of personal city guides; and, last but surely not least, they designed and distributed a wide range of promotional materials: brochures, flyers, posters, lists of hotels and restaurants, museum and exhibition agendas, in all modern languages – many of them made available in tourist offices all over the world. In 1938, Nikerk concluded with great satisfaction that, despite the unstable economy and the insecure political situation in Europe, the VVV’s new energy and initiatives had borne fruit: Amsterdam had attracted 211,837 tourists – 109,422 of domestic and 92,205 of foreign origin, representing 37 per cent of all overnight stays by foreign tourists in the Netherlands. They came mostly from neighbouring Germany (28 per cent), Great Britain (14 per cent), Belgium (9 per cent), France (8 per cent), the United States (8 per cent) and the Dutch colonies (6 per cent). Nikerk calculated the total economic benefit of tourism to Amsterdam as no less than 5.3 million guilders.Footnote ¹³ In August 1939, statistical evidence of the slight increase in the average number of overnight stays encouraged him to launch a new publicity campaign with posters in public trams and taxis with the English-language slogan: ‘Why not stay longer in Amsterdam?’Footnote ¹⁴

Just one month later, the outbreak of World War II made this optimistic slogan at once irrelevant. As the borders closed and the Dutch government announced a national military mobilization campaign, the influx of foreign tourists suddenly came to a complete standstill. Building on the experiences of World War I – when closed borders made Dutch domestic tourism flourish – the Amsterdam VVV was quick to change its policies. On 25 September, the Executive Board eagerly agreed on a motion for the national tourism association ANVV:

With additional support from the municipality, the VVV launched a special ‘Winter Campaign’ to lure domestic tourists to Amsterdam, widely promoting a coupon booklet that offered attractive price reductions on national and local public transport, hotels, restaurants and a range of prominent museums. Although the sale of coupon booklets remained somewhat disappointing, the indirect promotion of Amsterdam appeared to have quite promising results. During October and November, the number of hotel bookings rose, and peaked in December. During Christmas, visits to Amsterdam were estimated to be 75 per cent higher than usual.Footnote ¹⁶ The annual report confidently declared: ‘It proves that under the current circumstances there is no need to despair and there is certainly an important task for our association to fulfil.’Footnote ¹⁷

Encouraged by this success, the VVV launched a range of new ideas and initiatives. In December 1939, the board commissioned, together with the national touring club ANWB, a new illustrated booklet Amsterdam en Omgeving (‘Amsterdam and surroundings’) with a print run of 3,000 copies, and decided to design the brand new colour brochure of Amsterdam, referred to above, with a print run of 50,000 copies.Footnote ¹⁸ In January 1940, Director Nikerk agreed a mutual promotional campaign with key figures in Belgium’s tourism sector – including coupon booklets, radio broadcasts and press meetings.Footnote ¹⁹ In February, the board brainstormed ideas for commissioning an illustrated culinary guide, ‘wittily and expertly’ describing the various characteristic eating establishments in Amsterdam.Footnote ²⁰ In March, they agreed to hire a propagandist to increase the number of paying members – also as a strategy to convince the municipality to further increase its annual subsidies.Footnote ²¹

Then, on 10 May, the day of the German invasion, the 50,000 colour brochures arrived. Director Nikerk hardly had time to decide what to do with them. During the air raids, various Amsterdam citizens on Dam Square hid in the VVV offices, as the staff quickly converted its cellar into an air-raid shelter. On the day after the capitulation and the entry of German troops in the city (Figure 2), Nikerk transformed the VVV into a temporary Civil Information Office, at the request of the local authorities, helping out citizens seeking shelter facilities, accommodation and news about evacuated and missing persons. Between 19 and 25 May, when several national telephone lines and postal services were interrupted, the VVV initiated and co-ordinated a national courier service of adult boy scouts, travelling by train to the southern and eastern regions of the country to exchange personal messages. In these first two weeks after the capitulation, the VVV processed thousands of communications between citizens, firmly shifting its mission from making public promotional material to the distribution of private information, and from attracting tourists to helping out local and national citizens.Footnote ²²

Figure 2. The arrival of German troups in Amsterdam, 15 May 1940. At the back right is the Tourist Office of the VVV on the ground floor of the ‘Industria’ building (NIOD, Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, nr. 64839).

What would be the next step? In June 1940, the VVV prided itself in its monthly newsletter on having ‘contributed, in very difficult times, to the alleviation of the emergency and to the return to more normal circumstances’.Footnote ²³ As we have seen, the board had just agreed that ‘the aim of our association is served best if the Bureau continues its task of promoting tourism’.Footnote ²⁴ However, promoting tourism soon became more than an aim in itself. Probably motivated by the quest for both economic and political stability, the VVV quickly seems to have conceived and applied it as a tool to promote a more general return to normalcy too, as the June newsletter explicitly noted: ‘With regard to the immediate future, VVV Amsterdam will be diligent and, for its part, will keep its attention focused on the return to normal conditions in Amsterdam. Our office was already providing several communications about holiday resorts and tourism in general in our country during the last week of May.’Footnote ²⁵ The holiday season was ready to begin. In the July newsletter, the VVV explained that, with the exception of military works, tools and destroyed areas, the ban on taking photographs had been lifted: ‘We are pleased to emphasize once again that the tourist can once more take out his camera and photograph his travel memories.’Footnote ²⁶

In the meantime, the Austrian lawyer and Nazi politician Arthur Seyss-Inquart had been appointed Reichskommissar of the Occupied Dutch Territories. In accordance with his assessment that he would be able to win over the Dutch population to National Socialism and make them accept German hegemony, he retained most of the structure of municipal authorities and its personnel, and initially limited the regulations of the Reichskommissariat on municipal affairs.Footnote ²⁷ Obliged by pre-war government instructions to stay at their posts in case of occupation, the Amsterdam mayor, aldermen and civil servants tried as best as they could to guarantee the continuation of policy, persuading themselves and their citizens against all odds – despite of as well as due to intimidating German remarks – that the impact of the German occupation on policy and the daily lives of most inhabitants would hopefully remain limited.Footnote ²⁸

