Hitler’s Nightmare: The Banker Who Stole 51 Million from the Nazis JJ

10 May 1940, the Netherlands. The Second World War is underway as   Nazi Germany invades the country, and the German  Air Force, the Luftwaffe, deploys paratroopers   to seize key positions and support the rapid  advance of ground troops across Dutch territory.   The invasion is accompanied by heavy aerial  bombardment of Rotterdam and culminates on   14 May with the destruction of its entire  historic centre.

Faced with the threat of   similar devastation in the city of Utrecht,  the Dutch forces surrender one day later  Soon after, the Nazis occupy the country  and introduce anti-Jewish laws designed to   exclude Jewish citizens from society and  strip them of their livelihoods. Arrests   follow, and in July 1942, systematic  deportations to death camps begin.

Yet not all are willing to accept this new  reality. Across the Netherlands, ordinary citizens   begin to resist, working in secrecy, hiding those  in danger, and risking their lives to oppose the   occupation. Among them is a banker who will turn  finance into a weapon and build a secret network   that fuels the resistance from the shadows. His name is Walraven van Hall.

Walraven van Hall, often nicknamed ‘Wally’,   the sixth child of Adriaan Floris van  Hall and Petronella Johanna Boissevain,   was born on 10 February 1906 in Amsterdam into a  prominent Dutch family of bankers and directors,   and was privately educated in his early years.

Rather than follow his family into banking,   he chose to go to sea and trained as an officer  in the merchant marine. After working for several   years as a third mate, Van Hall was declared  unfit for service because of his poor eyesight.  In the autumn of 1929, Van Hall went to the  United States, where he had intended to join   a shipping company in New York, but because of  the global economic crisis, he was not hired.

Through his brother, Gijs van Hall, who would  become Mayor of Amsterdam after the war and   was working in banking in New York at the time,  he found a position on Wall Street. After just   over a year, Van Hall returned to the Netherlands  and, in February 1931, was appointed co-director   of a local branch of the Amsterdam-based bank  H. Oyens & Sons, where his father was director.

In March 1932, Van Hall married Tilly den  Tex and the marriage produced three children. The Second World War began on 1 September  1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. After the Germans invaded the Netherlands in  May 1940, the Dutch resistance set up a fund   to support the families of merchant sailors who  had been stranded abroad when the war broke out.

Van Hall was asked to help establish  the Amsterdam branch together with his   brother Gijs. Thanks to his banking experience,  he was able to raise funds with support from   the Dutch government in London. Soon  after, the occupation tightened as   Jews were stripped of their rights, and  increasingly subjected to persecution.

On 22 and 23 February 1941, German forces  raided the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam,   arresting and deporting more than 400 Jewish men  to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration   camps. The Dutch response was unique in  Nazi-occupied Europe: a two-day general strike,   known as the February Strike, began on 25 February  1941.

German authorities, however, brutally   suppressed the strike. This action was followed by  a hardening of Nazi policy. The German authorities   as well as collaborating Dutch authorities and  civil services segregated Jews from the general   Dutch population and incarcerated 15,000 of  them in German-administered forced-labour camps.   The Germans then ordered the concentration  of Jews in Amsterdam and sent foreign and   stateless Jews to the Westerbork transit  camp in the northeast part of the country.

Van Hall was one of many Dutch citizens  who could not simply stand by and watch   what was happening to their country  and people. After the February Strike,   he collected money for families who had lost  their breadwinners due to arrest or dismissal. Within the resistance, Van Hall worked closely  with his colleague Iman Jacob van den Bosch and   his brother Gijs van Hall.

In June 1943, they  founded the National Support Fund, or NSF,   which they led together. The NSF provided  financial support to people in hiding,   their families, and resistance groups. The funds  were also used to support hundreds of Jews,   assist resistance activities, carry out acts of  sabotage, and help rescue captured Allied pilots.  The NSF had around 2,000 members and worked  closely with the government in London,   becoming known as the “Bank of the Resistance.

”  The NSF relied heavily on Van Hall’s financial   expertise, and through a range of clever methods,  he raised large sums of money. Across the country,   the NSF operated through 23 districts, with  teams responsible for distributing funds,   delivering wage packets, and keeping accounts.  NSF workers transported suitcases full of cash,   delivered money to homes, supported resistance  groups, and handled the bookkeeping.

Van Hall became known as the banker of resistance.  Among his additional nicknames was ‘the Oilman’   for his ability to ease tensions between different  resistance groups and bring them together,   and he played a key role in establishing regular  consultations between the leaders of the most   important Dutch resistance organizations.

Although  his prominent position in the resistance offered   certain benefits, such as extra food,  he refused to take advantage of them. Together with his brother, he carried out what  has been called the largest bank fraud in Dutch   history. Between September 1944 and May 1945,  treasury notes worth 51 million guilders were   secretly replaced with forged ones in 15 stages,  with the help of officials at the Dutch central   bank and the knowledge of the government-in-exile  in London.

These forged notes were then exchanged   for real securities at the Kas-Vereeniging bank  in Amsterdam and converted into cash by presenting   them as payments for workers of factories  that could no longer operate due to the war.   The operation was carried out in cooperation  with Frans den Hollander, who managed the   unemployment fund, and without the knowledge of  Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, the president of the   Dutch central bank and a Nazi collaborator.

Another way of raising money was to borrow   from wealthy Dutch citizens. As proof of their  investment, they received old stock certificates,   which could be exchanged after the war for their  money, backed by the Dutch government-in-exile. To keep the money flowing, Walraven van  Hall argued that only large sums of at least   25,000 guilders should be loaned. He believed  this would reduce the risk of being caught.

For this reason, he and his brother developed   a system to manage a complex network of  illegal loans, all administered in code. In total, more than 83 million guilders were  distributed through the National Support Fund,   an equivalent to roughly 450 million euros  today, with very little misuse of funds.

On 26 January 1945, due to betrayal  by a Nazi collaborator, Johan van Lom,   resistance member Teus van Vliet was arrested.  Under interrogation, he revealed that an NSF   meeting would take place the following day.  The next day, all participants in the meeting,   including Van Hall, were arrested by  the Nazis and imprisoned in Amsterdam.

Walraven van Hall was 39 years old when he was  executed on 12 February 1945 in the city of   Haarlem, along with seven other resistance  members, in retaliation for the death of   a high-ranking police officer. Ironically,  the Germans had no idea who he really was;   they believed he was just another  resistance fighter, not the man who   had financed much of the underground movement.

The Germans officially surrendered all their   troops in the Netherlands on 5 May 1945, three  days before the general capitulation of Germany. After the war, efforts began to sort out the  complex financial operations carried out during   the occupation. Loans to the NSF were repaid by  the Dutch government, and the issue of the forged   treasury bonds was resolved.

The NSF still held  22 million guilders in cash, which was used to   build the national monument in Amsterdam and to  help establish the Netherlands Institute for War   Documentation. In 1954, the NSF was dissolved. Walraven van Hall was posthumously awarded the   Dutch Cross of Resistance by the Dutch government.  The United States awarded him the Medal of Freedom   with Gold Palm.

In 1978, Israel recognized him as  Righteous Among the Nations for helping to support   between 800 and 900 Jews in hiding during the war. Van Hall is buried at the Dutch Honorary Cemetery   in Bloemendaal, where many Second World War  victims—including resistance fighter Hannie   Schaft and sculptor and resistance leader Gerrit  van der Veen—were reinterred after the war. Thanks for watching the World History  Channel.

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