MILITARY (GENERAL)
This book is proof that although the Dutch may have been occupied, they were never conquered.
The book, Stepping Stones to Freedom: Help to Allied Airmen in The Netherlands During World War II, by Professor Bob de Graaff was originally published in Dutch as Schakels naar de vrijheid by SDU Publishers in The Hague in 1995 in cooperation with “The Escape” organization, a group made up of WWII helpers of downed Allied airmen. Members of “The Escape” felt so strongly about its historical contents that they gathered financial support to have it translated and printed in English for members of the Air Forces Escape and Evasion Society (AFEES) in 2003. We are grateful to Professor de Graaff for permission to reproduce the English version of the book.
One in seven Allied aviators who survived being shot down in the Netherlands were helped to safety. According to Bob de Graaff, roughly 6,000 Dutch civilians took part in the rescue operations. They included Roman Catholic clerics, veterinarians, farmers, rationing inspectors, air-defense officials, gendarmes and smugglers—all of whom joined in constructing, as Mr. de Graaff describes it, “a hodge-podge of intertwining lines” across the flat countryside.