In the summer of 1940, the Amsterdam VVV played a key role in reassuring the local population and visitors that ‘the return to normal conditions’ would be within easy reach. On the initiative and request of the newly appointed Catholic alderman Cor Kropman – the successor of the Jewish alderman Emanuel Boekman, who had committed suicide on the day of the capitulation – the VVV promoted and helped to organize an ambitious series of theatre, ballet and concert performances under the umbrella of ‘Art in Amsterdam, Summer 1940’. Between 20 June and 30 July, the Concertgebouw, the Municipal Theatre and a few other major halls – usually closed during the summer season – staged an almost continuous series of evening performances of German music and music theatre (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner), Sophocles’ Electra, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, a Dutch eighteenth-century century play Don Quichotte and ballet works by the German choreographer Yvonne Georgi, all at low entrance fees and massively marketed by 2,000 posters, 30,000 window posters, 50,000 leaflets, and press and radio coverage.Footnote ²⁹ According to the VVV, the campaign was a huge artistic, cultural and economic success: ‘The summer season has not recorded such satisfactory receipts for years…The revived interest in excellent theatrical performances and operas performed by Dutchmen is especially gratifying.’Footnote ³⁰ Yet, the VVV saw the campaign as an organizational success too:

Even though most of its board members may have been shocked by the German occupation, with this statement the VVV not just publicly supported the return to normalcy, but also suggested that the occupation facilitated a new normalcy, offering new, long-awaited opportunities to improve the governance of the local and national cultural infrastructure in ways that had been inconceivable in pre-war Dutch politics and society. They seemed to agree with what alderman Kropman declared in a national newspaper: ‘In this new age, Art has acquired a new task…Above all, it is necessary that the public spirit should not be allowed to become depressed, but should elevate itself.’Footnote ³²

Political accommodation to German anti-Jewish measures and the new regime

Between the summer of 1940 and the autumn of 1941, optimistic prospects of ‘the return to normalcy’ in occupied Amsterdam became increasingly difficult to maintain. Fairly quickly, a growing number of regulations from the Reichskommissariat of the Occupied Dutch Territories and other German-controlled institutions, as well as increasing street violence and economic scarcity, fundamentally affected the daily lives of the city’s inhabitants, and of Jewish citizens in particular.Footnote ³³ As the VVV wished to continue its activities, the question soon arose of how to position the association in the new political order, particularly as a public–private body between the German-controlled municipality and private members. Without expressing any overt enthusiasm for the German occupation or a spirit of principled resistance, the board adjusted – gradually and ad hoc – to a politics of law-abiding and accommodation.

The German ordinances demanding the exclusion of Jews from public office and public life were the first most challenging and significant litmus tests. On the day of the German invasion, the VVV’s board and its various committees counted three Jewish members. Paul Cronheim (1892–1971) – secretary of the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst, secretary of the Wagnervereeniging and newly appointed director of the Nederlandsche Opera Stichting – had been a member of the board representing the Amsterdam municipality since 1937. Under his chairmanship, the art dealer Jacques Goudstikker (1897–1940) and printer Willem Alexander van Leer (1884–1941) were members of the association’s Committee of the Arts. Initially, Cronheim did not seem too alarmed about his position. By the end of May, he informed his board members about his meeting with the new alderman Kropman, who seemed to agree with his opinion about the future governance of the VVV, that ‘given the splendid work that has been done in the past few weeks, the excellent organization of our office should not be fragmented but integrated as a whole’.Footnote ³⁴ In September 1940, in a meeting of the Committee of the Arts he still felt confident enough to invoke the memory of the late Jacques Goudstikker, who had died on 14 May on the cargo ship on which he was escaping to England: ‘The speaker thinks it is right to remember with a single word Mr Goudstikker, who contributed his creative imagination so many times in the meetings of the Committee of the Arts.’Footnote ³⁵ Only the phrasing of the justifying words (‘thinks it is right’) might have marked some sense of cautiousness.

By the end of October 1940, the Department of the Interior demanded that all Dutch civil servants as well as board members of largely state-funded associations, such as the VVV, should sign the so-called Aryan Declaration.Footnote ³⁶ On the urgent request of alderman Kropman, the interim president of the board H.W. de Jong forwarded the forms at once to his fellow board members, including Cronheim.Footnote ³⁷ Two weeks later, Cronheim received a polite letter from the Amsterdam mayor and aldermen – signed by the Jewish city secretary Siegfried van Lier – to announce that ‘to our regret, due to circumstances of which you are aware, we are unable to reappoint you as one of the three delegates of the Municipality in the Board of VVV as of 1 January’. They added their ‘extraordinary gratitude’ for everything he had done to promote tourism to Amsterdam.Footnote ³⁸ Although his mandate would formally end on 31 December, Cronheim decided to resign as a board member straight away, informing his colleagues of his decision in a terse, formal tone (‘Accept, kind sirs, the assurance of my highest esteem, yours faithfully…’).Footnote ³⁹ While his successor cordially expressed his wish to return his seat to Cronheim immediately should there be ‘a change in circumstances’,Footnote ⁴⁰ the other board members took refuge in a similar respectful yet distant politeness by thanking their expelled colleague for his ‘versatile and important contribution to the association’ and sending him their ‘sentiments of high esteem’.Footnote ⁴¹

When it came to the Jewish members of the Committee of the Arts, the board was disinclined to fulfil German demands to personally instruct them to step down. They improvised a circumventing tactic. By December 1940, the board simply notified its members that ‘due to the extraordinary circumstances’ all committees would be immediately dissolved.Footnote ⁴² However, according to a pencil annotation on the very same letter, only two months later the treasurer-secretary P.J. Mijksenaar, also head of the Municipal Department of Press, Propaganda and Tourism, was urging the board to reinstall the Committee of the Arts as soon as possible.Footnote ⁴³ The board then reinvited all former members, except for the Jewish members Cronheim and Van Leer, as well as a new representative of the Colonial Institute. All of them accepted; except for Henriëtte van Dam van Isselt, who a few months earlier also had refused to sign the Aryan Declaration and as a result had lost her job as head of the Municipal Department of Art: a courageous act that demonstrates the wider range of options to resist the German anti-Jewish measures as well as the immediate consequences of doing so.Footnote ⁴⁴ The board felt embarrassed and hesitant but was ultimately not capable or prepared to resist the German policy of Jewish exclusion from public life. Still, at the inaugural meeting of the new Committee of the Arts, the new committee president Frederik Schmidt Degener, director of the Rijksmuseum, did not flinch from paying tribute to the Jewish colleagues – particularly Van Leer, who had died of a heart attack, a few months after his arrest by the Gestapo – and made sure to record it in the minutes too: ‘New chairman Schmidt Degener opened the meeting with a tribute to one of the members of the previous art committee W.A. van Leer, who died suddenly a short time ago and to whom the art committee owes a great deal, and also to the memory of the work of the previous chairman, Dr P. Cronheim, who has resigned.’Footnote ⁴⁵

All these formal and informal manoeuvres to reluctantly accommodate to the new regime while, cautiously, paying respect to expelled Jewish colleagues were improvised and developed step by step, in response to constantly shifting situations.Footnote ⁴⁶ They largely remained unknown to people outside the inner circle of the VVV’s governing bodies. How did the association communicate its new position in society more publicly? In January 1941, the monthly newsletter published some very explicit new year wishes:

‘Love among humanity’, ‘peace’, ‘reciprocal trust’, ‘mutual appreciation’ – in the context of the increasing number of exclusionary measures against Amsterdam Jews and regular incidents of street violence, the VVV in its new year wish for 1941 chose extraordinary words in an extraordinary time. Against all odds, it set and defended a moral standard, and communicated a reassuring, optimistic message about the power of international tourism to improve the world.

