IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER we saw that P. J. Meertens, Yge Foppema, and Garmt Stuiveling were prominently involved in the postwar discussion about the importance of clandestine literature. All three men had impressive careers in Dutch postwar society. In 1945 Foppema was celebrated as one of the greatest poets of clandestine literature and was awarded a thousand-guilder prize for his contribution to the resistance. He later worked as a journalist for several newspapers and magazines and ended his career as editor-in-chief of the weekly supplement of the NRC, one the leading national newspapers. Meertens was invited to collaborate on the first major study on the Dutch resistance, Onderdrukking en verzet (Repression and Resistance, 1947–54), and became director of a research institute on Dutch ethnology and dialectology that was later (and is still today) named after him. Garmt Stuiveling had a career as professor in Dutch philology at Amsterdam University and became director of the Dutch PEN Club.

Besides their successful careers and their common interest in the literary expression of the Dutch resistance, these men also shared something very different: a shadow of collaboration. Although they were never accused of actual collaboration, there were allegations about a questionable lenience toward the occupiers, and suggestions that their prominence in the study of clandestine literature might have been a deliberate strategy to obscure some dubious activities during the occupation.

During the occupation Foppema worked for the Nazified Dutch radio, where he had his own program, the Taalclub (Language Club).