Meinoud Rost van Tonningen

Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen
Born	Template:Birth date Surabaya, Dutch East Indies
Died	June 6, 1945(1945-06-06) (aged 51)
Occupation(s)	Politician, diplomat, financial administrator
Years active	1923–1945
Known for	Collaboration with German occupying forces during World War II; President of De Nederlandsche Bank; NSB leader

Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen (19 February 1894 – 6 June 1945) was an active member of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) who collaborated closely with German occupying forces during World War II. He was married to Florentine Rost van Tonningen.

Early life

Rost van Tonningen was born on 19 February 1894 in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). He was the son of KNIL general Marinus Bernardus Rost van Tonningen, who gained recognition for his role in quelling uprisings in Lombok, Aceh, and Bali. After completing secondary education, he pursued legal studies at the University of Leiden.

From 1923 to 1928 and again between 1931 and 1936, he served as a representative for the League of Nations in Vienna, where he was responsible for supervising Austrian financial policies. During this period, Rost van Tonningen adopted pronounced anti-Semitic and anti-communist positions and developed a close association with Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.

NSB period

Upon returning from Austria, Rost van Tonningen joined the NSB on 7 August 1936. He secured a parliamentary seat and led his party’s faction within the House of Representatives. Additionally, he assumed the role of editor-in-chief for the NSB publication Het Nationale Dagblad, where he advocated a pro-German, Greater Germanic vision that contrasted with party leader Anton Mussert’s preference for Italian-style fascism.

His intense anti-Semitic stance pushed the NSB into closer alignment with the German Nazi Party (NSDAP). In 1939, he established the paramilitary Mussert guards, many members of which later joined the Nederlandsche SS. Although initially rejected from joining the SS Westland regiment due to his Dutch East Indies birthplace and insufficient evidence of "Aryan" descent, he was admitted in 1944 after regulations were amended to permit Indos (Dutch Eurasians) to serve in lower Waffen SS ranks.

German occupation of the Netherlands

During the German occupation, Arthur Seyss-Inquart appointed Rost van Tonningen as liquidation commissar responsible for dismantling Marxist organizations, focusing particularly on the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSAP), and Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN). The plan entailed dissolving the CPN and RSAP entirely, while attempting to "reconstruct" the SDAP under Nazi ideology—a strategy that failed due to SDAP’s prior destruction of most archival records.

The SDAP leadership refused collaboration outright, declaring their opposition at regional gatherings. Almost all organizations affiliated with SDAP rejected Rost van Tonningen’s efforts to integrate them into Nazi structures; many chose dissolution over cooperation. On 5 July 1941, all remaining political parties including the SDAP were officially disbanded.

Financial administrator

On 26 March 1941, Rost van Tonningen was appointed Secretary-General of the Finance Ministry and President of De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch Central Bank. Under his leadership, the Netherlands was held financially accountable for occupation expenses amounting to 9.49 billion Reichsmark. Furthermore, loans totaling 5.75 billion Reichsmark extended to Germany were never repaid, resulting in an overall transfer of approximately 14.5 billion Reichsmark to Germany—compared with France’s payments of 43.25 billion and Belgium’s 11.07 billion Reichsmark.

Currency controls between Nazi Germany and the Netherlands were removed on 1 April 1941 and fully abolished by 1 September that year. This enabled Germany to exchange Dutch gold reserves for paper Reichsmarks. Unlike other occupied nations, however, the Netherlands could not use these Reichsmarks to settle debts elsewhere, causing Dutch Reichsmark balances to soar from 83 million in March to 3.65 billion by September 1941. Simultaneously, Rost van Tonningen authorized large-scale printing of Dutch currency, which led to significant inflation.

In his capacity as Secretary-General for Special Economic Affairs, he played a role in founding the Nederlandse Oostcompagnie (Dutch East Company), an initiative intended to rebuild Ukraine; however, this enterprise ultimately failed.

Death

On 5 September 1944, known as Dolle Dinsdag (Mad Tuesday), Rost van Tonningen fled alongside other Dutch collaborators, fearing the imminent arrival of Allied forces. Although he resurfaced a few days later, Anton Mussert rejected him as a potential leader of the NSB after Rost van Tonningen expressed admiration for Dutch NSB youth members who had joined the Hitlerjugend division.

During the summer of 1944, he underwent officer training within the first battalion of Landstorm Nederland, a Dutch paramilitary defense organization. By March 1945, he was deployed to the frontlines in the Betuwe region. On 8 May 1945, Canadian military forces apprehended him. Following his detention in Elst and Utrecht, he was moved to Scheveningen prison on 24 May. It is reported that on 6 June 1945, Rost van Tonningen took his own life by leaping from a prison balcony.

Family

His second spouse, Florentine Rost van Tonningen, persisted in advocating pro-German and Nazi ideologies after World War II, denying the occurrence of the Holocaust and mourning both the collapse of the Third Reich and perceived threats to racial purity. Their son, Ebbe Rost van Tonningen, authored a memoir in 2012 titled In Niemandsland ("In No Man's Land"), which offers reflections on his early years.

References

• The Dutch version of this article was utilized extensively as a source for this content.