Meanwhile, it was not entirely clear what the VVV exactly meant by a ‘new and better age’. Did they dare to refer to a time when the Netherlands would again be a free and independent country, or did they refer to a future when, after a German victory, the Netherlands would in one way or another be integrated into the Third Reich? The annual report of 1940 – published in March 1941 – daringly suggested the first option by explicitly referring to ‘the special circumstances in which our country found itself as a result of the occupation’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Yet, in the annual report of 1941, published in March 1942, the VVV seems to have been increasingly leaning towards the second option by stating: ‘We were able to successfully adjust to the changed relations and once again vigorously carry out propaganda for our imperishable beautiful city.’Footnote ⁴⁹ When, at the annual General Assembly in November 1941, one member asked ‘what plans the VVV has after the wartime operations’, the president self-confidently responded that ‘everything is ready for it to resume its old activities with renewed vigour immediately after the end of the war’.Footnote ⁵⁰ He used this phrasing only a few weeks after the infamous decree 199/1941 that prohibited Jews from joining voluntary associations with non-Jewish members: a crucial new measure to expel Amsterdam Jews from public life that, despite the substantial number of Jewish members, left no explicit traces in the extensive VVV archives.Footnote ⁵¹ By consistently referring to the ‘current special circumstances’ and the ‘current circumstances of the age’, the director and board of the VVV had by this time learned to keep their opinions about the present German occupation and any hopes for the future political situation firmly in the middle ground.Footnote ⁵²

Over the course of the war, the VVV never changed or challenged its good and even loyal relationship with the German and the municipal authorities – even after March 1941 when the mayor, four aldermen and the chief of police were removed from office and a new pro-German mayor and chief of police were installed. In October 1940, the VVV dutifully followed the new regulations by reporting the organization of the General Assembly to the public prosecutor.Footnote ⁵³ A few months later, it mentioned in its annual report of 1940, without any sign of reluctance, that it had provided assistance to the German Stadtkommendantur for the tour of official persons and groups of military personnel, and that it had distributed folders, brochures and information on museum visits, entertainment and recreation for military personnel in Amsterdam.Footnote ⁵⁴ In July 1941, the board considered strengthening relations with the new chief of police, by offering him a training programme for 300 new policemen about tourism and the difference between ‘desired’ and ‘undesired aliens’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Between 1941 and 1943, director Nikerk received various visits of the prominent Dutch Nazi official Meinoud Rost van Tonningen and various German officials, while he and deputy director Ton Koot at various times guided groups of Germans through the city.Footnote ⁵⁶ On 30 January 1942, the VVV confidently celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the association with a huge reception in the Municipal Theatre, with about 2,000 invitations and with the distinguished presence of the new mayor and aldermen.Footnote ⁵⁷ And when in November 1943, the commissioner for non-commercial associations sternly criticized the VVV for including announcements that he perceived as having a ‘non-business’ character in its monthly newsletter, Nikerk swiftly adapted its tone.Footnote ⁵⁸

Still, it is crucial to note that in November 1942, the members of the VVV – on the initiative of the board – did not hesitate to elect as their new representative the owner of a major canal boat company J.G. Koppe, who would soon turn out to be a member of the Amsterdam resistance, for which he eventually paid with his life in Bergen Belsen.Footnote ⁵⁹ In the summer of 1943, the VVV also willingly offered assistance with an exhibition of art works about Amsterdam in aid of the prominent citizens who had been taken hostage in St Michielsgestel.Footnote ⁶⁰ And in 1944, the former deputy director Ton Koot, in his new function of civil servant at the Municipal Department of Art, joined the later legendary resistance movement Vrij Nederland.Footnote ⁶¹ In contrast to the Flemish tourist association, the Amsterdam VVV did not reach out to German tourist associations and media.Footnote ⁶² The VVV, in other words, was not at all eager to collaborate with the Germans. Rather, it developed, gradually, a cautious and increasingly self-assured practice of adjustment to the new regime. And indeed, increasingly accepted and promoted the new normalcy too.

Promoting domestic tourism

The summer of 1940 had proved that the German occupation did not prevent Dutch inhabitants from visiting Amsterdam, either as overnight or short stays or as day trips. On the contrary: according to the local Bureau of Statistics, in 1940 the local hotels and pensions attracted a total of 102,573 domestic tourists, who made a total of 178,824 overnight stays (just slightly less than in 1938 and 1939), while director Nikerk calculated the total number of day-trippers at no fewer than 6.3 million.Footnote ⁶³ During subsequent wartime seasons, the VVV pulled out all the stops to stimulate domestic tourism to the capital: primarily to support the local economy, but also to reinforce the liveliness of the city and support local morale.

During the war, the increasing paper shortages and restrictions on print work prevented the VVV from creating much new promotional material to stimulate the domestic market. But well into 1944, the VVV deployed its main promotional resources as strategically as possible with a thrifty distribution of the available stock of about 59,000 Dutch-language folding sheets (reprinted in 1942), 9,000 brochures and other print work to about 500 tourist offices, railway stations, travel agencies and banks across the country as well as at its own office in Amsterdam.Footnote ⁶⁴ In addition, the VVV created extensive sets of promotional materials for window displays which it sent to its partners, and issued about 20 press releases a year, resulting in substantial free publicity in national and regional newspapers.Footnote ⁶⁵ By actively distributing pre-war publicity materials, the VVV confirmed the conventional image of Amsterdam as offering a return to normal; a reassuring image they clearly did not aim to change in the limited new materials either.

