Even under Nazi Germany’s ruthless rule, sport kept the Dutch people going. Football remained largely untouched by the occupiers and attracted thousands in attendance.
But the pitches, courts, and fields also harboured heroes of the Dutch resistance, who fought for the country’s freedom by giving shelter to Jewish families, sabotaging German war efforts, being the extension of the Dutch government-in-exile in London, and standing up to oppression.
During the week on which we celebrate 80 years of freedom, we tell the stories of the resistance heroes who lived double lives on and off the theatre of their sport.
Gerben Wagenaar
After debuting as a 16-year-old for then-third division club De Volewijckers, Wagenaar helped the Amsterdam club rise through the ranks of Dutch football. In 1941, local newspapers hailed the wide midfielder as a hard-working, stylish player. “Gerben Wagenaar toiled again and it was a pleasure, not for a moment neglecting his technique and brainwork,” newspaper Het Volk reported on November 3rd.
De Volewijckers even clinched promotion in 1941 under the guidance of club captain Wagenaar.
However, Wagenaar had led a double life since the surrender of the Dutch forces during the German invasion. The big, blonde star of De Volewijckers joined the Dutch resistance a mere week after the capitulation and gradually grew bigger as a resistance fighter.
Shortly after the celebratory words from Het Volk, Wagenaar vanished from the face of the Earth. The German occupier had him on their radar – reason enough for the midfielder to go into hiding.
He was one of the masterminds behind the famous February strike of 1941, which was organised by the then-illegal CNP, the Dutch communist party Wagenaar was a member of.
It didn’t stop Wagenaar and his efforts to call the German war machine to a halt. As a member of the Resistance Council, Wagenaar stayed in contact with affiliated resistance groups and most famously sabotaged 30 German fighter planes, which blew up shortly after taking off from an airfield near Breda.
De Volewijckers
However, the resistance hero didn’t just stay in hiding. In 1942, Wagenaar took part in that year’s Elfstedentocht, the famous speed skating tour going past 11 cities in the Frisia province. And the midfielder even bumped into his former coach from De Volewijckers in Utrecht, Jaap van der Leck.
“On a good day, my left midfielder Gerben Wagenaar suddenly seemed to have disappeared,” Van der Leck told Het Parool in 1985. “Then I heard he was in the resistance. But his brother Douwe stayed on as club chairman.
“Later in the war, I happened to run into Gerben again in Utrecht. It scared the hell out of me. Then you think: Gosh, if those Krauts knew that Gerben Wagenaar was walking around here... He approached me and said: 'Things are going well with De Volewijckers, aren't they?'”
And they were. When Wagenaar debuted for De Volewijckers in 1928, they played in the third tier of Dutch football. The club had clinched promotion to the second tier a few months before Wagenaar disappeared, and their rise to stardom didn’t stop there.
In their first season in the second tier, Van der Leck’s Volewijckers were promoted to the highest level of Dutch football after beating DOS from Utrecht in Ajax’s sold-out stadium De Meer.
The First Class A, in which De Volewijckers played, was one of five regional competitions in the highest tier of the Dutch football association NVB, which the German occupiers restructured from the KNVB (Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond, or Royal Dutch Football Association) to remove the then-banned predicate ‘royal’ from the name and identity.
De Volewijckers’ first season in the top tier was historic, but also saw one of the worst chapters of the club’s history be written. In July 1943, after finishing in seventh, De Volewijckers’ complex got hit by an Allied bombardment meant for the aeroplane factory Fokker, which was taken over during the German occupation. After playing on their home pitch, which was deemed too dangerous, De Volewijckers moved from the north of Amsterdam to the Ajax stadium in the east.
Inspired by Chapman
The first season away from home would forever be written in football history. The football refugees of De Volewijckers, who rose to fame with Jaap van der Leck’s implementation of Herbert Chapman’s famous ‘WM system’, won the First Class A title - their first major title in club history. De Volewijckers thus qualified for the championship group, where they’d play VUC, LONGA, Heerenveen and Heracles for the official professional championship.
After beating Heracles 6-1 in the first game, Heerenveen were due to play in Amsterdam next. De Meer hosted 40,000 spectators for the second championship game of De Volewijckers, but the game on March 26th, 1944, would not last long as air sirens sounded ten minutes after kick-off. An evacuation followed, but this didn’t seem to matter for the home support: “We are green-white, we are De Volewijckers,” they chanted before being escorted out.
After two wins and a defeat, De Volewijckers’ to-be-resumed game against Heerenveen would prove crucial for the title. In front of 50,000 fans - among whom many Jews were in hiding - and without their Jewish players, who had been forcibly banned, and their goalkeeper, who was sent to Germany as a forced labourer, De Volewijckers outclassed Heerenveen 4-1 en route to their first and only national title.
Gerben Wagenaar wasn’t there to celebrate, but his brother Douwe celebrated the title as chairman. Douwe had organised a silent protest in 1943 when he made his side wear orange shirts - the colour of the banned royal family and Dutch identity - instead of the white and green kits. It cost him an arrest but underlined what De Volewijckers and the Wagenaar family stood for.
Gerben Wagenaar would go on to coach De Volewijckers in the 60s and make a name for himself as a politician before passing away in 1993.