More important than distributing publicity materials was the transformation of the Amsterdam Tourist Office into a highly professionalized centre of information. During the war, the personnel of the VVV strongly intensified its task of actively collecting and distributing information for and to its partner institutions, conference organizers and thousands of private travellers. With pre-printed postcards, letters, telephone calls and information exchange at the office desk as well as press releases for national and regional newspapers they shared all kinds of up-to-date information: about available rooms in local hotels and pensions (of which initially about 30 per cent had been seized by German military and civic personnel); about train, tram, bus and boat timetables and other means of public transport (increasingly hampered due to fuel shortages and state regulations); as well as about all the cultural, sporting and other recreational activities Amsterdam had on offer, partly co-organized by the VVV itself.Footnote ⁶⁶ The co-operation with the new voluntary organization Uwe Leidsman (‘Your Guide’) ensured that tourists would find their way safely from the railway station to their hotel in a darkened city, especially during the winter season.Footnote ⁶⁷

All these efforts did not fail to make an impact. After the summer of 1940, the number of domestic tourists to Amsterdam substantially increased from 100,375 in 1941, 124,851 in 1942 and 146,899 in 1943, while the number of overnight stays rose from 152,964 in 1941, 185,990 in 1942 and 229,248 in 1943 – outnumbering the immediate pre-war years.Footnote ⁶⁸ In July and August 1943, the capital’s more than 100 hotels and pensions, with a total capacity of about 9,000 beds, were almost fully booked.Footnote ⁶⁹ Initially, the number of day-trippers decreased to 4.4 million visitors in 1941 (also due to the wet summer), but their numbers substantially increased again in 1942 and 1943.Footnote ⁷⁰ In the annual report of 1941, director Nikerk cheerfully concluded: ‘Due to continuing promotional activities Amsterdam has attracted a substantial proportion of the travel-loving compatriots.’ He hastened to add that the rise in tourism also stemmed from ‘the fact that Amsterdam, despite all the current difficulties, has still substantially more on offer than any other city in the Netherlands’.Footnote ⁷¹ Apart from boasting about his own propaganda efforts, he primarily aimed to support the self-confidence of its fellow citizens: ‘Our capital city continues to play its part in social and cultural life in every respect, and in the areas of entertainment and sport; in short even in these times, Amsterdam still shows itself to be a world city, in every area of public life, where the whole of the Netherlands assembles.’Footnote ⁷² In 1943, he concluded in the same spirit: ‘In this year of war, despite serious obstacles in many areas, Amsterdam was still a major living city, which managed to attract millions of visitors.’Footnote ⁷³ By reassuringly embracing the discourse of continuity, the VVV further developed the idea of normalcy in an abnormal context too.

The VVV also promoted tourism in a different direction: by facilitating tourism by Amsterdam citizens to other parts of the Netherlands. In May 1941, the VVV called on all partner organizations to keep them informed about available hotel accommodation in the country, in order to pass on the information to Amsterdam citizens who longed for a holiday.Footnote ⁷⁴ During the summer, increasing numbers of Amsterdam citizens went to the Tourist Office to profit from that information. The VVV especially encouraged the visits of working-class families, arguing that ‘a well-spent holiday can do much to increase the worker’s productivity in these times’.Footnote ⁷⁵ This attitude to domestic tourism potentially had a political dimension too. As early as March 1941, just a few months after the resignation of its Jewish board and commission members, the VVV was assisting the initiative of ‘Joy and Strength’, the Dutch National-Socialist version of Kraft durch Freude, to support working-class travel between Amsterdam and the countryside. It seems that director Nikerk and the board may not have been very eager to take on this facilitating role: they did not mention it in their extensive monthly newsletter or the annual report. However, a major Protestant newspaper did not hesitate to normalize the link between the two organizations.Footnote ⁷⁶

Less politically charged was the VVV’s co-operation, in 1942, with the Dutch League for Commuters (‘Nederlandschen Bond van Forenzen’). Explicitly promoting ‘the idea that holiday is indispensable for all, old and young’, the two organizations launched an ambitious house exchange scheme that would enable Amsterdam families to exchange their home with families in the countryside – thus saving rent and solving problems with rationing of food and other goods. As the number of applicants from Amsterdam appeared to far exceed the number of applicants from the other regions, the scheme in the end did not materialize.Footnote ⁷⁷ Nevertheless, it marked the commitment of the VVV not only to supporting the capital’s economy, but also to raising its citizens’ morale.

Promoting culture and entertainment

World War II in Amsterdam is anchored into Dutch collective memory as a period of major atrocities and hardship, first and foremost for the city’s 80,000 Jewish inhabitants. During 1940 and 1941, they were gradually excluded from public life and robbed of their possessions; in the subsequent two years, most of them were deported and killed in concentration camps. In addition, severe challenges of food rationing and shortages, violent confrontations on public streets, increasingly brutal German control and repression, the Arbeitseinsatz for all men between 18 and 35, and eventually the devastating Hunger Winter of 1944/45 – in short, the loss of freedom, safety and the means of subsistence – further dominates how this dreadful period is remembered and studied.Footnote ⁷⁸ In this context, the developing historical scholarship on the city’s continued and even vibrant public leisure culture may come as an unexpected, rather embarrassing surprise. As various studies have demonstrated, German Gleichschaltung and cultural propaganda in the fields of classical music, theatre and sports went hand in hand with growing state subsidies and increased opportunities for participation. In addition, the continued and even growing determination of many citizens to enjoy culture, relax and amuse themselves in this age of hardship has been explained as a coping mechanism or a form of escapism.Footnote ⁷⁹ As key actor in promoting culture and entertainment, the role of the Amsterdam VVV in this development can hardly be underestimated. Not only because it advertised, supported and in some cases even co-organized an extraordinarily broad range of cultural and recreational activities, but also because of its evolution into the key institution that reassured citizens and tourists that amusing themselves during wartime was a ‘normal’ thing to do.

Promoting theatre-going was one of the VVV’s main ambitions. After the successful promotional campaign ‘Art in Amsterdam, Summer 1940’, the Amsterdam Municipality joined forces again with the VVV to launch a new campaign ‘Art in Amsterdam, season 1940–41’, consisting of 15 extraordinary music theatre performances of, again, exclusively German and German-Nordic works – Fidelio, Peer Gynt, Die Fledermaus and a ballet – executed by the new Dutch Opera Foundation, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and other leading companies and orchestras. Supported by 80,000 leaflets, 2,000 posters and other promotional materials, the campaign became an ‘unprecedented success’, despite the ultimate audience decline due to blackout measures and the early timing of the last trams. ‘It is a delightful phenomenon that in such difficult times for our country and for our capital city in particular, we may experience a revival of the arts and in particular of the performing arts’, the VVV reported in its annual report.Footnote ⁸⁰ It appeared to be just a beginning. While Amsterdam theatre and opera performances between 1936 and 1939 had attracted an annual average of 355,000 visitors, numbers almost doubled – and eventually more than doubled – to 624,000 in 1940, 683,000 in 1941 and 727,000 in 1942.Footnote ⁸¹

The VVV actively supported the Amsterdam theatre craze during the war by promoting the wide variety of theatre performances in its monthly newsletter and at the Tourist Office, but also by more practical support, such as experiments with horse-drawn autobuses to facilitate transport to and from theatres in October 1940 and, again, in 1943 and 1944.Footnote ⁸² At least as important were its discursive endorsements of the new normal. In 1941, the VVV warmly welcomed the decision of the Amsterdam municipality – at the instigation of the German-controlled national government – to merge various private theatre companies into the Gemeentelijk Theaterbedrijf (Municipal Theatre Company), under the direction of H.D. van Dellen, the head of the Municipal Department of Art and an active board member of the VVV. By this endorsement – repeatedly reinforced – the VVV, and its director Nikerk in particular, not only expressed its enthusiasm for the company’s high-quality theatre and music theatre facilitated by unprecedented national subsidies, but also for the new political order that reorganized and ‘gleichschaltet’ the capital’s artistic infrastructure.Footnote ⁸³ In addition, the VVV explicitly promoted the benefits of theatre-going as a way to temporarily escape or ignore harsh realities. In October 1942, a few months after the last theatre accessible to Jews was converted into a deportation station and in the very weeks when the largest raids so far on Jewish citizens took place, the newsletter stated: ‘It is gratifying that in these times, theatre performances are a major attraction for Dutch audiences. A more pleasant distraction, a better opportunity to “get away from it all” for a few hours, is not imaginable.’Footnote ⁸⁴

In its promotion of theatre-going, the VVV demonstrated a clear preference for ‘high’ quality performances offered by the Municipal Theatre Company over the ‘light’ theatre, revues and operettas in other play houses, such as the Centraal Theater, Theater Royal and Theater Carré.Footnote ⁸⁵ This preference reflected a new dimension in the VVV’s propaganda policy, formulated early 1942; one that echoed a nineteenth-century bourgeois civilizing mission in addition to its original economic goals:

During the war, the VVV increasingly regarded itself as promotor and arbiter of refined cultural taste. In March 1943, the VVV saw the growing theatre audiences in Amsterdam as a ‘gratifying’ phenomenon, ‘because this points to a rising cultural level of the population’.Footnote ⁸⁷ When later that year Nikerk compared the mounting theatre-going with the relative stagnation of cinema-going – from an average of 9.6 million visitors in 1936–39 to 8.2 million in 1940, 6 million in 1941 and 8.2 million in 1942, largely due to the restriction to German and Dutch films – he presented this as a happy proof of ‘the increasing cultural level of the Amsterdam population’.Footnote ⁸⁸

In the domain of music, the VVV likewise warmly endorsed the ‘high culture’ concert performances in the Concertgebouw, but also more broadly promoted listening to and making music as a source of pleasant distraction and social cohesion. It actively supported the municipality and various private foundations by co-organizing and promoting series of open air concerts in parks and squares, as well as major music events by amateur music associations, also by granting medals for music competitions.Footnote ⁸⁹ Strikingly, and quite in contrast with the usual aim of promoting the citizens’ ‘rising cultural level’, the board of the VVV briefly discussed the desirability of reinstalling the annual September Fair, abolished in 1874 as the key trophy of the bourgeois and confessional civilizing mission of the labouring classes.Footnote ⁹⁰

In June 1940, the VVV reassuringly reported: ‘Immediately after the arms were drawn, people in Amsterdam sports circles became diligent again.’Footnote ⁹¹ In the subsequent years of the occupation, the VVV fully acknowledged the importance of both spectator and amateur sports for Amsterdam’s citizens and visiting tourists, and actively promoted them too.Footnote ⁹² The VVV collected and distributed information about major sporting events, and increased their appeal with VVV medals. Just as in the field of theatre-going, the VVV developed and communicated a discourse about sports that helped to justify their increasing popularity. ‘In times like those we are experiencing now, sport is of no significance compared to world events’, the monthly newsletter stated in May 1942, ‘yet there is a kind of flight into sport, a desire to indulge in sport and play and to enjoy nature and the wonderful spring air at the same time.’Footnote ⁹³ Despite the prohibition of major international duels, the annual number of sport spectators initially dropped from about 1 million in the pre-war years to 719,000 in 1940 and 660,000 in 1941, but remarkably climbed up again to 936,000 in 1942.Footnote ⁹⁴ In its annual reports, the VVV cheerfully published extensive lists of major national and regional sporting events with hundreds, thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of visitors.Footnote ⁹⁵ Early in 1944, the monthly newsletter announced that despite the discontinuation of the trams, major football matches on Sundays continued to attract usually 35,000 or more visitors.Footnote ⁹⁶

For domestic tourists, day-trippers and local citizens alike, visiting cafés and restaurants continued to be a popular pastime during the occupation.Footnote ⁹⁷ In its annual reports, the VVV regularly noted, with relief and admiration, that despite increasing limitations – food rationing, blackout, early closing at 11.00pm – Amsterdam restaurants and cafés continued to serve their clients, even when a lack of alcohol made them further restrict their opening hours.Footnote ⁹⁸ In contrast with the cultural sector and sports, the VVV did little to promote the food and drink trade, except for issuing a formal advisory statement against a fixed ‘music free’ evening in cafés that had been demanded by musicians in the entertainment industry.Footnote ⁹⁹

In this context, one striking intervention of director Nikerk concerning cafés and restaurants stands out. In May 1941, he contacted the German Zivilverwaltung to send him ‘a different list of institutions not accessible to Jews’. Although clearly responding to the growing number of café and restaurant owners that, either on their own initiative or pressured by Nazi crowds, developed grassroots anti-Jewish measures, it is less clear whether his initiative stemmed from questions from (Jewish) tourists or local citizens, or from his own, more pro-active wish to create an overview of establishments that they would like to avoid. The answer from the Zivilverwaltung was clear enough: ‘I don’t know in full which are the restaurants that Jews want to know they are excluded from visiting. I don’t keep a list of them. I’ll leave that to you to establish.’Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Nikerk did not take this advice to heart, but nor did he react to the exclusion of Jews in the city’s public leisure culture again either. In the meantime, we should not be too naive about his personal sympathy for some aspects of the new order. When in 1943 a confectioner on the premier shopping street Nieuwendijk asked him for help against nuisance-causing crowds of people in illegal pubs, Nikerk did not hesitate to contact board member H.D. van Dellen at the municipality, who in turn convinced the pro-German mayor Eduard Voûte to organize a few ‘raids’ to get rid of the unwanted crowds.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Although the VVV did not exclusively support ‘high’ cultural activities, its promotion of Amsterdam as a vibrant cultural city was largely tailored to the taste and preferred social order of the educated middle classes. When in 1942 the board of the association decided to launch an ambitious new campaign to expand its falling membership (from 572 on 1 January 1939 to 476 on 1 January 1942), it rejected director Nikerk’s original proposal to focus primarily on shopkeepers, café owners and other small entrepreneurs profiting from tourism. Instead, the board explicitly opted for a campaign with 1,000 folding sheets targeted at ‘lawyers, doctors, notaries and similar intellectuals in the city’, eventually expanded to ‘art dealers and art associations’.Footnote ¹⁰² Not only, it seems, because they had more capital to spend and a (perceived) higher sense for the public interest, but also because this would enable the VVV to be transformed from a ‘subscriber’ association of members with economic interests to a ‘member’ association of Amsterdam (non-Jewish) elite and upper-middle-class patrons, interested in cultivating normalcy in an abnormal age by increasing the ‘cultural level of the Amsterdam population’ as well as by consolidating their own social network. Board members regularly proposed to make membership more attractive by offering price reductions on theatre and concert performances and on museum entrance.Footnote ¹⁰³ As the war continued, the VVV increasingly organized excursions in the region and other cultural activities for members only.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Eventually, one of the most important assets with which to lure new members appeared to be the association’s monthly newsletter. In February 1944, the editors prided themselves on having created ‘the only general agenda compiled for Amsterdam’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ When, later that summer, earlier curfew (initially to 9.00pm in July, to 8.00pm in September), a lack of energy for heating and lighting, staff shortages and various German decrees all forced theatres, concert halls and cinemas to start performances earlier, turn to matinées and, from the autumn, to close altogether, the VVV informed its 650 members on thin paper with orange ink about the very few performances that did continue to take place.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Promoting local heritage and identity

In the inter-war period, the Amsterdam VVV had lured foreign and domestic tourists by directing their gaze to the rich art and architectural heritage of the capital: the medieval heart of the city, the unique urban ensemble of the Canal Zone, urban icons such as the Palace on the Dam and the extraordinary collections of paintings in the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Since the war prevented the influx of foreign tourists, the VVV expanded its promotion of local heritage to not only domestic tourists but also, and particularly, to local citizens. Reappraising the beautiful cityscape and the capital’s many lieux de mémoires, the VVV launched various initiatives to encourage local inhabitants to embrace their local heritage as a source of diversion, solace, accommodation and potentially even defiance in a distressing age of increasing hardship and repression.

Between September 1940 and autumn 1941, the VVV issued a series of five illustrated walks through Amsterdam, encouraging inhabitants and visitors to actively rediscover the capital’s ‘historic and architectural beauty’. The illustrated walks, each four pages long and available at the VVV office for 10 cents, respectively provided a guide to the medieval parts of the city, the canal district, along the Amstel river, the modern(ist) quarters in Amsterdam-Zuid and the surrounding rural vicinities.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The stencilled walks reflected but also expanded on the conventional tourist sites and sights and clearly filled a demand. ‘Suddenly, Amsterdammers are emerging as enthusiastic walkers’, a national newspaper reported cheerfully: ‘They discover pleasant spots, which they have repeatedly passed by without ever stopping. Now they stop and enjoy the abundance of urban beauty Amsterdam has to offer. This is how Amsterdammers learn to walk in their own city.’Footnote ¹⁰⁹ By the autumn of 1940, the Tourist Office had already sold several thousand copies; in 1941 it distributed no fewer than 10,000 stencilled walks.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Reassured by the ‘considerable interest at this time in taking walks in and around Amsterdam’, the VVV reprinted and advertised them in September 1942 and continued to do so well into the Hunger Winter of 1944/45.Footnote ¹¹¹

According to the VVV, the walks ‘opened the eyes to the characteristic cityscapes Amsterdam has on offer’, steering the tourist gaze both to well-known areas and monuments and to hidden gems, particularly in the medieval part of the city.Footnote ¹¹² In accordance with the VVV’s overarching aim to maintain Amsterdam’s image and self-image as a lively city, the leaflets repeatedly stressed the ‘typical Amsterdam industriousness’, ‘lively street traffic’ and the inner city’s ‘conviviality’. Nor did the flyers recoil from proudly mentioning several stadholders and kings of the House or Orange (but not the queen in exile). In a remarkably cheerful tone, the flyers encouraged citizens to feel reassured by the continuity between the past, the present and the future: ‘May the character of the historical road through this typically tranquil landscape, which lies so close under the smoke of the city, be preserved for posterity for a long time to come, and may many enjoy it walking along Amstel.’Footnote ¹¹³

In July 1941, deputy director Ton Koot brought his personal knowledge and that of the VVV documentation section together in a relatively inexpensive 250 page walking guide En nu…Amsterdam in! Zwerftochten in en rond Amsterdam (‘And now…into Amsterdam! Rambling in and around Amsterdam’). Initially entitled Langs grachten en gevels van Amsterdam (‘Passing Amsterdam canals and façades’), the choice of the final title – a few months after the February Strike of 1941 – expressed a vital sense of urgency, imperative, invitation and opportunity in one.Footnote ¹¹⁴ The book offered extended versions of the five VVV walks as well as ten elaborate new walks, covering almost all quarters of the inner city, several modern city extensions (skipping the nineteenth-century ones) and the city’s outskirts and surrounding region. Written in a light-hearted and optimistic tone, the text empathically encouraged Amsterdam citizens to explore, appreciate and interact with their own city in new ways, finding solace and confidence in their built heritage and in the past, without worrying too much about the present or future. The VVV actively promoted the book and encouraged Amsterdam citizens to discover their city anew: ‘Amsterdam, like probably no other large city in the world, offers the opportunity to undertake rambles, enjoying both the atmospheric old town and the spacious and light modern town.’Footnote ¹¹⁵ Within a few weeks, the guide appears to have been a great success, with a reprint after one month, followed by a third, revised edition in 1943 and a fourth edition in 1944.Footnote ¹¹⁶

En nu…Amsterdam in! offered Amsterdam citizens a guide to countering feelings of concern, distress or despair through a passion for walking, accumulating knowledge and sensing pride, rootedness and, indeed, reassuring normalcy in the Amsterdam cityscape. The book encouraged a form of ‘inner emigration’ in public space, turning away from the increasing violence on Amsterdam streets, particularly against Amsterdam Jews. Despite strict German censorship, Ton Koot also dared to mention Jewish heritage and culture in positive terms by highlighting the city’s two monumental seventeenth-century synagogues. He also praised the ‘boisterous dynamism of the Jewish quarter’, even though this cliché also communicated traditional Jewish stereotypes and racial thinking, similarly reflected in his narrative of the historical evolution of spatial segregation between ‘fellows from the Jewish race’ and ‘the Amsterdammers’.Footnote ¹¹⁷ In his substantially revised 1943 and 1944 editions, Koot followed the decree of mayor Voûte and referred to the Jonas Daniël Meijerplein (named after a famous pioneer of Jewish emancipation around 1800) by its former eighteenth-century name (oude Deventer) Houtmarkt. Yet, his revised editions continued to refer to the two monumental synagogues and the ‘boisterous dynamism of the Jewish quarter’.Footnote ¹¹⁸ By that time, tens of thousands of Amsterdam Jews had been deported, transported to concentration camps and murdered. Whether or not Koot deliberately intended the unchanged passages as some form of homage, they may have prompted many Amsterdam readers and ramblers to experience, feel and reflect on the tragic contrast with the deserted, silent and increasingly ruined streets and homes in what had recently been such a lively neighbourhood.Footnote ¹¹⁹

The VVV launched several other innovative initiatives to reconnect local citizens to their local heritage and urban environment. ‘In order to draw attention to so many characteristic city corners and buildings’, in the winter of 1941/42 the VVV organized a light-hearted prize competition with 30 photos of easy and hard to recognize Amsterdam locations, exhibited in the windows of the Tourist Office. The competition attracted about 600 interested participants and 300 contributors, all eager to demonstrate and deepen their knowledge of their city, expressing their affection for their city in lavishly illustrated and poetic entries.Footnote ¹²⁰ In the winter of 1942/43, the VVV initiated a second prize competition ‘Where famous Amsterdam people have lived and worked’, allowing local inhabitants to celebrate the collective memory of ‘important men and women’ and firmly anchoring such memories in their mental map of the city.Footnote ¹²¹ In February 1943, the VVV together with the historical association Amstelodamum organized a third and final prize competition: ‘The youth gets to know Amsterdam’, inviting school boys and girls ‘to prove that they are actively learning to know the city’, by scrapbooks, collections, scale models or other individually and collectively created work pieces.Footnote ¹²²

In order to encourage local engagement with the city’s heritage and cityscape, the VVV also initiated various lecture series. In the winter of 1942/43, the VVV together with a few other associations organized a lecture series in the American Hotel on ‘Landscape and Urban Beauty in North Holland’, which ran in parallel to the exhibition ‘City and Countryside’ in the Stedelijk Museum.Footnote ¹²³ In the winter of 1943/44, the VVV continued with a lecture series on ‘Art in Amsterdam Museums’ in Hotel Krasnapolsky, which was deliberately intended to ‘keep contact with our museums, now so many art treasures are safely stowed away’.Footnote ¹²⁴ Both lecture series staged renowned university professors and other scholarly and professional experts. They were considered to be a great success, both attracting about 450 paying participants and luring in quite a few new members. Even as late as November 1944, the VVV organized a third lecture series on ‘Amsterdam in the Golden Age’, which was delivered in the Recital Hall of the Concertgebouw and continued as best as they could during the harsh Hunger Winter of 1944/45.Footnote ¹²⁵ ‘What a great contrast, those lectures on Amsterdam in the Golden Age in the Concertgebouw and the desolate state of the city outside that same building’, wrote one of Nikerk’s colleagues to him encouragingly: ‘May the daring choice of this subject for your winter lectures in the war year 1944 be an omen of the sturdy will and energy with which the people of Amsterdam will soon set about rebuilding the Dutch capital.’Footnote ¹²⁶

During the war, the VVV promoted visits to museums and exhibitions too. While the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum had safely stored most of their masterpieces in bunkers in the coastal dunes, both museums organized a series of temporary exhibitions that allowed local citizens and domestic tourists to engage with lesser-known parts of the collection and major historical overviews of key aspects of Dutch culture. In June 1940, the VVV’s monthly newsletter enthusiastically asserted that the exhibition of eighteenth-century prints and drawings in the Rijksmuseum ‘refreshes the mind and strengthens artistic and cultural awareness’ and argued the exhibition was particularly timely as ‘now more than ever, every man’s soul is searching for other occupations’.Footnote ¹²⁷ In 1941, the period rooms of the popular exhibition ‘In Holland Stands a House’ in the Stedelijk Museum – which attracted more than 50,000 visitors – were explicitly applauded for their escapist qualities: ‘One experiences the atmosphere of the past and just now feels more attracted to it than ever.’Footnote ¹²⁸ The same thinking may have accounted for numerous other exhibitions, amongst the most frequented of which were ‘Michiel de Ruyter’, ‘Children’s Toys’ and ‘Reviving Netherland’ in the Rijksmuseum in 1942 and ‘150 Years of Fashion’, ‘City and Countryside’, ‘Amstel, Vecht and Zaan’ in the Stedelijk Museum in 1942 and 1943.Footnote ¹²⁹ While the VVV deplored the continuing closure of the various house museums such as the Rembrandthuis, Museum Fodor and Museum Willet Holthuyzen, its monthly newsletter happily promoted lesser-known museums such as the period rooms of the Sophia Augusta Foundation and the Museum of Time Measurement.Footnote ¹³⁰

During the occupation, the number of visitors to the Rijksmuseum, missing its master pieces, significantly decreased, from a pre-war average of 164,000 to a mere 53,000, 68,000, 81,000 and 66,000 annual visitors respectively between 1940 and 1943. In the Stedelijk Museum, numbers decreased from a pre-war average of 100,000 to about 50,000 visitors per year, with the exception of the anomalous peak of 118,000 visitors in 1941. These numbers contrasted strikingly with the extraordinary growing popularity of the Colonial Museum. This museum, established in 1926, attracted on average 49,000 visitors in the pre-war years. Between 1940 and 1943, it saw its popularity increase to 66,000, 63,000, 78,000 and eventually no fewer than 131,000 visitors. Amsterdam and Dutch citizens, oppressed by German occupation, were clearly fascinated by and cherished their colonial possessions since they had lost ‘their’ Dutch East Indies to the Japanese liberation and occupation. The VVV – whose director, secretary and treasurer joined the Museum’s Propaganda Committee – played a substantial part in promoting the Colonial Museum: not only through regular articles in its monthly newsletter and occasional window displays, but also by organizing events such as a gamelan-concert and Indian dance performances, accessible lectures with slide shows (on Balinese dances and cremation rituals, but also petroleum), courses and guided tours.Footnote ¹³¹ In 1943, the VVV welcomed the steep increase in visitors ‘with great satisfaction’ as a proof of the ‘extraordinary interest in the Dutch Overseas Regions’.Footnote ¹³²

Promoting science and hope for the future

Since the reorganization of the VVV in 1937, director Jan Nikerk had been a zealous promotor of the idea that tourism promotion could only be effective if based on a solid foundation of knowledge and science. Accordingly, he had not only started to collect and process municipal statistical data, but had also developed an elaborate documentation system in which he and his staff would record everything that was worth knowing both for tourists and about tourists to Amsterdam. This included, for instance, statistical processing of the thousands of pieces of written, telephonic and desk information that the Tourist Office provided for foreign tourists in order to analyse national differences in their interest in museums, folklore, architecture and other tourist highlights.Footnote ¹³³ During the war, Nikerk continued to encourage documentation and scientific analysis as the core foundation of tourism promotion, actively preparing for the expansion of the VVV’s activities in the post-war era, either under the new order of the Third Reich or – as was increasingly anticipated – after allied liberation.

Among Nikerk’s most important new initiatives were the two intensive courses on tourism, organized in the winters of 1940/41 and 1941/42 for professionals working in the Amsterdam and Dutch tourism industry. Consisting of 16 afternoon lectures in the Colonial Museum and a range of excursions, the courses offered the very first programme in Tourism Studies in the Netherlands, explicitly aimed at ‘placing tourism on a more scientific basis’. Taught by Nikerk and a variety of experts, the courses addressed a broad variety of topics ranging from general tourism, traffic, transport, statistics, economy, to art history, colonial art, architecture, history of Amsterdam, history of tourism, propaganda, display techniques, printing techniques and ‘psychology of customer service’. The two winter courses became quite a success, attracting 63 male and female participants of whom 20 received a certificate after taking a formal written exam. They even attracted interest from foreign colleagues in Luzern and Belgium who were aiming to organize similar initiatives.Footnote ¹³⁴ In March 1941, Nikerk compiled many of his key findings in a 70 page stencilled syllabus Economie en Toerisme, sold as a written course to 200 interested professionals and VVV members.Footnote ¹³⁵

When in 1942 the VVV Amsterdam celebrated its fortieth anniversary as the successor of the original association ’t Koggeschip, the journalist Gerhard Werkman was commissioned to write a jubilee reflection. He noted how the new director Nikerk had reorganized the association, leaving behind ‘the atmosphere of dilettantism, which was well intentioned but led to few results’ and raising it ‘to the level of an institution based on scientific foundations’ and ‘analytical research’.Footnote ¹³⁶ Werkman not only praised the elaborate documentation systems and the active collecting and processing of statistical data, but also Nikerk’s creation of what he explicitly framed as ‘the touristic concept of Amsterdam’: a careful selection of places, activities and people based on research, which was to be distinguished from the city of ‘Amsterdam’ as a general collection of 800,000 inhabitants, of streets and canals and activities.Footnote ¹³⁷ Although ‘the current war situation’ had ‘temporarily paralysed’ international tourism, Werkman was optimistic about the advantages of scientific marketing research to actively prepare for future tourism promotion, especially for defining national target groups and increasing their average duration of stay.

Building on the VVV’s data collection and the two courses, director Nikerk promoted a scientific approach to Dutch tourism studies in several scholarly articles. In 1941, the prominent Dutch journal Tijdschrift voor Economische Geografie (Journal for Economic Geography) published his extensive article on domestic tourism in the Netherlands, in 1943 followed by an article on the economic impact of leisure in Amsterdam.Footnote ¹³⁸ In July 1944, Nikerk finalized a 293 page book manuscript Vreemdelingenverkeer (Tourism), in which he elaborated his vision and data on the social, cultural and economic functions of tourism, on domestic and international tourism, on tourism associations and propaganda and on the management of hotels.Footnote ¹³⁹ Despite the hardships of the war, his scientific publications all breathe a remarkable sense of optimism, particularly about the rewards of efficient tourism planning based on statistical data. In fact, Nikerk’s scientific vision for the efficient governance of tourism aligned pretty well with the National-Socialist policy of centralization and ‘Gleichschaltung’. In December 1941, he concluded: ‘We must break with the system of hundreds of tourism associations…Leadership should be provided by the [national] tourism association. To this end, the organization should be thoroughly restructured.’Footnote ¹⁴⁰ The New Order, he seemed to suggest after 20 months of German occupation, did not fundamentally threaten Dutch society and culture, but offered new, positive prospects: ‘The high level of civilization in the Netherlands makes our country a Mecca of science and art, to which many tourists are attracted in order to get their share of the art and culture that they will need so much after the war years.’Footnote ¹⁴¹

By December 1941, it was not entirely clear what his references to ‘after the war years’ pointed to exactly. Yet in October 1943, eight months after the Battle of Stalingrad, the board of the VVV was already anticipating an allied victory and even implied it in the minutes, which were sent to the Municipal Department of Press, Propaganda and Tourism too. In this meeting, the board not only discussed a stock of foreign-language brochures that could ‘in case of revival meet the first need’, but also decided to promote ‘post-war tourism’ by distributing new books about Amsterdam, ‘particularly in America’, and to organize summer schools at universities or museums ‘together with institutions such as American Express’.Footnote ¹⁴² In August 1944, 10 days before allied forces liberated Paris, the board decided to commission a richly illustrated publication Amsterdam in Amerika, and to reach out to potential authors and art dealers.Footnote ¹⁴³ When, after the Hunger Winter of 1944/45 and the long-awaited Liberation in May 1945, the VVV could finally start its international tourism promotion campaigns again, the board and director Nikerk were perfectly prepared to bring together all their practical experience and scientific expertise and to rebrand Amsterdam as one of the most attractive touristic hotspots in Europe.